By Ambassador John Bolton

The UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (“UNHCR”) has long boasted impressive credentials in carrying out its important humanitarian work. Winning Nobel Peace Prizes in 1954 and 1981 for protecting and assisting refugees, UNHCR typically operates more efficiently and effectively than most other UN agencies. UNHCR’s compelling logo embodies its critical mission, picturing two human hands providing shelter for a refugee.

Now, however, UNHCR’s reputation is being badly damaged by the systemic failure of virtually the entire UN operation in Iraq. Iranian refugees, members of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (“MEK”), now residents at Camp Liberty, a vandalized, abandoned U.S. military base near Baghdad, have been subject to rocket attacks, forced to live in wretched, unsanitary conditions more like a prison than a refugee camp, and denied their property.

Worse, Martin Kobler, the bureaucrat heading the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (“UNAMI”), acts more like a paid agent of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Iraqi regime and its puppet masters in Iran than a representative of the UN’s member governments.

Kobler is clearly guilty of what diplomatic circles call “clientitis”: forgetting who he actually works for, in this case the UN Security Council, not Iraq and Iran.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon should have long ago recognized that failing to overrule Kobler, and his indifference to the MEK’s harsh and dangerous treatment, now threatens his own reputation.

In America, the MEK is overcoming an undeserved reputation after being listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the Clinton administration, which erroneously believed that appeasing Tehran’s mullahs would facilitate negotiations over Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

That mistake was repeated by Secretary of State Rice in 2008, also to appease the ayatollahs.

By contrast, the U.S. military in Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s overthrow, found the MEK peaceful and cooperative. The Pentagon placed all residents of Camp Ashraf, their longstanding facility near the Iran-Iraq border, under U.S. protection, which of course disappeared when coalition forces withdrew.

Last year, however, Hillary Clinton correctly removed the MEK from the proscribed list, on the condition that Ashraf’s inhabitants move to Camp Liberty. Kobler assured the MEK that Liberty’s facilities would be equivalent to Ashraf, and that UNHCR would rapidly process their applications for asylum in third countries. That has not happened, and as long as these refugees remain in Iraq, they will be subject to threats and deadly attacks.

Kobler and UNAMI have repeatedly impeded UNHCR’s work, making it a pawn for Tehran’s religious dictatorship to use against the MEK. So doing violates UNHCR’s 1950 founding statute, adopted by UN member governments, which mandates that its work must be “of an entirely non-political character.” Moreover, neither Kobler nor any other UN bureaucrat has authority to compromise UNHCR’s mandate, reaffirmed last July by the Security Council in Resolution 2061, which specifically requires UNAMI to work “in coordination with” UNHCR, not as its master.

UNHCR was intended precisely to interpose itself in circumstance such as these. By definition,refugees face hostility and the likelihood of retribution from authorities in the country they are fleeing. And it is frequently true that refugees are unwelcome and persecuted in their countries of first asylum. The fact that Iraq’s al-Maliki regime is under the thrall of Iran here only heightens the need for UNHCR to assert its unique mandate.

Unfortunately, however, High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres has been unable or unwilling to uphold his responsibility to protect and assist the refugees, either at Camp Liberty or by finding them asylum in third countries.

Ironically, Guterres has asked for significantly greater funding for UNHCR’s work on MEK issues in 2013, which is hard to understand given how little UNHCR is actually doing on behalf of the 3,000-plus asylum-seekers involved.

This dispute may initially sound like simply another exercise in bureaucratic turf-fighting within the UN system, but the global implications are actually far broader. If Iran and Iraq’s al-Maliki regime succeed in intimidating and impeding UNHCR, thereby politicizing its work, the consequences risk devastating the UN’s ability to provide impartial international assistance.

All UN members should be alarmed at this prospect, since no one can predict where UNHCR or other UN humanitarian agencies will be needed next. With the UN’s political decision-making bodies already largely dysfunctional, it would be a profound loss for the UN’s humanitarian agencies to suffer the same fate.

Moreover, non-governmental organizations (“NGO’s”) which provide humanitarian assistance should also be appalled at Kobler’s damage to UNHCR’s mandate, and the damage the agency is doing to itself. Whether or not a particular NGO does refugee work, is present in the Middle East, or tries to avoid politicization, NGO’s generally will find their humanitarian status jeopardized by the gross politicization that Iran and Iraq are wreaking.

