Source: Niqash.com
Trouble is brewing at Iraq’s Camp Ashraf, where 3,500 members of the main Iranian opposition group, the People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI/MEK), are based.
At Iran's request, Iraqi authorities, who took over protection of Ashraf from American troops in January, are now preventing medicine and fuel from reaching the inhabitants. Parts of Ashraf, including a dormitory for several hundred women, have been besieged since mid-March, and unarmed residents have been subjected to violence. Journalists and Iraqi doctors are not allowed entry, neither are relatives of PMOI (MEK) members or women of any nationality.
These draconian measures were put into force by Iraq's National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, a key ally of Iran, who says he wants to drive PMOI (MEK) members out of Iraq. They also come two months after the European Union removed the PMOI from its terrorist list. Britain de-proscribed the group in 2008 after the Court of Appeal found that all the evidence showed it was "perverse" to classify the group as a terrorist organisation. The group still remains on the US blacklist, but in 2004 Washington recognised all PMOI (MEK) members in Ashraf as "protected persons" under the Fourth Geneva Convention, after determining that none of them could be charged with any crime under U.S law. Under international law, an attempt to forcefully displace the population even inside Iraq would be tantamount to a "war crime". Nevertheless, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei publicly demanded in February that the Iraqi President "implement the bilateral agreement to expel the PMOI(MEK) ", triggering current developments.
The World Organisation Against Torture warned earlier this month that PMOI(MEK) members risk being tortured if sent back to Iran. The NGO urged U.S authorities to "take the necessary steps to ensure the effective protection of Ashraf residents."
In Strasbourg last week Ms Corien Jonker, who chairs the refugees committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, said: "The situation of Iranians in Camp Ashraf in Iraq has become more than alarming. These persons must, as a matter of urgency, receive full guarantees of international protection."
Most independent observers agree – and the Iraqis make no secret of this – that the actions to drive the PMOI (MEK) out of Iraq have been coordinated with Tehran. Iranian authorities are overwhelmed by student-led protests and resort to arbitrary arrests, torture and mass executions to spread fear. Opponents of the regime were given a major boost when the 27 EU states lifted the ban on the PMOI (MEK) in January. This alarmed Khamenei and his mullah clique.
Khamenei suffered a second blow at the end of January when Iraqis went to the polls to elect provincial councillors. The slate allied to Iran failed to win in any of the 14 provinces in which voting was held, and Iraqis sent a powerful message that they oppose what most call a "hidden occupation" by Iran. Almost incomprehensibly, the Christian minority groups did better in Baghdad than Iran's chief ally.
The PMOI (MEK) in Ashraf has spent the past six years convincing Sunni and Shiite Iraqis to stop their infighting and hostility towards the Coalition and unite in opposing the import of Iranian fundamentalism. Sunni Arabs leaders are now encouraging members of their sect to take part in the December national elections, and top Shiite and Kurdish groups, including those in government, are threatening to withdraw from their alliance with Iranian proxy groups such as the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq led by Khamenei protégé Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim.
Iraqi dailies and commentators constantly talk of 5.2 million Iraqis having backed the PMOI's call. Khamenei has realised that if the current circumstances persist, come December, he will lose his grip on power centres in Iraq, which would break his already feeble ideological mould over members of his Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. To Khamenei, losing Iraq is akin to losing the ideological adjutancy of the Guards, which also happen to form the backbone of the suppression apparatus in Iran. It follows that Khamenei's regime would then face huge domestic public upheaval of revolutionary proportions. This is precisely why his predecessor Ruhollah Khomeini saw the takeover of Iraq, with its majority Shiite population, as the Islamic Republic's lifeline, and this is why Khamenei is putting maximum pressure on Iraq to expel his main opponents.
The current siege of Ashraf by Iraqi forces violates international humanitarian law and the written assurances Baghdad gave to the U.S before taking charge of the camp's protection. Ashraf’s residents have vowed not to leave despite the use of force by Iraqis. Fearing a humanitarian catastrophe, Iraqi democrats and nationalists such as Saleh Mutlaq who heads the Sunni National Dialogue Front in the Iraqi Parliament and Shiite Ayatollah Ayad Jamaleddin who sits on the Iraqi Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee have urged U.S forces to take back responsibility for protection of Ashraf to undercut Iranian pressure on the Iraqi government to suppress the group.
Iraq's Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi earlier this month announced on his website that the PMOI's presence in Iraq was legal and fell "within the bounds of international conventions."
The U.S must now heed the recommendation of Iraqi democrats and re-take control of Ashraf. In doing so, this time next year, we could see an Iraqi administration free of Iranian proxies and consequently an Iranian society brimming with dissent.
Lord Corbett of Castle Vale chairs the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom. He is a former chairman of the UK’s House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee.