Word: mek
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...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...
...With Baghdad and Tehran getting increasingly close, some observers think the raid was an attempt to 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...
...Bush Administration would have none of it. "The Americans just couldn't bring themselves to trust the Iranians, even though they had been pretty straight in their dealings over al-Qaeda and the Taliban," says the official. Instead, the U.S. decided to protect the MEK, even over the objections of Iraq's elected government. (Read "Bin Laden's Son Loses Political-Asylum Bid in Spain...
...with the U.S. military presence in Iraq beginning to draw down, the government in Baghdad has made it clear that it will evict the MEK, though not to Iran. (Iraqi troops forced their way into the MEK's camp north of Baghdad on July 28.) Given the decline of the MEK's fortunes in Iraq, Tehran seems to have decided in late 2008 that the al-Qaeda commanders under house arrest had lost their value as bargaining chips. Several of them, including Saad bin Laden, appear to have been taken to the border with Pakistan and released. For Saad, however...