Clearly, High Commissioner Guterres has to stand up on his hind legs and demand that UNHCR be allowed to provide protection and assistance to the refugees at Camp Liberty and rapidly process their asylum requests, no matter what Kobler, al-Maliki or Tehran’s ayatollahs want. UN members and NGO’s should likewise insist that UNHCR be allowed to operate according to its mandate, and urge Secretary General Ban not to turn a blind eye.

And the U.S. Congress, in a time of incredibly tight budgets for both domestic and military programs, should look very carefully at what the UN system as a whole is doing — and more importantly failing to do — in Iraq. If nothing else works, restricting American contributions to UN agencies always gets their attention.

John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a Fox News contributor. He is a senior fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

The post The terrible damage being done to UNHCR’s reputation appeared first on Camp Ashraf.

By Christopher Booker

What on earth does Ban Ki-moon, the UN’s Secretary-General, think that Martin Kobler, his personal representative in Iraq, is up to?

I have reported before on the extraordinary story of the betrayal of 3,200 Iranian dissidents who, for 30 years after the 1979 Iranian revolution, lived in Camp Ashraf, a little desert town near the Iranian border. In 2003, in return for disarming, they were given guarantees of their safety by a US general. But no sooner had US forces departed than, in 2009 and 2011, the town was attacked by Iraqi and Iranian forces, directed by Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, leaving 47 residents dead and hundreds injured.

Last year, Martin Kobler, head of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (Unami), brokered a deal with Mr Maliki and the Iranian government, whereby the town’s residents were persuaded to move to Camp Liberty, a former US base near Baghdad, promising that this would be a staging post before they could be resettled abroad. A report for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees found that Liberty met none of the basic requirements of a refugee camp. But, at Kobler’s direction, this was rewritten to say the opposite, so that when the residents arrived they found they were the victims of a horrible deception.

Their new home was no more than a cramped and squalid prison, where they were robbed of their belongings, bullied night and day by brutal Iraqi and Iranian guards, and deprived of water, food and medical supplies. Two weeks ago, the camp was heavily mortared, leaving seven residents dead and 100 injured. The German ambassador to Baghdad, Britta Wagner, issued a statement expressing her government’s “full support” for the work of Unami. The head of Unami, Martin Kobler, is Ms Wagner’s husband.

In Washington, backed by an array of former senior US government officials, New York’s former mayor, Rudy Giuliani, made an impassioned speech, calling on Ban Ki-moon to fire Mr Kobler, saying that Camp Liberty was “not only a concentration camp, it’s a killing field”, and that it was Kobler who had “permitted it to become a killing field”.

So bizarre has been the part played by the UN’s man in Iraq that I asked the Foreign Office to explain our own government’s position on these events. Its reply was that, while condemning the attack on Camp Liberty that “killed or injured a number of residents” (and “it is reported, Iraqi guards at the camp”), “we also fully support the work of Mr Kobler as the Secretary-General’s Special Representative”. Well, well.

The post The UN’s role in Baghdad’s killing fields appeared first on Camp Ashraf.

Yesterday saw the launch of the Ashraf Campaign (ASHCAM), a new student-led humanitarian initiative, at the University of York.

The official launch event, which was attended by dozens of students and locals, sought to raise awareness of the more than 3,000 Iranian refugees currently imprisoned at a concentration camp, Camp Liberty, in Iraq.

Attendees were welcomed by ASHCAM’s Honorary President, Struan Stevenson, a Scottish MEP and Chairman of the EU Delegation for Relations with Iraq, who recorded a video message specifically for the occasion.

Describing the campaign, and the students involved, as “brave and courageous,” Mr Stevenson explained how the Iranian refugees had been “forcibly evicted” from their homes in Ashraf City and made to live in “squalid, appalling conditions” at Camp Liberty.

The formation of ASHCAM, set up by students at the University of York, came just days after a rocket attack on Camp Liberty in which 7 detainees were killed and more than 100 injured.

Jacob Campbell, one of the founders and Co-Chairman of ASHCAM, said he was “encouraged” by the turnout at the official launch event, adding that “the terrible plight of the former Ashraf City residents is not something that has galvanised the student community up until this point, but ASHCAM is already demonstrating the great potential for student action on the issue.”

Many of those who attended the event signed “The ASHCAM Declaration,” which calls for the immediate return of Iranian refugees held at Camp Liberty to their homes in Ashraf City.

The post “Brave and courageous” UK students demand human rights for Camp Liberty prisoners appeared first on Camp Ashraf.

