By David Amess, Member of the UK Parliament
The HILL, 12 Dec 2011 –As the US combat mission in Iraq draws to a close, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will be meeting President Obama in Washington today, with no doubt Iranian influence over Iraq a major topic of discussion.
The downgrade of the US military presence in Iraq coincides paradoxically with an announced decision by the Iraqi government to close Camp Ashraf, home to 3,400 Iranian dissidents for the last two decades.
In 2003, the US promised to protect these Iranians – members of the main opposition group PMOI – as they disarmed voluntary. Subsequently they were declared civilians and handed individual written guarantees of American protection by the US military, which recognised them as Protected Persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Nevertheless, the protection responsibility of the residents was handed to the Iraqi authorities in 2009 despite the residents’ grievances and fears of harassment and aggression. At Iran’s behest, Prime Minister al-Maliki imposed a siege on the residents and ordered two brutal attacks on the camp in 2009 and earlier this year, leaving 47 residents killed and more than 1,000 injured.
Iran’s active meddling in the daily domestic politics of Iraq has diverted the latter nation from its democratic path. How the Iraqi Government has treated the Camp Ashraf residents is perhaps the best measure of the Iranian regime’s influence over Iraq and where Nuri al-Maliki’s ultimate commitment stands. Up until now al-Maliki has done the Iranian mullahs’ bidding at Ashraf and he has ordered the forcible closure of the camp by year’s end, a prelude to another massacre.
This is despite the residents’ cooperation with the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) for a peaceful solution. The UNHCR has declared them asylum-seekers, while the UN special representative for Iraq, Martin Kobler, described the idea of their forced removal as ‘ill-advised and unacceptable’. In a speech to the UN Security Council last week, he asked Iraq to extend its December 31 deadline for closing Camp Ashraf.
It’s now America’s turn to act.
President Obama has praised the sacrifices of US servicemen and women in Iraq. Today the 3,400 asylum-seekers in Camp Ashraf, their family members in Iran, Europe and the US as well as freedom-seeking people everywhere call for the same courage and resolve from the US Commander-in-Chief. President Obama can and should stop a massacre in Camp Ashraf to honour the US military’s promise of protection.
In order to help the chances of a peaceful UN-backed solution, President Obama should publically speak out against the Iraqi deadline to close Camp Ashraf and the forcible displacement of the residents inside Iraq.
He should use his meeting with Nuri al-Maliki to make him understand that further violence against Ashraf residents is unacceptable to the United States and its allies.
With just over two weeks from a possible massacre in Iraq, the spotlights are once again on President Obama to seize the moment and use US leverage to stop further bloodshed in Camp Ashraf.
The US has made too many sacrifices in Iraq to allow such an atrocity to happen, which would only be to the strategic advantage of the Iranian regime and a major blow to Iraq’s democratic path.
Amess is a Conservative Member of Parliament from the United Kingdom, and is a leading member of the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom
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