Friday, April 22, 2005 - First there was the news, delivered by Seymour Hersh, that the U.S. armed forces had started running covert operations in Iran. Then came news reports, and advocacy articles in conservative journals, that the United States was, or should be, using the Mujahideen e-Khalq for running reconnaissance and disruptive operations in Iran.

The MEK had long been listed as a designated terrorist group by the U.S. State Department, most recently in its 2003 Patterns of Global Terrorism report, due to their history of launching terror attacks against civilian targets in Iran. But that was when they were backed by Saddam Hussein.

In a recent decision, the Bush administration has decided to stop publishing the State Department’s annual terrorism report. No terror report, no designated terrorist lists.

Now the MEK, a group of disgruntled revolutionaries ousted by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979, are cleared to be American allies. In the war on terror, some terrorists are more equal than others. But not all terror groups supported by the U.S. are necessarily facing outward from Iraq.

Today, a report by Arun Gupta in The Indypendent, adds to previous reporting by The Wall Street Journal reporter Greg Jaffe, elaborating on how politicians backed by the U.S. in Iraq are running private militia armies as counter-insurgency forces. While they receive some funding and training from the U.S., these militia seem to operate with complete plausible deniability – spook speak for running death squads without fear of legal prosecution.

Jaffe’s report, from Feb. 16, identified these militia, known to the U.S. military as "Unplanned Units," that went by names such as Defenders of Baghdad, the Special Police Commandos, the Defenders of Khadamiya and the Amarah Brigade.

"We don't call them militias. Militias are...illegal," said Maj. Chris Wales in Jaffe’s report, "I've begun calling them 'Irregular Iraqi ministry-directed brigades.’"

Jaffe described Maj. Wales as someone "who spent most of January tracking down and finding these new forces."

Many academics and journalists observing the Iraqi insurgency had raised flags in late 2004, inquiring why the so-called Sunni insurgents would be killing people who seemingly had little to do with resisting the insurgents. Robert Fisk posed the question specifically after the killing of aid worker Margaret Hassan in November 2004, asking if there were other forces running amock in Iraq killing those critical of the Iraqi administration, then led by Iyad Allawi.

While conservative "patriots" would scoff at any suggestion of American forces being involved in the running of foreign militia, they would be speaking from a peculiarly selective reading of history. The kind of history, for example, that ignores the Georgia-based School of the Americas, the proud alma mater for death squads (special police teams) that slaughtered civilians (communists/socialists) in Central and South America in the 1980s.

In 2001, the Bush administration applied a face lift to the SOA by renaming it the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation."

Then there were the Contras, Reagan’s "freedom fighters" who were also compared to America’s "founding fathers." The U.S. government continued to fund them even after Congress forbade it, running as low as to ask the Saudis for monetary assistance and finally channeling moneys to the Contras by selling missiles to Iran.

In this same time period, as noted by Steve Coll in his book "Ghost Wars," Americans were also quite happy to train Pakistani officials in sniping and bomb making, and provided them with sniper rifles and tons of plastic explosives. The Pakistanis in turn trained the Afghan militia who then used these weapons and training to eliminate Soviet officers. Well, in the beginning anyway.

Pretty soon Sikh militants in Punjab were using similar bombs to kill Indian government officials and civilians. The Indian government maintains to this day that the Sikh terrorists were trained by Pakistan.

And India itself used the death squad counter-insurgency techniques in its operations in Kashmir. Most notable of such "militants" was Kukka Parray, whose Ikhawan-ul-Muslimeen militia seemed exceptionally skilled at killing fellow Kashmiris, especially those loyal to the Hizbul Mujahideen.

Parray, like many other successful "freedom fighters" around the world, was rewarded for his work by a stint as a legislator. And so it goes in Iraq now, where "elected" politicians (appointed by the U.S.) are also running amock with their private little armies, serving the cause of "freedom and liberty."

Should terror be used to fight terrorists? Should illegal armies be employed to destroy insurgencies? If your aim is to suppress an insurgency through a bloodbath, while maintaining plausible deniability, then this is surely a good tactic. Militias loyal to the government in Colombia, for example, have made great inroads in murdering the support base of the FARC.

They also have been allowed by their sponsors in the Colombian government to farm opiates and run drugs, most commonly into the United States.

Peace and justice, as Mohandas Gandhi often said, are not the end goals – they are the path one must walk in life. Violence, as Gandhi discovered to great personal dismay, is readily dispatched by moral cowards and intellectual posers to accelerate a short cut to peace. But can the use of immoral methods really achieve moral results? Or are we doomed to inherit even more corruption, in the form of warlords, drug lords and unending oppression and repression in Iraq? Is this the "freedom" that democracy is supposed to bring? A lawless police state policed by private militias?

The road to hell, as the song goes, was paved with good intentions. So are our murderers.

Abhinav K. Aima is an Instructor of Journalism University of Minnesota. To contact the author: aaima@d.umn.edu