The attack on Camp Liberty in Iraq that left six people dead was as inevitable as it was preventable – and it demands a robust response from the international community, writes MEP

I have just looked at grisly photographs of the six innocent refugees and asylum-seekers massacred in Camp Liberty, west of Baghdad. Blown apart and incinerated while they slept, the five men and one woman were sitting ducks when 35 missiles and mortars rained down into their tightly-packed, prison-like compound at 05.45 am in the morning. More than 100 other residents of the camp have been seriously injured. This was a murderous attack that was as inevitable as it was preventable.

Since the first of the Iranian opposition members of the People’s Mohajedin of Iran were forced to move from their home in Camp Ashraf over a year ago, I and many other parliamentarians and lawyers representing the PMOI have warned about their vulnerability to attack. We were assured by the United Nations special representative in Iraq Martin Kobler that there was nothing to fear; that Camp Liberty was a safe haven. His boss, UN high commissioner Antonio Guterres assured me in two separate meetings in Geneva that these people would be interviewed individually by the UN, given refugee status and then shipped to countries of safety in a ‘revolving door’ scenario.

Based on such assurances, I persuaded the residents of Ashraf to move to Camp Liberty, despite the fact that they were insulted and abused, denied most of their belongings and crammed into a polluted and derelict compound of only half a square kilometre in size, 80 times smaller than Ashraf. However, we were assured that Liberty would only be a short-term home – a Temporary Transit Location in UN jargon – until the United States and European Union could find new homes for them and fly them to safety. Having crammed 3,100 people into this death camp, the US and EU promptly washed their hands of the whole affair and abandoned these innocent men and women to their fate.

I was supposed to go to Baghdad on February 10 to meet with senior members of the Iraqi government. A visit to Camp Liberty was high on my agenda. The European Parliament vetoed my visit at the last minute because of the deteriorating security situation. But it can be no coincidence that the last time I visited Baghdad, in April 2011, a horrific massacre took place at Camp Ashraf only days before my arrival, when the Iraqi security forces mounted a murderous armed assault on the camp killing 45 men and women and injuring hundreds.

This event became the focus for heated meetings between me and Iraqi ministers. I even aired the protests of the EU parliament in a personal meeting with President Jalal Talabani of Iraq. But predictably, the Ashraf massacre quickly became the main argument deployed by both the UN and US as they built up pressure to close Ashraf and move all of the residents to Camp Liberty. They capitulated to threats of further violence and bloodshed at the hands of the Iraqis and their Iranian sponsors and finally signed an agreement with the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, without consulting the Ashraf residents. The enforced evacuation of Ashraf began.

Now, one year later and with my intended visit to Baghdad only days away, can it be a coincidence that once again a violent assault on the PMOI has resulted in death and injury? Camp Liberty is in the middle of a vast Iraqi military complex. It cannot be reached without successfully negotiating at least five military checkpoints. How is it possible that 35 missiles could be fired with complete accuracy into the middle of Camp Liberty without the knowledge of the Iraqi military authorities? Was this the Iraqi prime minister’s way of reminding the EU that he wants rid of these people and the west had better get them relocated fast or they may all suffer the same bloody fate?

Conspiracy theories like this would not surprise me in the slightest. There is mounting concern that Iraq is once again descending into chaos and potential civil war, barely one year after the last American troops left the country. In recent weeks hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have taken to the streets in protests in six of the main Iraqi provinces, including Baghdad itself. They are outraged at what they regard as an emerging dictatorship led by Maliki, who many regard as a puppet of the Iranian regime. He has outraged the west by allowing the free flow of arms and military personnel from Iran to Syria through Iraqi territory, boosting the vicious Assad regime and prolonging the brutal civil war in Syria.

Maliki’s behaviour is utterly deplorable and this latest atrocity at Camp Liberty requires an immediate and robust response from the newly appointed US Secretary of State John Kerry, from the EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and also from the UN’s Guterres. Maliki needs to be told to reign in his murderers. Camp Liberty should immediately be given full refugee status by the UN so that its residents are afforded the highest possible level of protection while arrangements are made for their swift return to the slightly safer Camp Ashraf and their rapid relocation out of Iraq to countries of safety.

The Americans pulled out a year ago stating that they had left behind a functioning democracy. In fact they left behind a basket case. Let us hope it is not too late for peace and stability to be restored and for the innocent residents of Camp Liberty to be rescued from this death camp.

Struan Stevenson is a Conservative MEP for Scotland and president of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with Iraq

The post Camp Liberty attack a symbol of ‘basket case’ Iraq appeared first on Camp Ashraf.

February 9, 2013

The United States condemns in the strongest terms the vicious and senseless terrorist attack that took place this morning at Camp Hurriya killing 6 people and injuring dozens more. We offer our condolences to the families of the victims and hope for the swift recovery of those who were injured.

