Iranian Rebels Based in Baghdad Unhappy With Iraq’s War Strategy

The Washington Post
June I, 1988
By Patrick E. Tyler

BAGHDAD, Iraq—Iran’s armed opposition move­ment, the People’s Mujaheddin, which is based in and backed by Iraq, is deeply concerned that Iraq’s use of missiles and chemical weapons against civilian targets in the Persian Gulf war is undercutting its attempts to build political support inside Iran.

The People’s Mujaheddin, already politically bur­dened by its association with the Iraqi regime that has been fighting Iran for more than 7½ years, is seeking to distance itself from Iraq’s new strategy of missile and chemical warfare.

“We are not in any way happy that the Iraqis are fir­ing missiles at Iran,” said Mohammed Mohaddessin, the political director of the Baghdad-based movement, in an interview.

The People’s Mujaheddin, which fields a National Liberation Army in camps on the Iraqi side of the war front, has cheered Iraq’s recent major victories over Iran in the war, and blames the war’s continuation on Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

But the movement’s young leadership is voicing dis­tinct discomfort that Iraq fired 160 missiles into Tehran and other Iranian cities during a six-week barrage that ended last month and which the Mujaheddin estimate killed or wounded 5,000 civilians. During the same pe­riod, Iran fired more than 40 missiles against Baghdad in an offshoot of the conflict known as the “war of the cities.”

“For any Iranian,” Mohaddessin said, “including us, it is very tough to see our compatriots under the rubble, getting killed in the war of the cities. People have been forced to leave their belongings, their houses and resort to putting up tents in the desert?

Mohaddessin deplored the “war of the cities” that raged between the two sides between Feb. 29 and April 18 as inhuman,” and said the escalating use of chemical weapons, particularly in civilian areas, “is even more inhuman.” His organization, which monitors events in­side Iran through a network of sympathizers, estimates that 4 million of Tehran’s 10 million people fled the Iranian capital during the missile exchanges.

In the past, the People’s Mujaheddin leader, Massoud Rajavi, had achieved moderate success in convincing the Iraqi regime to stop aerial bombing of civilian tar­gets in Iran. But with Iraq now relying heavily on long-range missiles as a strategic weapon to deter Iranian aggression, he showed no confidence that his group could influence the Iraqi leadership.

“I have my own concerns as to the restart of the war of the cities,” he said, adding, “we have our own limi­tations in this regard.”

For the moment, Mohaddessin said, the group is forced to live with the stigma of its association with Iraq. “We have a saying in Persian,” Mohaddessin said through an interpreter, “The enemy of your enemy is on your side.”

“Naturally when we fight against Khomeini,” he added, “the Iraqis are happy. It consumes some of Kho­meini’s energy.”

While both the People’s Mujaheddin and Iraq aim to apply military pressure on Tehran’s revolutionary lead­ership, Mohaddessin noted that their goals inevitably will diverge.

“Our war,” he said, “is offensive for the purpose of overthrowing Khomeini whereas the Iraqis are just fighting a defensive war in order to protect them­selves.”

The People’s Mujaheddin was founded in 1965 with a leftist orientation and allied with Khomeini in the move­ment that toppled Shah Reza Pahlavi in 1979. The mu­jaheddin, or “holy fighters,” are unconnected with the Afghan anticommunist movement that uses the same name.

When Khomeini’s government cracked down on the People’s Mujaheddin in 1981, its leadership moved to France until 1986, when the French government, locked in its own political confrontation with Tehran, agreed to expel Rajavi and his followers.

Rajavi then announced that it was time the Mujaheddin took their opposition onto the battlefield, Iran’s only neighbor willing to accept a guerrilla force against Kho­meini’s government was Iraq.

After a year of organization, the group established camps in the central and northern sectors of the 700-mile war front. Several thousand fighters, including women, have been equipped and trained, receiving mil­itary and logistical support from the Iraqi army, accord­ing to diplomatic sources.

The consensus of military and diplomatic sources here-is that the Mujaheddin’s National Liberation Army has played a minor role in harassing Iranian forces in cross-border raids.

“I can’t see that they are much of a factor in the war,” said one western political analyst.

Yet at a time when Iran has relied more heavily on exploiting Iraq’s rebellious Kurdish minority in the north as a proxy army, Iraq appears to be assisting the People’s Mujaheddin to train and equip its forces to play a similar proxy role.

In its most successful attack, the Mujaheddin on March 28 crossed into Iran from the central Iraqi bor­der town of Fekkeh and struck the rear defense area held by Iran’s 77th Khorassan division.

Baghdad-based correspondents for western news agencies who visited the Mujaheddin forces after they returned across the Iraqi border said several hundred Iranian soldiers had been taken prisoner in the raid and a large cache of weapons seized, including four aging M47 tanks.

The Mujaheddin claimed to have killed 2,000 troops and wounded 1,500, but western military sources said they were skeptical of the claims.