Self-Sacrifice (24 page)

Kobler eagerly exploited these dossiers, writing letters on a weekly basis to Mrs Rajavi, Mohammad Mohaddessin, myself and Alejo Vidal-Quadras, with copies going to numerous US, European and UN personalities, claiming that his monitors were not allowed to visit everywhere in the camp or to talk privately with people, and that they were routinely being humiliated and boycotted by the residents. In his letters he claimed that the camp’s PMOI leadership was clearly violating the residents’ rights! I knew from my personal
acquaintance with Liberty’s residents and many telephone conversations with them, together with regular examination of Camp Liberty Daily Reports and my familiarity with the repeated bad behaviour of Mr Kobler, that he was in fact not implementing the goals of the UN but rather playing into the hands of Iraqi officials and the Iranian regime, who had every intention of liquidating the inhabitants.

After several tortuous transportations, usually numbering 400 to 500 Ashrafis at a time, all except for a small number of the former residents of Camp Ashraf had been moved to the tiny prison compound of Camp Liberty. By agreement with UNAMI, UNHCR, the US, the EU and the Iraqi government, 101 residents had been left behind in Camp Ashraf to look after the property and prevent looting. In Camp Liberty the siege by the Iraqi authorities continued apace, with ongoing restrictions on access to fuel, food, medicines and other essentials, and a reluctance to allow necessary repairs to be carried out to the broken-down sewerage, water and energy infrastructure. Meanwhile the UNHCR interviews were conducted at a snail’s pace, with only two or three residents a day being taken for interview to see if they could be approved for full refugee status.

On 9 February 2013, the inevitable happened. A rocket and mortar attack left eight dead and nearly 100 wounded. Having been denied hard hats, protective vests, concrete T-walls and even shovels with which to dig protective shelters, the 3,300 residents crammed into half a kilometre square of flimsy portacabins were sitting ducks. When 45 Katyusha rockets and mortars rained down into their tightly-packed, prison-like compound at 5.45 am, they were blown apart and incinerated while they slept.

There was no doubt that this rocket attack had been well planned and professionally targeted; it could only have been carried out by the Iraqi military, obviously with Qods Force help from Iran. Indeed the launch pad from which the rockets had been fired was discovered shortly afterwards. It was well within the tight security zone that surrounded Baghdad Airport and Camp Liberty. A brick wall had been specially constructed around the launch pad. It would have been impossible to approach this area with a truckload of Katyusha rockets and mortars without passing through five
separate security roadblocks. Only the Iraqi military could carry out such an attack and they were only able to do so on the direct orders of Nouri al-Maliki. I raised an outcry in the European Parliament and fired off angry letters to Ashton, Ban Ki-moon and President Obama, saying that our repeated negligence had cost lives once again.

On 27 February 2013, I wrote a letter to Kobler’s deputy, Gyorgy Busztin:

Despite our vociferous protests and demands for UN and international help, the West sat on its hands. Maliki was delighted and ordered another rocket attack on 29 April 2013, when 20 explosions rocked Camp Liberty, luckily largely missing their target, as this time no one was injured.

Again our cries of protest were ignored. Our repeated request for the return of the concrete T-Walls, helmets and protective vests fell on deaf ears, despite the fact that these were the minimum protective requirements that could help to reduce future casualties from further rocket attacks. On 15 June 2013, Liberty was attacked once again by rockets, a day after the fraudulent presidential elections in Iran. It came as no surprise to us that Khamenei was keen to divert international attention from these elections. In this attack, two people were killed and many wounded. This time the residents were better prepared and sought cover after the first missiles exploded, so the number of casualties was not as high as the Iraqis and their Iranian puppet-masters had no doubt hoped.

But a further deadly rocket attack occurred on 26 December 2013, killing four of the residents and wounding about seventy. After each attack, of course, the Iraqi authorities repeatedly denied any involvement and said that they would hunt down the perpetrators.