We understand the Government of Iraq has undertaken to promptly investigate the attack. We call on it to earnestly and fully carry out that investigation and to take all appropriate measures to enhance the security of the camp consistent with its commitment and obligation to the safety and security of the camp’s residents. The terrorists responsible for this attack must be brought to justice.

We are consulting with the Government of Iraq and the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) on the circumstances surrounding this tragedy, and we remain committed to assisting the Government of Iraq and UNAMI in their efforts to implement the December 25, 2011 agreement.

The post Terrorist Attack on Camp Hurriya in Iraq appeared first on Camp Ashraf.

The US Committee for Camp Ashraf Residents (USCCAR), on behalf of hundreds of Iranian-Americans whose loved ones in Iraq’s Camp Liberty were the target of the Tehran-engineered rocket attack last weekend, has written to the US Secretary of State John Kerry to urge him to facilitate the immediate return of Camp Liberty residents to Camp Ashraf where they are far better protected against such attacks.

Saturday’s cowardly attack, which left seven residents killed and more than 100 seriously wounded, attests to the fact that this camp is neither safe nor secure for the residents whom the UN Refugee Agency has recognized as asylum seekers.

In the letter, USCCAR noted that “By all measures, Camp Liberty is a killing field. It is only half a square kilometers in size, 80 times smaller than Camp Ashraf. The camp lacks any shelter or high concrete walls to shield the residents against rocket attacks. The residential areas are consisted of dilapidated trailers that are crammed next to each other. The trailers’ aluminum walls provide no protection at all against rocket shrapnel… In contrast, the sprawling Camp Ashraf has buildings made from concrete and contains protective shelters.”

“We, the families of Iranian dissidents in Camp Liberty and Camp Ashraf, hold the United States responsible for safety and security of our loved ones in accordance with its treaty and international obligations as well as its written guarantees to each and every resident in 2004 that it will protect them until their final disposition,” the letter added.

Recalling Secretary Kerry’s condemnation of the April 2011 attack on Camp Ashraf by Iraqi forces as a “massacre” when he was the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair, the letter urged Secretary Kerry “to facilitate the immediate return [of the residents] to Camp Ashraf before more innocent lives are taken by Tehran and their Iraqi proxies.”

Some 3,100 members of Iran’s principal opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) have been living at Camp Liberty, a former U.S. military base near Baghdad international airport after they left Camp Ashraf, their home for 26 years, following US and UN assurances about their safety and security. About one-third of the residents are women and an equal number are former political prisoners in Iran.

SOURCE US Committee for Camp Ashraf Residents (USCCAR)

The post USCCAR Urges Secretary Kerry to Facilitate Immediate Return of Residents of Iraq’s Camp Liberty “Killing Field” to Camp Ashraf appeared first on Camp Ashraf.

In recent years, I have come to learn that with age comes experience, that without this process of maturation one cannot gain the experience necessary to make the right decisions in his/her life. This lack of experience can often times bar us from seeing the truly important things in our lives.

I grew up in a bubble, with much to learn outside my small, sheltered world in Orange County.
My parents attempted to break my whiny barrier by dragging me to, what I thought, were pointless events in support of Camp Ashraf residents.

Throughout my adolescence, my parents attempted to open my eyes to the importance of these events, and the people who we were supporting. I was frequently told about how the residents of Camp Ashraf were the most courageous and selfless people. Emphasizing that they had given up everything they had, in order to bring democracy to their homeland. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until later that my parents words took form in my head.

November 2010 I attended an event in DC regarding Camp Ashraf. No matter how much I complained regarding the trip, my parents were reluctant to allow me to stay home by myself during the week that they would be gone. However, it occurred to me at the end of my week there, that this would become a life changing trip for me.

The first couple days in DC were spent in front of the State Department, attending sit-ins with other Camp Ashraf family members. I would be told stories from former political prisoners about the tortures they were dealt in Iran’s prisons, solely for supporting the democratic opposition in Camp Ashraf. In these days I learned more about the residents of Camp Ashraf than I had ever allowed myself to learn through my parents. The attack in July of 2009 upon the residents, the continued blockades on the Camp, and the psychological and physical tortures they had to go through, all of which finally had began to resonate with me. The words of my parents, finally, began to make sense to me. On the day of the event I heard multiple former US officials speak in favor of the residents. The intensity that officials such as Howard Dean spoke with, allowed me to see the true nature of this cause. This had become a huge turning point for me. Finally, I was able to see why my parents would drag me to these events, and attempt to impress upon me the importance. It finally occurred to me how selfless these people truly were. That they had given up their comfortable lives with their families, with one goal in mind: democratic regime change for their people. In my eyes, I felt that there was no objective more noble than this.

