The Ashraf-3 community, not quite finished, rests on a sprawling plot that until 30 months ago was farmland. It is about halfway between the Albanian capital of Tirana and the Adriatic coastline. Home to more than 3,000 dissidents from the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, best known as MEK, Ashraf-3 is too new to appear on map programs. Cement was still drying around the base of some flag posts, and workers were painting the handrails on a bridge as more than 350 dignitaries from 47 countries arrived.
In later years, when MEK members were forced to leave, they built a city in memory of Ashraf in Iraq’s Diyala province. During three decades, through their hard toil, MEK members turned a desolate patch of land in the middle of the desert into beautiful city. In 2003, after the invasion of Iraq by American forces, members of the MEK, who were organized into a well-trained army with more than a dozen bases across Iraq, entered an agreement with U.S. forces to voluntarily turn over their weapons and gather in Ashraf. In exchange, the U.S. committed itself to protecting MEK members in Ashraf against the terrorist attacks of the regime.
