Daniel Pipes at Lion's Den ("a fast way to comment on many topics") is concerned about looming deadlines.
Money quote(s):
"Iraqi authorities threaten by April 30 forcibly to expel 3,400 Iranians, members of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq. MeK members rightly fear for their lives if pushed across the border for the Iranian regime criminalizes membership in the MeK and abominates the organization, its determined foe."
Prof. Pipes gives the (recent, Iraq-centric) background:
"Saddam Hussein allied with the MeK (also known as the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, or PMOI) against their common enemy in Tehran. Following the U.S.-led conquest of Iraq in 2003, MeK members living in Iraq acquired "protected persons" status and entered a political limbo, neither friend nor enemy of the occupying powers. With the gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops and increasingly close ties between the Iraqi and Iranian governments, MeK circumstances worsened to the point that in April 2011 Iraqi troops attacked Camp Ashraf, its Iraqi home since 1986, killing 34 people and injuring 325.
Cooler heads prevailed after this dangerous flare-up. With U.S. government approval, Baghdad signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United Nations in December 2011. In it, the Government of Iraq committed to the relocation of Camp Ashraf (now renamed Camp New Iraq) residents to a temporary transit facility where the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would begin the process of transiting MeK members in Iraq to refugee status, a necessary first step to resettle them outside Iraq."
So that brings us up to the nearly-present day.
"(A)bout 400 MeK members voluntarily left Camp Ashraf on Feb. 18 and moved to Camp Liberty, a former U.S. military base. Their transfer, however, was marred by threats from Iraqi forces, harassment from elements of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and inhospitable living conditions and constant police surveillance within Camp Liberty."
CAA has seen (on the internet, so it must be true!) reports that, following the U.S. withdrawal from Baghdad, Camp Liberty was truly and most-thoroughly looted.
In the Iraq context, that means (as it does in much of the Third World), plumbing and electrical fixtures, to include pipes and wiring, pulled out of walls, ceilings, and floors.
"(T)here is no clear sense how the MeK members will all be processed as refugees within the next two months, much less of their ultimate destination for resettlement outside either Iraq or Iran."
The easy cases, the ones who have passports, citizenship, or legal residency in Europe or the U.S., have likely already departed Iraq. The remainder are something of an indigestible lump, in terms of their relocation.
".... Washington.... must not abandon the organization most feared by the tyrants in Tehran"
To that end, Prof. Pipes has several suggestions. Scroll down and read them here.
Prof. Pipes point about the PMOI being the "organization most feared" by the Iranian regime is an interesting one. For all the legitimate (to one degree or another) criticisms of the PMOI/MEK and its related/umbrella/subsidiary groups; they're terrorists, undemocratic, a personality cult, neo-marxists, maoists, &tc.; the Evil Mullah Regime (TM) in Tehran is afraid of them.
2/28