As the week ended and my flight drew near, my sudden change of heart had me wanting to stay longer. The trip that I couldn’t bare at the beginning, became something I dreaded the end of. I was angry at the ignorance I had harbored while growing up. I began to see the importance of these events, and found myself wanting to do everything in my power to help the cause, in order to make up for lost time.

Looking back now I couldn’t be more grateful for going on that trip. Gaining the knowledge and experience of so many admirable people I met in Washington helped me grow out of my unawareness, and allowed me to open my eyes to the ‘real world’. Finally, I was able to make the right decision, decipher what was most important in my life: the well-being and security of my friends and family in Camp Ashraf.

The post How I Got Started appeared first on Camp Ashraf.

BRUSSELS — A US official urged European nations Wednesday to offer shelter to Iranian dissidents housed for decades in a camp in Iraq and last week removed from a Washington terrorist blacklist.

US Ambassador Daniel Fried told a media briefing he was in Europe for talks in Geneva and in Brussels on relocating some 3,200 members of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran who were settled in Iraq some 30 years ago.

On Iraq’s insistence, some 3,000 members of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) have been moved out of their historic paramilitary camp of the 1980s — Camp Ashraf — to a transit camp close to Baghdad called Camp Liberty.

But “moving people from one place in Iraq to another place in Iraq will not solve the problem,” Fried said. “The issue will be resolved when the residents are out of Iraq.”

The US official said that at talks in Geneva the previous day, the United States and a number of European countries had agreed to resettle the Iranians “in a spirit of solidarity and burden-sharing.”

Both Washington and European officials had begun reviewing the exiles at Camp Liberty “but it’s true that a great many were formerly residing in Europe,” he said in a plea to move forward with resettlement.

He also said a US decision Friday to remove the group from its blacklist of designated terror groups “had nothing to do with our differences with Iran.”

“The Department of State has serious concerns about MEK as an organisation,” he said. “Our interest in the MEK is purely humanitarian, our interest is in the individuals who are in Camp Liberty, not in the MEK as an organisation.”

He said some 200 members of the group had been authorised by the Iraqis to remain in Camp Ashraf until the end of last month to sell off vehicles and property but that 100 were due to leave shortly.

Asked whether there was a deadline for the last group of 100 to leave, he said there was “no time limit. However the Iraqis have made the very valid point that the sooner the process of resettlement starts the better.

“It’s important that both the Iraqi government and MEK see that the international community is ready to step up and help these people,” he said, praising Baghdad’s patience throughout a months-long process of emptying Camp Ashraf.

Also visiting Brussels, MEK leader Maryam Rajavi urged European Union nations to “end the policy of appeasement with the criminal rulers of Iran” who were supplying weapons to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while working on building nuclear arms.
“From the West we seek neither money nor weapons, We only want the West to be neutral,” she said.

A statement issued later by European parliamentarians gathered in the Friends of a Free Iran group accused the Iraqi authorities of planning “to plunder” assets of the group left behind at Camp Ashraf.

Saying the camp was the product of the work of thousands of people over 26 years and was worth 500 million dollars, the MEPs said after meeting Rajavi that Baghdad “intends to plunder Ashraf residents’ property and actively prevents their transfer and sale.”

“The US and the EU must force the government of Iraq to stop putting any further pressure on them and to recognize their ownership rights and allow them to sell their movable and immovable properties,” the statement said.

The post US urges EU to shelter Iran dissidents stranded in Iraq appeared first on Camp Ashraf.

The Washington Times
By Ashish Kumar Sen

NEW YORK — The Obama administration has taken a group of Iranian dissidents off the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, culminating a long-running public relations campaign by the dissidents and their supporters.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s decision to remove the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MeK) from the list will be published Wednesday in the Federal Register. The group also is known as the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran.

After an exhaustive review ordered by a federal court, U.S. officials found no evidence of the group’s involvement in terrorist activity.

The post U.S. takes Iranian dissident group MeK off terrorist list appeared first on Camp Ashraf.

By The Associated Press

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Thousands of people have filled a plaza near the United Nations in a protest against the Iranian regime.

Wednesday’s protest came as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N.

The protest includes appearances by former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Syrians also are protesting Iran’s support of their homeland’s regime.

The post Thousands protest near United Nations over Iranian regime as Ahmadinejad speaks appeared first on Camp Ashraf.