thedrifter
09-02-07, 06:03 AM
Marine's Bid to Pierce Refugee Logjam
A Quest to Repay An Iraqi Interpreter And Father Figure
By Paul Lewis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 2, 2007; A05
Days after fleeing Baghdad, and after his relatives had been gunned down and burned in their cars for collaborating with U.S. forces or their allies, Khalid Abood al-Khafajee reached Amman, Jordan, in December. There the Iraqi translator and his family joined thousands of refugees hoping for passage to Western Europe or the United States.
His odds weren't good. About 2 million refugees have poured out of Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003, yet only a trickle have managed to make it out of the Middle East. And the 60-year-old Abood was also seeking a way out for his wife, Batool, 59, and their two daughters, Nadia, 29, and Shaimaa, 23.
But Abood, a translator for Marines and for NATO forces in Iraq since 2003, had one advantage: More than 6,000 miles away, in Wrightsville Beach, N.C., a young Marine was working to bring the translator and his family to the United States.
Putting out dozens of calls and e-mails every day, Capt. Zachary Iscol, an Iraq veteran, spent months trying to unclog the bureaucratic pipeline between Jordan and the United States. Iscol's effort would culminate on Capitol Hill, where he would stand before a Senate panel and make an impassioned plea for his friend and former translator, plucking Abood's case out of a sea of names and faces.
Iscol explained how Abood had helped keep him and his men alive, translating for him in tense meetings with clerics and during bloody battles in Fallujah in 2004, when Iscol was 25. He was determined, he said, to repay the silver-haired translator who had become a father figure for him.
"I feel that I was able to bring 30 Marines back to their families alive," Iscol said. "Some of them may have been pretty beat-up, but they were alive. And that was down to Abood. I don't know how I could repay him for that. I'll be indebted to him for the rest of my life."
Under fire from Congress over its aid to Iraqis who have assisted U.S. forces, the State Department said in February that it would streamline its refugee program and resettle 7,000 Iraqis in the United States by the end of the fiscal year in September. State Department officials have since lowered the goal to 2,000. But figures released Friday revealed that 700 Iraqi refugees reached the United States over the past 11 months, leaving the department 1,300 short of its goal with one month left.
Abood and Iscol's unlikely partnership began in July 2004 in Nasr Wa Salam, a poor Shiite city near Fallujah. Iscol, then a second lieutenant, commanded patrols through a near-derelict territory littered with roadside bombs.
Iscol relied on Abood to interpret culture as much as words, the Marine said. Abood told him to avoid eating with his left hand and cautioned against showing his feet during meals -- breaches of etiquette in Iraq. Often, Iscol said, Abood would essentially take over meetings with local figures. "Respect really comes with age over there," Iscol said. "I was a 20-year-old kid. He was a 55-year-old guy with a white moustache."
Striking pacts with groups in the city, Abood helped keep Iscol's men from becoming targets, the Marine said. At least a dozen times, Iscol's platoon drove past roadside bombs that detonated seconds later, he said, as another convoy passed. Iscol is convinced this was because Abood forged ties with local factions, who in turn afforded Iscol's Marines special treatment. By the end of intense combat to take Fallujah, only one member of Iscol's platoon had been killed.
"The secret of counterinsurgency is you can't win it with bullets and grenades," Iscol said. "It's about forging relationships. . . . I needed Abood for that."
Abood tried to ease the pressure on the young Marine. "When I saw him sitting alone at night, I would go to him and talk about the stars," Abood said. "And [I told] jokes about the meetings [with] the sheiks and the imams."
The support was most valuable at the lowest point of Iscol's deployment: the night his men opened fire on a truck at a checkpoint and killed the innocent driver.
"I tried to tell him it's not his fault," Abood said. "It was the truck driver's fault. He was not to blame himself for the others' mistakes."
It was around this time that Iscol began calling Abood "Abu Zach" -- "Zach's father."
Iscol stayed in touch with Abood after returning to Camp Lejeune, N.C., in early 2005. As the security situation in Iraq deteriorated, he pleaded with Abood, who had transferred to work for NATO in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, to leave Iraq. For nearly two years, the interpreter resisted, saying he had yet to complete his mission.
That changed in November, when Abood telephoned Iscol with the news that three unknown men had visited his home and asked neighbors about his whereabouts -- a harbinger of a possible attack against him. Abood told Iscol he was in hiding and planned to flee to Jordan. But both men knew that Abood's life would remain in danger among the refugee community, where elements still loyal to Saddam Hussein operate covertly.
