Update, March 10th 2011: We received a letter from the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran in relation to this blog post. See below.



In a guest post, a Middle East editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister organisation, examines the way in which dictators choose whether or not to use violence to stay in power.

Violence only works if it is overwhelming. Up to a critical point, civilian losses embolden protesters who will rally against the injustices they see in the loss of their comrades. If the losses are massive, and pass that point, protesters are likely to realise that the state means business and is here to stay. This was the case in 1991; as soon as Saddam Hussein was allowed to use helicopter gunships, he did. The magnitude of destruction was stratospheric and anybody seen as being remotely sympathetic to the uprising was punished. Even palm trees were destroyed (10m in Basra alone), and the Marshes were drained, ostensibly to stop rebel fighters from seeking refuge there, but undoubtedly also to punish the people seen by the state as being complicit in the uprising by destroying their livelihoods.

The need for a patronised inner coterie: Iraq taught us that magnitude of destruction has to be immense. Muammar Qaddafi's rhetoric suggests he understands this and is willing to follow through. This will depend on the willingness of the army to follow his directives. Saddam did not have the army, but he did have a series of concentric circles of supporters loyal to him because of the patronage he extended them (special-forces units and tribes). He had tied their interests to his survival so successfully that they could not risk defecting. In the same way that Mr Qaddafi has turned to foreign mercenaries, Saddam Hussein could also rely on his own foreign legion, the Mojahid-e-Khalq organisation whose divisions were used to fight both against the Kurds and the Shia down south (Mariam Rajavi, one of the group's leaders, famously said "take the Kurds under your tanks and save your bullets for the Islamic Guard").

The need for a scapegoat. Iraqis in 1991, even the Shia, did not trust Iran. According to Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi academic in his book, "Cruelty and Silence", agents from the Iraqi state began to post pictures of Iran's leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, across the south. This allowed Saddam to frame the uprising as one orchestrated by Iran, not disgruntled Iraqis with real grievance against the regime. This idea gained traction and was key to maintaining support among the "White Provinces", the mainly Sunni areas to the north and west of the country that feared that an Iranian-style regime would replace Saddam, and that the new system would be inherently hostile to their community. These provinces remained loyal and formed the mainstay of Saddam's support base throughout the uprising.

Supporters of the monarchy in Bahrain are painting the unrest as a Shia uprising to try to retain support of the country's Sunni community (despite leading Sunni opposition MPs, including Munira Fakhro of Wa'ad, coming out in support of the protest movements). Similar tactics, but with an ethnic dimension, have been used in Jordan; King Abdullah sacked the Palestinian-born prime minister and replaced him with a Jordanian replacement. Part of the reason for the move is likely to play on the Palestinian/Jordanian rift within society and to shore up his Jordanian support base who are uneasy about Palestinian representation in the government.

The will to maintain power vs. the desire to pander to international public opinion: Libya went through years of sanctions and was an international pariah for decades. Mr Qaddafi would probably like to nurture friendly ties with Europe and the wider international community, but he will not do this at the expense of his own survival. Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's former president, crumbled under international pressure. This was part of the reason he could not use overwhelming force to maintain his grip (the apparent defection of the army played a part too). Mr Qaddafi, like Saddam Hussein, probably cares less about external pressure because the damage has been done. He may feel he can go it alone, as he has in the past.

Letter from the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran

The claim that the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) took part in the suppression of Kurds and Shiites in 1991 is a great lie and its publication in The Economist violates the principles of journalism and has a clear political agenda.

This claim was first made by intelligence organs of the mullahs' regime and published in its affiliated media, and it continues to be a serious part of Tehran's demonisation campaign against its main opposition force. The WikiLeaks revelations, published by the Daily Telegraph on February 4th, exposed one such front organisation of the mullahs' Intelligence Ministry called “Nejat” Association which approached British government agencies and officials to propagate such lies against the PMOI.

There is a wealth of documentation and evidence to prove the baseless nature of the claim that the PMOI had any role in the suppression of the Kurds and Shiites, and if The Economist sought the truth it could have referred to them to easily clarify the bogus nature of this claim. These include:

1 - In a 1999 affidavit to a court in the Netherlands, Iraq's present Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, who was at the time the foreign policy spokesman for the main Kurdish political movement Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq (KDP), wrote: “(We) can confirm that the Mujahedeen (sic) were not involved in suppressing the Kurdish people neither during the uprising nor in its aftermath. We have not come across any evidence to suggest that the Mujahedeen have exercised any hostility towards the people of Iraqi Kurdistan.”

2 - Reuters news agency in a report dated 22 May 2002, while referring to the contents of the above-mentioned letter, rejected the claim that the PMOI played a role in the suppression of the Kurds.

3 - The Iran Policy Committee, comprised of former US national security and military officials in Washington, in a research paper entitled “US policy and the Iranian opposition” (published in 2006) evaluated and rejected the above claim, stressing: “An IPC task force conducted its own investigation of charges of MEK [PMOI] collaboration against the Kurds. The task force collected statements from credible Iraqi sources and American military officers who served at Camp Ashraf, Iraq. In addition, the task force held direct discussions with current and former MEK members. The research findings confirm Iraqi and MEK denials of any such role by the MEK in suppression of the Kurdish people”. (Page 63 of the report)

4 - In order to investigate the matter, Iraqi reporter Safi al-Yasseri personally went to the Kurdish region in northern Iraq including to Erbil, Kelar, Khaneqein, Dahouk, Mandali, Jalula, and Suleimania. He issued a statement on 27 May 2005 reiterating that he personally conducted a poll in Kurdish villages to see the people's reaction to the PMOI. According to Al-Yasseri's statement, the Kurdish citizens denied that the PMOI had played any role in the crackdown on the Kurds.

