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| Iraq | |||
| Iraq seeks to expel Iranian exile group | |||
| 2013-02-20 | |||
| BAGHDAD — An Iranian exile group attacked in Iraq this month has moved from terrorism lists to international good graces, but Baghdad wants it out over its opposition to Iran’s rulers and ties to Saddam Hussein. On February 9, mortar rounds and rockets slammed into Camp Liberty, a former US military base near Baghdad that now houses some 3,000 members of the People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), killing five people, according to Iraqi security officials. The attack triggered condemnation from the United States and United Nations, but in Iraq officials are eager to see the group depart.
Iraqi political analyst Ihsan Al Shammari said the “nature of the relationship between the (Iraqi) political powers and Iran,” Baghdad’s neighbour to the east with which it has close ties, is a key factor in Iraq’s insistence on the PMOI’s ouster. Saddam allowed the PMOI to establish a base called Camp Ashraf northeast of Baghdad after he launched the 1980-88 war with Iran, in which the group fought alongside his forces. According to the US State Department, Saddam armed the group with “heavy military equipment and deployed thousands of (PMOI) fighters in suicidal, mass wave attacks against Iranian forces” near the end of the war. Following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the PMOI turned over “2,000 tanks, armoured personnel carriers, and heavy artillery,” the State Department said. The group was also allegedly involved in Saddam’s violent suppression of 1991 Shia and Kurdish uprisings in Iraq.
But after this monthÂ’s attack, the PMOI complained about the slow pace of the process, which has dragged on as few countries have come forward with concrete offers of resettlement.
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| Posted by:Steve White |