Josh Rogin reports on the latest development in the MEK story:
However, according to an Obama administration official who works on the issue, it’s actually the MEK that is trashing Camp Liberty — literally. According to this official, the U.N. has reported that MEK members at Camp Liberty have been sabotaging the camp, littering garbage and manipulating the utilities to make things look worse than they really are. While there are some legitimate problems at the camp, the official admitted, the U.N. has been monitoring Camp Liberty’s water, sewage, and food systems on a daily basis and the conditions are better than the MEK is portraying.
It doesn’t exactly come as a shock that the MEK is misrepresenting the facts about the conditions at Camp Liberty, since the group misrepresents itself on a regular basis. Pro-MEK advocates in the U.S. and Europe worked diligently for years to blur the differences between the welfare of the civilians at Camp Ashraf and the issue of the MEK’s listing as a foreign terrorist organization. The goal of this was to exploit the plight of Ashraf residents (or, more accurately, prisoners of the group’s leadership) to build support for removing the group from the FTO list. Now that the legitimate humanitarian concerns about conditions at Ashraf are being addressed, these same advocates are portraying Camp Liberty as a prison or “concentration camp.” The reason for this is not to improve conditions for the people at Camp Liberty, but to continue using humanitarian appeals to make itself seem more sympathetic as an organization that it is.
The pro-MEK advocates are complicating a difficult situation, and they are actually undermining the prospects for a peaceful resolution to the MEK’s presence in Iraq. Then again, this is what one would expect from paid stooges:
“The Americans who ought to know better and claim to be on the side of good solutions are really damaging it. Either they are too lazy or too arrogant to actually do their homework. They don’t spend the time to learn facts, they just pop off. They accept the MEK line without question and then they posture,” the official said. “We have a plan that has a chance to work and the Iraqis want it to work. The MEK … it’s not clear. And in this situation they are being badly advised by the people whose names appear in these ads.”“Whether the MEK wants a resolution or wants a confrontation is something we’re still debating. It’s that bad,” the official said.
By Daniel Larison