BAGHDAD — More than 3,000 Iranian dissidents who have been threatened with expulsion from Iraq on Dec. 31 have applied to the United Nations for refugee status, which could help clear up one of Iraq’s thorniest international problems from the Saddam Hussein era, U.N. and Western diplomats said Sunday.
The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said it would review the 3,200 individual applications received in the past month from Iranian residents of Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad, which has been run by the paramilitary People’s Mujahedeen of Iran.
“It’s a very positive step forward,” said a Western diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak on the record.
Although the U.N. refugee agency won’t require the dissidents to dissociate from the group, it said in a recent statement that refugee status could be granted only to individuals and not to the group as a whole. In effect, the MEK, as it is known by its Farsi initials, appears to be on the verge of accepting the demand by U.S. Ambassador James Jeffrey in July to disband as a military organization.
The U.N. refugee agency has appealed to the Iraqi government to delay closing Camp Ashraf by as much as six months, according to the Western diplomat. The U.S. Embassy hasn’t endorsed the request and is waiting for the refugee agency to present its plan for reviewing applications, an official said Sunday. Iraqi government spokesmen had no immediate comment.
The MEK had fought as a mechanized division in alliance with Hussein during the 1980-88 war with Iran. But it was left stranded by the U.S. invasion in 2003 that toppled the dictator. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has called MEK a terrorist group and demanded that Ashraf be dismantled and its members deported by the end of the year. Iraqi troops drove the point home in April in a military operation that cut the size of the camp by one- third and killed at least 35 people.
The U.S. government has characterized MEK as a cult and designated it a terrorist group in 1997, holding it responsible for the assassinations of three U.S. Army officers and three civilian contractors before the Iranian revolution. With funding from the Iranian diaspora, the MEK has mounted a major campaign in the U.S. and Europe to get its terrorist designation lifted.