5 - In November 2006, “DLA Piper” published a report entitled, “Iran: Foreign Policy Challenges and Choices”, analysing the issue in detail and stating: “No evidence exists suggesting that MEK [PMOI] ever supported Saddam Hussein's forces in either Operation Desert Storm or Operation Iraqi Freedom.” (Page 93)

6 - “International Educational Development”, a non-governmental organisation with consultative status at with UN, has also confirmed this reality. In 1995, it published an official statement which was recorded with the UN reiterating that it had conducted widespread investigations on this matter and it completely refuted the allegation that the PMOI had assisted Saddam in attacking the Kurds. In its conclusion, this organisation stated this was all part of a well-orchestrated misinformation campaign by the Iranian regime's intelligence agencies.

7 - In 2006, “GlobalOptions, Inc.” produced a report entitled: “Independent Assessment of the Mujahedin-e Khalq and National Council of Resistance of Iran” in which it evaluated allegations against the PMOI including that it played a role in the suppression of the Kurds. The report stressed the vast majority of the evidence first appeared in the regime's official news agency IRNA. According to the organisation's report, IRNA has also claimed: “A Mojahedin woman drove a tank over the bodies of the dead and wounded.” (Page 79)

8 - In an interview on 26 January 2009, prominent Iraqi Shiite leader, Ayatollah Iyad Jamal ad-Din, former chairman of the Iraqi Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Al-Arabia television station: “I have personally reviewed many of the files in the intelligence services of the previous government and the current special security agencies. We did not find any such document or evidence that the Mujahedin-e Khalq took part in the crackdown against the people of Iraq.”

Over the past 25 years, during which time some of its forces have been based in Iraq, the PMOI has remained steadfast to its principle of non-meddling in Iraq's internal affairs. The support of 5.2 million Iraqis, including Kurds and Shiites, regarding the continued presence of the PMOI in Iraq in 2006 and the support of 3 million Iraqi Shiites in 2008 are a clear testament to the widespread support for this organisation among the Iraqi population.

Hossein Abedini

Member

Foreign Affairs Committee

National Council of Resistance of Iran

London

The Economist replies:

Allegations concerning the uprising of 1991 are currently being aired before Iraq's High Tribunal, which has already heard the testimony of numerous victims who say they were targeted by the Mojahedin e-Khalq (MEK), the Persian abbreviation for the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI). Several arrest warrants have been issued on the basis of these testimonies.

Nibras Kadhimi, a scholar at the Hudson Institute who is a respected analyst of Iraqi affairs, has testified that the MEK was Saddam Hussein's main force in recapturing the towns of Kifri and Kalar and their surrounding villages, as well as parts of Kirkuk, from the Iraqis rebelling against Saddam in 1991. There are many such documented testimonies in this regard.

Wilfred Buchta, in his book “Who Rules Iran? The Structure of Power in the Islamic Republic”, states that the MEK received some $80m a month from Saddam between 1982 and 1990. One of Saddam's senior generals, who had a hand in suppressing the uprisings, also stated that the MEK received $7m a month after 1990.

A New York Times correspondent in Iraq, Elizabeth Rubin, who visited Camp Ashraf, the MEK's base in Iraq, and wrote an exhaustively researched article on it published on July 13th 2003, quoted Mariam Rajavi making the statement denied in the letter (published above) from the MEK's supporters. She also wrote: “Everyone I spoke to—Iraq intelligence officers, Kurdish commanders and human rights groups—said that in 1991 Hussein used the Mujahideen and its tanks as advance forces to crush the Kurdish uprisings in the north and the Shia uprisings in the south.”

In her book ''Why does the west forget?'', Baroness Nicholson includes further testimony of the Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq, lending weight to the array of allegations against the MEK cited above. This was based on interviews she conducted during many visits to Iraq in the past 20 years.

UPDATE, March 14th 2011: A previous version of The Economist's reply contained the following paragraph:



“Professor Raymond Tanter, a former member of the American National Security Council, wrote a paper in which he states: “Following their expulsion from Iran by Ayatollah Khomeini in the early 1980s, the MEK allied with Saddam Hussein and, in exchange for providing domestic security operations against Iraqi Shiites and Kurds, Saddam gave the MEK millions of dollars, protection, and bases along the Iranian border from which the MEK could launch their frequent attacks against the clerical regime.” The same allegation is made again in the US State Department's “Patterns of Global Terrorism” published in 2002.”



In fact, those were the views of one of Professor Tanter's students and he does not endorse them. Instead, he has written about the MEK in Iraq, thus:



“The IPC [Iran Policy Committee] Task Force also conducted its own investigation of charges of MEK collaboration against the Kurds. The IPC collected statements from credible Iraqi sources and American military officers who served at Camp Ashraf, Iraq. The IPC also held 8 direct discussions with current and former MEK members. The findings confirm Iraqi and MEK denials of any such role by the MEK in suppression of the Kurdish people.



In 2002, Reuters obtained a document from a civil suit being conducted in the Netherlands testifying that the MEK had no part in Saddam's brutal operations against

the Kurds. The document, signed by a principal Kurdish political official, said that the MEK was not involved in suppressing the Kurdish people neither during the uprising nor in its aftermath.”



We apologise to Professor Tanter.