However, in a rare claim of responsibility for attacks on the PMOI, Wathiq al-Batat, the commander of the al-Mukhtar Army militia, admitted his group had fired the rockets at the camp. This relatively new Shiite militia was supported and funded by Iran and tolerated, if not actively encouraged, by the Iraqi authorities, particularly when its objective was to kill members of the PMOI. The UNHCR called on the government of Iraq urgently to scale up security measures in the camp to ensure the safety and security of its residents. Maliki probably chuckled with delight every time he received such a plea. He knew that Kobler and UNAMI would do his bidding and he knew that he could murder the PMOI residents with impunity, as the West would do nothing.

I now felt a deep sense of guilt over the fact that, having crammed over 3,000 people into this death camp, the US and EU promptly washed their hands of the whole affair and abandoned these innocent men and women to their fate at the hands of the Iraqis. The great liar and sociopath Maliki, having signed an MOU accepting responsibility for the safety and protection of the refugees in Camp Liberty, was now happily engaged in their serial murder with the full encouragement and assistance of his backers in Tehran. Kobler, in a breathtaking and shameless show of concern, even publicly thanked the Iraqi Government for their pledge to investigate the murders! He was joined in this charade by his wife, Britta Wagner, the German Ambassador to Iraq, who not only publicly thanked the Iraqi government for their pledge to uncover the perpetrators of the bloody attacks on Camp Liberty, but even congratulated her husband and UNAMI for their sterling efforts to resolve the Ashraf crisis by transferring everyone to the new camp!

For the residents of Liberty, enough was enough. They now began a protest of deliberate non-cooperation, refusing to be interviewed by the UNHCR and refusing to speak to UNAMI and Kobler.

Behind the scenes, Mrs Rajavi had been negotiating at the highest level through European friends with the Albanian government in Tirana, from early 2012, to see if they would accept a significant number of refugees from Camp Liberty. They had arrived at a breakthrough agreement, with the Albanians willing to accept all or most of the residents as refugees. Their humanitarian initiative was
supported by UNHCR and the US. In November 2012, Ambassador Dan Fried, the special Ashraf Envoy appointed by Hillary Clinton, after returning from Tirana, wrote to Mohammad Mohaddessin:

The PMOI were meanwhile negotiating with Albania to accept a much larger number of refugees. In January 2013, a senior delegation from the PMOI had gone to Tirana and met the Prime Minister Sali Berisha, who was sympathetic to the idea of increasing the number of PMOI members taking refuge in his country, but he insisted that the issue must not be made public. The Albanian government was particularly keen to do everything quietly, beneath the radar, so as not to stir up international controversy and cause a diplomatic split with the Iranians.

When news of this highly sensitive and confidential negotiation reached Kobler, oblivious to such niceties, he promptly issued a press release on 15 March 2013, taking full credit for the breakthrough, announcing that he had negotiated this amazing deal with Albania; he then turned his fire on the PMOI, arguing that the non-cooperation protest by the refugees was putting the whole operation in jeopardy. This in fact spooked the Albanians, who became much more cautious about accepting additional refugees.

On a subsequent visit to Camp Liberty, Kobler was surrounded by a group of angry PMOI women shouting that he had betrayed them. Displaying all of the typical traits of a bully confronted by his crimes, he came near to nervous collapse, rendered speechless and terrified by a handful of unarmed women. He retreated quickly from the camp to jeers of derision.

In an attempt to defend his controversial record, on 29 May 2013 Kobler came to the European Parliament to address a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He got a hostile reception, although some German MEPs felt it was their duty to defend him.
But many MEPs accused the UN Special Representative in Iraq of deceit and demanded his resignation or dismissal, protesting that he had attempted to deceive parliament in the past, had presided over a disastrous decline in the domestic situation in Iraq while doing little to criticise the Iraqi government and had brought progress on the re-settlement of 3,400 refugees in Camps Ashraf and Liberty to a virtual standstill through his incompetence.

