Word: camp
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Nearly every day, an ambulance comes to pick up one of the 12 Iranian hunger strikers camping out in front of the U.S. embassy in London. After a month and a half without food, some have suffered fainting spells, others vision loss or heart attacks. But the ambulance soon brings them back, because they refuse to be given IV drips. The strikers are relatives of Iranian dissidents living in a camp in central Iraq that was taken over by Iraqi police once U.S. troops had handed over control of the area. Their message to the U.S. is clear: protect their...
...Outside the U.S. embassy in London's Grosvenor Square, Farzaneh Hosseini points to her 60-year-old father half asleep on a cot. He hasn't eaten in 44 days; his siblings in the camp in Iraq are starving themselves too. His other daughter, Hoda, a doctor who watches over the strikers, says he and the others have reached a point where their blood pressure is so low they could die at any time. "I hope the U.S. fulfills its promise to the people of Camp Ashraf soon," says Farzaneh...
...Camp Ashraf, some 40 miles north of Baghdad, is the base for the controversial People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran, also known as the MEK. A formerly-armed group that critics say resembles a cult, the MEK helped overturn the Shah in 1979, but in the '80s clashed with former Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini and fled Iran. Saddam Hussein let the exiles set up bases in Iraq - Camp Ashraf is the last standing - and gave the group arms and training to help him fight his war with Iran...
After the fall of Saddam in 2003, U.S. forces were protecting Camp Ashraf's approximately 3,400 inhabitants as part of an agreement in which the MEK traded in their arms in exchange for "protected persons" status under the Geneva Convention. (The U.S. considers the MEK a terrorist organization, though it has reportedly tapped the group for intelligence on Iran's nuclear program). But ever since the U.S. handed sovereignty back to the Iraqis in June, Camp Ashraf no longer feels like a safe haven. On July 28, clashes between camp dwellers and Iraqi forces left 11 Iranians dead, scores...
...appease Iran's ayatullahs, who consider MEK members terrorists. "This situation was predictable the day Saddam's regime fell," says Karim Pakzad, a Middle East expert at Paris' Institute of Strategic and International Relations (IRIS). "It's understandable that the Iraqis want to extend their sovereignty to a camp of former militants, whose presence they can no longer stand. But it's also become a humanitarian question: what to do with these people...