A Sign of Growing Cooperation Between Iraq and Iran

In a sign of growing cooperation between Iraq and Iran, the Iraqi armed forces took control of Mujahadeen-e-Khalq’s (MEK)- also known as People’s Mujahideen of Iran (PMOI)-  main compound north of Baghdad, camp Ashraf.  It is believed that a number of high-ranking officials and leaders of the MEK, including Ahmad Hanifnejad, brother of the founder of the MEK, and Majid Morovvati, first director of Camp Ashraf, were seriously injured and are in critical conditions as a result of clashes between the Iraqi forces and the camp members.  The Iraqi government vowed to close Camp Ashraf and return the MEK members to Iran or a third country.

MEK was founded in 1963 by a group of Iranian leftist students opposed to the Shah of Iran.  The group was an active participant in the 1979 Islamic revolution that overthrew the Shah, but soon afterward their ideology, a mixture of Marxism, feminism, and Islam, clashed with the clerical regime. The MEK advocates the violent overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran.  The group, according to the U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism, has planned and executed terrorist attacks against the Iranian government for nearly three decades.  Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK) was designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department in 1997 and was added to European Union’s terrorist list in 2002.  Though in December 2008, the European Court of First Instance annulled the European Union’s designation of the MEK as a terrorist organization.

The U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism estimates MEK’s worldwide membership to be between 5,000 and 10,000 members, with major presence in Paris and other major European capitals.  In Iraq, it is believed that 3,400 MEK members operated from the Camp Ashraf.  The MEK has been operating from Iraq’s Diyala province since the 1980s, where it supported Iraq in its eight-year war against Iran.  Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the MEK received military assistance and financial support from Saddam Hussein.

As detailed in this CFR backgrounder, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, those living at Camp Ashraf were designated as “protected persons” under Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which prevented extradition or forced repatriation to Iran as long as the United States maintained a presence in Iraq.  With the United States withdrawal from Iraq and improving relationship between Iran and Iraq, the protection enjoyed by MEK comes to an end.

Photo taken from the CNN.