The previous part of this article (Part I) ended on the notion that since the protection of Camp Ashraf was handed over to Iraq on February 20, 2009, we have witnessed an ominous cycle that has kept repeating itself.
The lack of adherence of the U.S. government to its commitments emboldened the Iraqi government and the Iranian regime to stage a siege, suppress and massacre Camp Ashraf residents and then inaction to the incidents on the part of the U.S. once again encouraged the next attack and slaughter by government of Iraq and the regime of Iran.
As the usual political logic and customary balance of power dictate, and as hoped by the clerical regime, there was every expectation that with another two rounds of this ominous cycle, the People’s Mojahedin organization of Iran (PMOI / MEK) would be destroyed in 2009.
However, the experience and actions by the PMOI (MEK) and the Iranian Resistance upset those calculations and created a new political balance.
The recurring ominous cycle
Exactly nine days after the Obama administration illegally handed over protection of Camp Ashraf to the Iraqi government, the Iranian regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, in his meeting with the President of Iraq on 29 February 2009 in Tehran, publicly and officially called on Iraq’s Prime Minister and President to adhere to the end of their mutual accord and expel the PMOI (MEK) from Iraq.
Beginning in the month of March, and while U.S. forces still had a considerable presence in Camp Ashraf, under the eyes of U.S. forces, the Iraqis initiated an inhuman blockade against Camp Ashraf residents.
Concurrently, in private interviews with each and every one of the residents conducted outside the camp, representatives of the government of Iraq encouraged PMOI members to leave their ranks. At that juncture, 11 people, or less than one percent (0.3% to be exact), chose to leave Camp Ashraf.
In the next stage, the Iraqi forces organized the criminal attack against Camp Ashraf in July 2009. This attack was carried out while U.S. forces were present in Camp Ashraf and right after Nouri Maliki returned from a trip to the U.S., and when the U.S. Secretary of Defense was visiting Iraq.
The attack resulted in the killing of 11 residents and the injuring of over 500. Additionally, 36 residents were taken hostage by the assaulting Iraqi forces. Only a 72-day hunger strike, together with an intense international campaign, forced the government of Iraq to release the hostages. Subsequently, a UN observing team was also stationed in Camp Ashraf.
On December 15, 2009, the government of Iraq that was under the impression that the residents were more prepared to leave the PMOI after the bloody massacre it had conducted in July, brought on a good number of buses to Camp Ashraf and called on the residents to leave Camp Ashraf and go to Baghdad. But not a single resident chose to leave Ashraf.
This ominous cycle repeated itself once again after the U.S. forces left Camp Ashraf on July 2, 2010. Although in February 2009, the U.S. forces had handed over the protection of Ashraf to the Iraqis, they kept a good presence in Camp Ashraf.
As the U.S. forces left, the team of UNAMI observers whose protection was provided by the U.S. Forces, also left Camp Ashraf, opening the way for further aggressions by Iraq and members of the Iranian terrorist Qods Force in the second half of 2010 and the beginning of 2011. In the ensuing aggressions, many Camp Ashraf residents were again injured.
In February 2010, a group of Iranian Ministry of Intelligence agents was dispatched to Camp Ashraf to be stationed beside the camp. They were to implement a white sound torture against Camp Ashraf residents to psychologically torment them.
This psychological torture that began when U.S. forces were still present in Ashraf, took on a much greater dimension as these forces left. This psychological torture continued until the end of 2011, with 320 powerful loudspeakers placed on all flanks of Camp Ashraf.
Since the mullahs’ regime and its proxies in Iraq failed to achieve their objectives through psychological torture by white sound and aggressions by unofficial forces, the Iraqi government organized a large scale attack by the official Iraqi forces in April 2011, when they used American armored vehicles and sharp shooters. This murderous military assault led to the death of 37 residents and the wounding of hundreds and a large section of Ashraf was occupied. This time too, the U.S. Secretary of Defense was in Iraq. Just hours before the attack was initiated, a unit of U.S. forces that was present in Ashraf in shifts received orders from its command to immediately leave Ashraf despite the insistence by the unit’s commander that had information of an imminent attack.
Then, after all these criminal massacres and aggressions and absence of a suitable reaction by the U.S. government and the shameful silence of its senior officials, Khamenei and Maliki decided to relocate PMOI members in Iraq without any legal, security-warranted or logical justification.
A U.S. Ambassador by the name of Lawrence Butler was tasked to achieve this objective and persuade the PMOI (MEK) to accept the relocation. The plan was so perverse that even UNAMI, headed by Mr. Melkert at the time, distanced itself from the plan. In July 2011, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey, told the McClatchy broadcasting: “the U.S. ambassador to Iraq this weekend urged a group of Iranian dissidents … to dissolve their ‘paramilitary organization’ and become refugees some-place else in Iraq. Ambassador James Jeffrey said Saturday that the U.S. was working with the United Nations to move the 3,000-plus Iranians ‘to a place that is a bit safer, a bit further from Iran,’ but they would have to disband…”
However, with the perseverance of the PMOI (MEK), this plan was defeated and following a diplomatic disgrace where Lawrence Butler had brought with him a reporter under the cover of his diplomatic delegation, he showed his true colors and revealed his true mission. Later, The New York Times condemned the reporter and Butler for this unprofessional act.
A few months later, the pairing of Martin Kobler and Daniel Fried took on the task of relocating the PMOI(MEK). They entered the scene with a proposal to relocate Camp Ashraf residents to Camp Liberty which was nothing more than a prison. In collaboration with the government of Iraq and by resorting to deception and fabrication – with the U.S. turning a blind eye – Martin Kobler attempted to hide the true nature of Camp Liberty as a de facto prison. The mullahs’ ambassador in Baghdad disclosed Kobler’s real intentions and quoted him as saying that once PMOI (MEK) were relocated to Camp Liberty, half of them would return back to Iran (Fars news agency, affiliated with IRGC – 24 January 2013).
However, as the dream of mullahs’ regime to dismantle its principal opposition did not come true and contrary to the expectations of the regimes of Iran and Iraq and Kobler, as well as prison conditions and pressures, failed to dissolve the PMOI (MEK), once again the slaughter resumed; this time through rocket attacks that were carried out four times in 2013. The February 9, 2013, rocket attack on Camp Liberty was a warning to the U.S. and UN that Camp Liberty lacks security. Two days after the attack on February 11, the U.S. Ambassador in Baghdad issued a warning to U.S. citizens in Iraq that attacks similar to that of February 9 may recur. However, the U.S. government not only took no measures to secure the protection of the residents in Camp Liberty, but even refused to issue any effective warnings to the government of Iraq.
The atrocity of neglecting obligations
The mass executions and abductions in Camp Ashraf on September 1 that were unmatched in cruelty and atrocity were also unprecedented in atrociously violating all international obligations, standards and laws.
The lowly attempt to save Maliki and the Iraqi government from this great crime against humanity and the washing of their bloody hands is one example of such violations.
Reiterations by U.S. officials that they had no clues as to the involvement of the government of Iraq in this atrocity, or for that matter denying the presence of the seven Ashraf hostages in Iraq, as well as a UN aversion to shouldering its responsibilities by conducting an investigation into the massacre and leaving the inquiry to the Iraqi government, was a green light to the Iranian regime and its puppet government in Iraq to resort to further crimes.