Word: camped
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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...
...camp, which is more like a sprawling village with flower-filled parks and tree-lined avenues dotted with old-fashioned white lampposts, is home to 3,418 people, about a 1,000 of whom are dual citizens with non-Iranian travel documents issued by Western governments including the U.S, Canada, Australia, and the European Union. It has become an irritant to Baghdad's increasingly close ties to Tehran. Iraq wants to close it, on the grounds that its residents are "terrorists" and "illegal foreigners." Still, deadlines for doing so have come and gone (the most recent was in late March...
...recently admitted that Vladimir Putin earned 11% more than his superior President Dmitry Medvedev. Putin is only the premier, but he was the head man before that, so some of his pay package may have been grandfathered. The Russians did not say. (See pictures of Putin's patriotic youth camp...