Iscol called everyone he could think of -- superior officers, immigration lawyers and even high school friends who worked at the State Department -- for help in getting Abood to safety. Only a few Iraqi refugees were entering the country each month, and 50 special visa slots for Afghan and Iraqi interpreters had been filled.
Frustrated by his poor progress, Iscol flew to Washington in late December and spent days knocking on doors on Capitol Hill, speaking to any staffer who would listen. Within weeks, Abood's case began gaining attention, his file passing among top human rights lawyers. By early January, a document laying out his case was hand-delivered to Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration. Her staff contacted officials with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Amman and promised to track the case.
In mid-January, Iscol was asked to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a hearing examining the Bush administration's failure to provide sanctuary to Iraqi refugees. The night before the hearing, the news came through that Abood and his family had been granted refugee status by the U.N. High Commissioner -- the first step in getting them here. The next day, as Iscol testified, lawmakers noted that it had taken a Senate hearing to rescue a single Iraqi and his family.
As Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) quipped, maybe "1.7 million hearings would bring 1.7 million people out."
In the hearing, Iscol emphasized the critical role his interpreter played in the mission. "Without our translators, we are deaf and dumb," he said. "Without them we cannot speak, we cannot listen, we cannot understand."
Abood said Iscol's stirring testimony was key to ensuring that his family received security clearance within a few months, a process that can take several years.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who led the hearing, said Iscol's "passion and desire to help someone who had risked his life for him and our country had a profound impact on our hearing, and I believe helped his translator get to safety."
That endeavor ended on a summer evening when Abood stood with his family on the steps of their new apartment in Brooklyn. "Yesterday morning, I woke up and saw people from the municipality walking along picking up trash," he said, as if confiding the latest neighborhood gossip. "In Baghdad, the municipality people tour the street in the morning to pick up corpses."
Abood said he intends to find a job and obtain U.S. citizenship with the help of the International Rescue Committee. Meanwhile, Iscol -- who is leaving the Marines in October to return to school -- has been inundated with calls from service members desperate to get their own interpreters out of Iraq.
"There's a lot of soldiers who feel an obligation to help the Iraqis who served by their side in combat," Iscol said. "These are literally people who have the most dangerous job in Iraq. They go on combat patrols for us, but they and their families live outside the wire."
Ellie
A Quest to Repay An Iraqi Interpreter And Father Figure
By Paul Lewis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 2, 2007; A05
Days after fleeing Baghdad, and after his relatives had been gunned down and burned in their cars for collaborating with U.S. forces or their allies, Khalid Abood al-Khafajee reached Amman, Jordan, in December. There the Iraqi translator and his family joined thousands of refugees hoping for passage to Western Europe or the United States.
His odds weren't good. About 2 million refugees have poured out of Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003, yet only a trickle have managed to make it out of the Middle East. And the 60-year-old Abood was also seeking a way out for his wife, Batool, 59, and their two daughters, Nadia, 29, and Shaimaa, 23.
But Abood, a translator for Marines and for NATO forces in Iraq since 2003, had one advantage: More than 6,000 miles away, in Wrightsville Beach, N.C., a young Marine was working to bring the translator and his family to the United States.
Putting out dozens of calls and e-mails every day, Capt. Zachary Iscol, an Iraq veteran, spent months trying to unclog the bureaucratic pipeline between Jordan and the United States. Iscol's effort would culminate on Capitol Hill, where he would stand before a Senate panel and make an impassioned plea for his friend and former translator, plucking Abood's case out of a sea of names and faces.
Iscol explained how Abood had helped keep him and his men alive, translating for him in tense meetings with clerics and during bloody battles in Fallujah in 2004, when Iscol was 25. He was determined, he said, to repay the silver-haired translator who had become a father figure for him.
"I feel that I was able to bring 30 Marines back to their families alive," Iscol said. "Some of them may have been pretty beat-up, but they were alive. And that was down to Abood. I don't know how I could repay him for that. I'll be indebted to him for the rest of my life."
Under fire from Congress over its aid to Iraqis who have assisted U.S. forces, the State Department said in February that it would streamline its refugee program and resettle 7,000 Iraqis in the United States by the end of the fiscal year in September. State Department officials have since lowered the goal to 2,000. But figures released Friday revealed that 700 Iraqi refugees reached the United States over the past 11 months, leaving the department 1,300 short of its goal with one month left.