During the meeting Kobler reiterated his usual litany of misinformation, complaining that UN monitors had difficulty in accessing residents of Camp Liberty and that there was a general lack of cooperation from the Camp management and the PMOI leadership in Paris. At the same time he tried to ignore the most pressing and immediate issue, namely the safety and security of the residents facing rocket and missile attacks in that tiny, prison-like compound. He was challenged three times by MEPs to explain why hard hats and protective vests that were left behind in Camp Ashraf had not been returned to the residents of Liberty to provide them with even rudimentary protection. His feeble reply was that this was a matter for the Iraqis. Kobler’s remarks were so contradictory that even the chairman of the committee, Elmar Brok MEP, stated: ‘I find what you have said today almost unbelievable. Accurate information should be provided to us through impartial channels.’

I pointed out the lack of any proper response by Kobler to the massive increase in executions and human rights abuses in Iraq and the lack of proper attention by Kobler regarding the ongoing popular uprisings in cities across Iraq. I also reminded Kobler that he had signed the Memorandum of Understanding regarding the transfer of the residents of Camp Ashraf to the prison of Camp Liberty with the government of Iraq without the consent of the residents of Camp Ashraf. I accused Kobler of deceiving members of parliament on the conditions in Camp Liberty by showing us doctored photographs. I said that he had guaranteed that the 3,400 residents would enjoy safety and security at Camp Liberty and they would be rapidly transferred to third countries, both of which were lies. I pointed out that Tahar Boumedra had resigned from UNAMI in protest at the behaviour of Kobler and had testified to the US Congress under oath that Kobler had doctored photographs of
Camp Liberty with the sole intention of deceiving MEPs and other decision-makers.

Jim Higgins, MEP from Ireland, said to Kobler, ‘You say the government of Iraq considers the Ashraf and Liberty residents as terrorists. But they have been removed from the US and EU terror lists and you, representing the UN, should state that they are not terrorists. Why do you not take a correct position on this? What you are doing is very hypocritical. Can you tell us what you have achieved in view of all the money that you receive? You should be fired. The UN Security Council should fire you’.

Vytautas Landsbergis, a former President of Lithuania, pointed out: ‘Scores of Iraqi politicians condemn you. Why do you involve Iran, a foreign country, into this issue in Iraq? Why do you bring Iran into the issue of the status of Camp Liberty and refugees that the Iranian regime hates so much? Eighteen political dignitaries [who had visited Ashraf before] have issued a statement and have called on your conduct to be examined in a court. They have stated their readiness to testify before this court and have called for an investigation into your conduct.’

Tunne Kelam, MEP from Estonia, said: ‘Mr Kobler, you have become a controversial figure in Iraq. It is said that you are too close to the government of Iraq. You provide no reasonable explanation regarding the safety of the Liberty residents. You signed the MOU with the government of Iraq but there is no guarantee for the safety and security of the residents. You put 80 percent of the blame on the inhabitants of Camp Liberty. This is very hypocritical and unacceptable.’

Ryszard Czarnecki, a Polish MEP, said: ‘You showed us pictures that you claimed demonstrated that Camp Liberty would be an excellent place. But none of these promises were true. The residents do not trust you. You are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Don’t you think it is about time that you should resign and leave?’

Kobler, becoming increasingly agitated in the face of such relentless disapproval, turned his fire on the PMOI. He said, ‘As Europeans, MEPs should look at the internal structure of the PMOI. You should not support structures that do not provide individual freedoms.’

Following the meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, I told the media, ‘This once again underscores
the need for Kobler’s immediate dismissal by the UN Secretary General.’

We did not have to wait long for the UN Secretary General’s response. In July 2013, only eight weeks after his final shambolic appearance before the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Kobler was dismissed from his post in Iraq and sent to the Congo. His cosy sinecure with his wife, the German ambassador to Iraq, had been ended. Such was the public outrage at Kobler’s appalling record in Iraq that Ban Ki-moon had no choice but to remove him! In his place, on 2 August 2013, the UN Secretary General appointed Nikolay Mladenov as his Special Representative in Iraq. Mladenov was a former Bulgarian Foreign Minister, and until 2009 had been a member of the European Parliament. I knew him from his time as a member of the EPP-ED majority group, when I had been Vice President. He was also a close friend of the Czech diplomat and former MEP Jana Hybášková, who was known for her hostility towards the Iranian PMOI and who was now the EU’s Ambassador to Iraq.