Iranian dissidents in Iraq

Iranians in Iraq who fought against the Islamic Republic face a shaky futureIT WAS one of the strangest places Id ever seen, says one of the few Farsi-speaking Westerners to have spent weeks in Camp Ashraf, 65km (40 miles) north-east of Baghdad, where some 3,400 Iranian dissidents are hunkered down and are now threatened with expulsion from Iraq, perhaps even back to Iran. It was like a spiffy midsized town in Iran, with parks, offices and buildingsbut no children. It was sterile, soulless and sad. Nearly two decades ago, families living in the camp were dissolved, couples were forcibly divorced, and their children sent away, many of them to live with supporters living in the West, to be brought up in the faith of a movement widely described by independent observers as a cult.For the past six years, the Americans have protected the camp, whose raison detre is generally opposed by the surrounding Iraqi communities and by most Iranians, whether or not they are for or against the clerical regime in Tehran. But as American troops prepare to go home, the Iraqi government, which wants cosy ties with Iran, now says the camp must be closed and its inhabitants dispersed, probably back to Iran, where they would face an uncertain future, to put it mildly.