Outside View: Why U.S. should protest conditions at Camp Liberty

If the United Nations won act regarding conditions faced by Iranian dissidents in Iraq, the United States must.

Soldiers of the Service Battery, 1st Battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment stand in formation during a ceremony at Camp Liberty, Iraq in this undated photo. (UPI Photo/HO)

LONDON, March 2 (UPI) -- The mullahs ruling Iran have had little reason to be happy with the United Nations in recent weeks, being forced to cope with crippling sanctions because of their pursuit of nuclear weapons and being further isolated by the world community with every passing day.

And, at home, the government is divided and the people are restless, especially having seen the Arab Spring force long-term dictators from power. So the mullahs are happy to get any good news and find any friends.

On top of the list of these friends is the government of Iraq, which is doing its best to carry out Tehran's campaign to eradicate its main opposition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran and its main component, the People's Mujahedin of Iran.

Some 3,400 PMOI members have been living peacefully in Iraq for a quarter of a century but since the United States agreed to leave Iraq their life has been in turmoil. Acting to please his bosses in Tehran, Iranian Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has engaged in a campaign of harassment and then murder to drive these dissidents from their homes in Camp Ashraf, north of Baghdad.

Finally, with assurances from the United Nations and United States and after pleas by Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the Iranian opposition, Ashraf residents agreed to be transferred to Camp Liberty, a former U.S. Army base near Baghdad Airport, where they would be processed by the U.N. refugee agency before being relocated in third countries.

It sounded too good to be true -- and it was. The devious Maliki, either with complicity or sheer ignorance by U.N. officials, had turned "liberty" into imprisonment. What was supposed to be a temporary home with all the freedoms and dignities of Camp Ashraf became a walled enclosure with Iraqi police stations, rampant presence of Iraqi armed forces, sophisticated Iraqi listening devices atop the walls and living conditions unfit for animals, much less humans.

How did this all happen? How did the U.N. Assistance Mission to Iraq determine that the conditions at Camp Liberty met any humanitarian standards? How could the secretary-general's special representative, Ambassador Martin Kobler, declare his satisfaction with the arrangements at Camp Liberty that has all the markings of a prison?

Why won't the Iraqi government allow a bipartisan delegation of former high-ranking U.S. officials to go to Camp Liberty and see for themselves the conditions that Kobler and Maliki consider suitable?

Continued here:
Outside View: Why U.S. should protest conditions at Camp Liberty