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Join Daniel Pipes on a Fact Finding Expedition to Israel (For full details click here) Please take a moment to visit and log in at the subscriber area, and submit your city & country location. We will use this information in future to invite you to any events that we organize in your area. Resettling the Mujahedeen-e Khalq of Iraqby Daniel Pipes http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2012/02/resettling-the-mujahedeen-e-khalq-of-iraq Be the first of your friends to like this. Tragedy looms as Iraqi authorities threaten by April 30 forcibly to expel 3,400 Iranians, members of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq. MeK members rightly fear for their lives if pushed across the border for the Iranian regime criminalizes membership in the MeK and abominates the organization, its determined foe. Some background: Saddam Hussein allied with the MeK (also known as the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, or PMOI) against their common enemy in Tehran. Following the U.S.-led conquest of Iraq in 2003, MeK members living in Iraq acquired "protected persons" status and entered a political limbo, neither friend nor enemy of the occupying powers. With the gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops and increasingly close ties between the Iraqi and Iranian governments, MeK circumstances worsened to the point that in April 2011 Iraqi troops attacked Camp Ashraf, its Iraqi home since 1986, killing 34 people and injuring 325. Cooler heads prevailed after this dangerous flare-up. With U.S. government approval, Baghdad signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United Nations in December 2011. In it, the Government of Iraq committed to the relocation of Camp Ashraf (now renamed Camp New Iraq) residents to a temporary transit facility where the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would begin the process of transiting MeK members in Iraq to refugee status, a necessary first step to resettle them outside Iraq.
Toward this end, about 400 MeK members voluntarily left Camp Ashraf on Feb. 18 and moved to Camp Liberty, a former U.S. military base. Their transfer, however, was marred by threats from Iraqi forces, harassment from elements of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and inhospitable living conditions and constant police surveillance within Camp Liberty. This move cast doubts on Iraqi government intentions and set a worrying precedent. Further, there is no clear sense how the MeK members will all be processed as refugees within the next two months, much less of their ultimate destination for resettlement outside either Iraq or Iran. Here follow some practical recommendations for Washington, which must not abandon the organization most feared by the tyrants in Tehran:
These steps offer a way to resettle MeK members and resolve an urgent impending human tragedy in advance of the looming April 30 deadline. (February 28, 2012) | |||||
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