Word: ashraf
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...dozens of middle-aged Iranians standing in six neat, gender-segregated rows stare straight ahead from behind the chain-link fence close to the entrance of Camp Ashraf, some 40 miles north of Baghdad in Diyala near the Iranian border. "Ashraf is our home, Ashraf is our home," they robotically chant in Iranian-accented Arabic, as they jab their right fists into the air in unison. Some of the women, who are all dressed in pantsuits with long jackets and colorful headscarves tied under the chin, carry placards in Persian. A bright yellow banner shimmers in the mid-morning...
Most of the time there's nobody outside Camp Ashraf to hear the members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a fiercely anti-Tehran group who have been based here for the past two decades. That is, unless you count the Iraqi security forces who took over control of the perimeter of the 19-sq.-mile camp in February from U.S troops. The Americans had protected it since the 2003 invasion. But the Iraqi soldiers, like their government in Baghdad, don't appear keen to listen to the chanting. The MEK should "understand that their days in Iraq are numbered...
Saddam Hussein's regime - no friend of the ayatollahs of Iran - welcomed the MEK in the mid-'80s, inviting them to set up a military camp and supplying them with hundreds of armored vehicles and other forms of support. Although in recent months Camp Ashraf's residents have swapped their once-mandatory olive green military fatigues for civilian garb, both Iraq and the U.S State Department consider the MEK a terrorist group. In 2003, the U.S military disarmed Ashraf. (After a legal battle, the European Union removed the organization from its terrorist list in January; the United Kingdom...
...They want to physically purge everybody here," says Hossein Madani, an MEK spokesman and liaison to the Iraqi government. "There is an Iranian agenda that wants Ashraf residents out of Iraq." That may be, but government officials say the camp's closure is also in Iraq's national interest. "We do not want any friction with our neighbors," Rubaie says. The days when Iraq was used as a base to launch attacks against its neighbors, whether by the MEK along the eastern border with Iran, or by the Kurdish separatist PKK along the northern border with Turkey, are over...
...allegations of ill treatment arose, the ICRC, would take them up with the authorities. Krimitsas says the ICRC hasn't received any new requests for voluntary repatriation. But that's only one way to leave. There are reports that in recent months defections from the camp have increased, although Ashraf leaders deny that anyone has left since January...