Abood and Iscol's unlikely partnership began in July 2004 in Nasr Wa Salam, a poor Shiite city near Fallujah. Iscol, then a second lieutenant, commanded patrols through a near-derelict territory littered with roadside bombs.
Iscol relied on Abood to interpret culture as much as words, the Marine said. Abood told him to avoid eating with his left hand and cautioned against showing his feet during meals -- breaches of etiquette in Iraq. Often, Iscol said, Abood would essentially take over meetings with local figures. "Respect really comes with age over there," Iscol said. "I was a 20-year-old kid. He was a 55-year-old guy with a white moustache."
Striking pacts with groups in the city, Abood helped keep Iscol's men from becoming targets, the Marine said. At least a dozen times, Iscol's platoon drove past roadside bombs that detonated seconds later, he said, as another convoy passed. Iscol is convinced this was because Abood forged ties with local factions, who in turn afforded Iscol's Marines special treatment. By the end of intense combat to take Fallujah, only one member of Iscol's platoon had been killed.
"The secret of counterinsurgency is you can't win it with bullets and grenades," Iscol said. "It's about forging relationships. . . . I needed Abood for that."
Abood tried to ease the pressure on the young Marine. "When I saw him sitting alone at night, I would go to him and talk about the stars," Abood said. "And [I told] jokes about the meetings [with] the sheiks and the imams."
The support was most valuable at the lowest point of Iscol's deployment: the night his men opened fire on a truck at a checkpoint and killed the innocent driver.
"I tried to tell him it's not his fault," Abood said. "It was the truck driver's fault. He was not to blame himself for the others' mistakes."
It was around this time that Iscol began calling Abood "Abu Zach" -- "Zach's father."
Iscol stayed in touch with Abood after returning to Camp Lejeune, N.C., in early 2005. As the security situation in Iraq deteriorated, he pleaded with Abood, who had transferred to work for NATO in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, to leave Iraq. For nearly two years, the interpreter resisted, saying he had yet to complete his mission.
That changed in November, when Abood telephoned Iscol with the news that three unknown men had visited his home and asked neighbors about his whereabouts -- a harbinger of a possible attack against him. Abood told Iscol he was in hiding and planned to flee to Jordan. But both men knew that Abood's life would remain in danger among the refugee community, where elements still loyal to Saddam Hussein operate covertly.
Iscol called everyone he could think of -- superior officers, immigration lawyers and even high school friends who worked at the State Department -- for help in getting Abood to safety. Only a few Iraqi refugees were entering the country each month, and 50 special visa slots for Afghan and Iraqi interpreters had been filled.
Frustrated by his poor progress, Iscol flew to Washington in late December and spent days knocking on doors on Capitol Hill, speaking to any staffer who would listen. Within weeks, Abood's case began gaining attention, his file passing among top human rights lawyers. By early January, a document laying out his case was hand-delivered to Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration. Her staff contacted officials with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Amman and promised to track the case.
In mid-January, Iscol was asked to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a hearing examining the Bush administration's failure to provide sanctuary to Iraqi refugees. The night before the hearing, the news came through that Abood and his family had been granted refugee status by the U.N. High Commissioner -- the first step in getting them here. The next day, as Iscol testified, lawmakers noted that it had taken a Senate hearing to rescue a single Iraqi and his family.
As Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) quipped, maybe "1.7 million hearings would bring 1.7 million people out."
In the hearing, Iscol emphasized the critical role his interpreter played in the mission. "Without our translators, we are deaf and dumb," he said. "Without them we cannot speak, we cannot listen, we cannot understand."
Abood said Iscol's stirring testimony was key to ensuring that his family received security clearance within a few months, a process that can take several years.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who led the hearing, said Iscol's "passion and desire to help someone who had risked his life for him and our country had a profound impact on our hearing, and I believe helped his translator get to safety."
That endeavor ended on a summer evening when Abood stood with his family on the steps of their new apartment in Brooklyn. "Yesterday morning, I woke up and saw people from the municipality walking along picking up trash," he said, as if confiding the latest neighborhood gossip. "In Baghdad, the municipality people tour the street in the morning to pick up corpses."
Abood said he intends to find a job and obtain U.S. citizenship with the help of the International Rescue Committee. Meanwhile, Iscol -- who is leaving the Marines in October to return to school -- has been inundated with calls from service members desperate to get their own interpreters out of Iraq.
"There's a lot of soldiers who feel an obligation to help the Iraqis who served by their side in combat," Iscol said. "These are literally people who have the most dangerous job in Iraq. They go on combat patrols for us, but they and their families live outside the wire."
Ellie