thedrifter
10-14-07, 05:26 PM
Safe at last
Iraqi interpreter finds refuge in home of Marine he helped save
By Michael Hoffman - mhoffman@militarytimes.com
Posted : October 22, 2007
BROOKFIELD, Conn. — Peering through the window of a white SUV parked next to an Iraqi armory, Lt. Col. Michael Zacchea watched intently as the plot to murder him and the seven other U.S. military advisers to the Iraqi army’s 5th Motorized Rifle Battalion got underway.
One insurgent and four Iraqi soldiers jumped into a white Nissan pickup truck piled high with rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47s, night-vision goggles, ammunition and body armor, all freshly stolen from the battalion’s armory. The plan was to ambush the two Marines and six soldiers sleeping in their bunks next to their Iraqi counterparts and then escape in the ensuing chaos.
Tipped off to the plot a few days earlier, Zacchea called on his most trusted interpreter to help root out the Iraqi turncoats and set a trap to catch the assassins in the act.
More than two years later, the interpreter who helped foil the plot and save Zacchea’s life now lives with the Marine officer and his wife in their modest suburban Connecticut home amid other New York City commuters and a world away from the sectarian violence enveloping Iraq.
Returning the favor
The interpreter — referred to here only as his U.S. military-given code name “Jack” in an effort to protect his family still living in Iraq — is one of a growing number of Iraqi interpreters turning to their Marine connections for help, desperate to escape the death sentence awaiting anyone identified as a collaborator with the U.S. military.
Thus far, Jack has avoided being pegged as a “murtad,” the Arabic word for “apostate,” a person that betrays his religion or cause and a title that many insurgents use to vilify Iraqis who work with Americans.
Jack saw his family suffer after insurgents discovered that his brother-in-law served in the Iraqi police force. Had Jack’s sister not seen an explosive round come through the window of the house where she lived with her husband, children and another sister and somehow hustled everyone out before it detonated, they probably would all be dead.
But the explosion demolished the house and forced Jack’s entire extended family, who lived in the same village and feared a similar attack, to move 150 miles south, away from their hometown on the northeast outskirts of Baghdad.
Beads of sweat form on Jack’s forehead as he discusses his family. He is nervous giving details about them and requests that the names of the towns they lived in not be named. To protect his identity, Jack has told only his father and two of his 10 siblings he worked as an interpreter, he said. Everyone else gets the same story: He’s traveling somewhere in Iraq on business for the construction company he worked for before the war started.
Jack figured it was only a matter of time before he was identified, especially after Arkan, another interpreter with the 5th Battalion, was killed about a year ago.
Insurgents followed Arkan as he drove through Baghdad to his ex-wife’s apartment to drop off their son. After he walked out of the apartment and got back into his car, he was riddled with bullets.
Jack served as an interpreter to both Marines and soldiers for 3½ years, but he decided last year it was time to leave. Sitting at Zacchea’s dining room table, Jack, 36, said he foresaw no future in Iraq. He hoped the U.S., the country he’d served since 2004, would return the favor and grant him a visa.
Zacchea, who was wounded in Fallujah and received a Purple Heart, is now a member of the Individual Ready Reserve. He left Iraq more than two years ago but never lost touch with the man who helped save his life. The pair e-mailed each other any time Jack got a break from his translating duties and had access to the Internet.
“I used to worry,” Zacchea said. “[Jack] would sometimes not have access to e-mail for months at a time, and I would be very worried about his health and safety.”
Visa woes
Jack turned to Zacchea for help to get the necessary paperwork to come to America. After a failed attempt to acquire a student visa, he applied for one of the 500 special immigrant visas for which the Pentagon can nominate an Iraqi or Afghan that worked with the U.S. each year.
The number of visas was boosted from 50 to 500 this summer after congressional hearings about Iraqi immigrants last January — which included testimony from an Iraqi interpreter — drew national attention to the difficulty the increased number of Iraqi and Afghan interpreters have had in getting a U.S. visa.
The criteria for the special immigrant visa dictates the nominee must have worked for the U.S. for more than a year, received a security screening, paid a $375 fee and been recommended by a flag officer.
“Getting that flag officer’s signature is the hardest part of the process,” said Brian Watson, an attorney with the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, who is working with three Iraqi interpreters trying to gain special immigrant status. “There are so many of these translators, but not nearly as many generals to write recommendations.”
It took a year — and a signature from Army Brig. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard — to fight through the administrative paperwork to obtain the visa, but Jack and Zacchea were finally reunited after not seeing each other since Feb. 28, 2005. Jack arrived at the Newark, N.J., airport the first week of October after receiving his special immigrant visa at the U.S. embassy in Damascus, Syria, and flying to Qatar and then finally to New Jersey.
Now, he’s waiting for his green card to arrive before beginning the job hunt, hoping to eventually earn enough money to bring his wife to America.
Jack spoke to her only sparingly while he served as an interpreter and hasn’t spoken to her since June. He says that’s for her safety.
Finding work
Texas state lawmaker and former Army Capt. Allen Vaught, who has helped one of his Iraqi interpreters move to America and is in the process of helping two others, said finding work can take months. It was four months before Hussein Albayti, Vaught’s success story, received his green card, which many people mistakenly think must be obtained to work legally in the U.S.
Even with his sponsor’s connections to the Texas statehouse, Albayti had to settle for low-paying hourly jobs, including work at a chicken factory with illegal immigrants. Vaught said the translator became so frustrated with his new life in Texas, he came close to boarding a flight back to Iraq just so he could find a job.
“Unless someone opens up their home and their wallets, there is no other financial assistance, and it’s going to be really tough for them,” Vaught said.
Watson said it’s a common misconception for the interpreters looking for a job to wait for their green card when they simply need to apply for work authorization on their special immigrant status, which takes much less time to get approved and will allow them to get a job faster.
Jack rarely leaves the in-law apartment the Zaccheas set up for him on the ground floor of their split-level home, where he waits for his green card and the appropriate documentation to apply for medical insurance and a driver’s license. He hasn’t experienced much American culture since he arrived, but he frequently watches the news on the television in his bedroom for updates on Iraq.
“I came here to look for a better life,” Jack said. “Especially for us that worked with U.S. forces, it’s difficult to get any opportunity in Iraq. Even the government of Iraq doesn’t sympathize with us. If I show them my I.D. card as an interpreter, I wouldn’t be safe.”
As for the other Iraqis who Zacchea worked with, the officer said he hopes to help more travel to the U.S., especially the Iraqi officer who first tipped him off to the assassination plot. Zacchea said he feels America has an obligation to help the Iraqis risking their lives to work with U.S. troops, and must do a better job of opening their doors to them.
In the meantime, Jack continues to look for a job to help restart his life. But he can’t stop thanking the Marine who helped pull him out of an uncertain future in Iraq.
“His body is here, but his mind and his thinking never left Iraq,” Jack said. “We felt that.”
Ellie
Iraqi interpreter finds refuge in home of Marine he helped save
By Michael Hoffman - mhoffman@militarytimes.com
Posted : October 22, 2007
BROOKFIELD, Conn. — Peering through the window of a white SUV parked next to an Iraqi armory, Lt. Col. Michael Zacchea watched intently as the plot to murder him and the seven other U.S. military advisers to the Iraqi army’s 5th Motorized Rifle Battalion got underway.
One insurgent and four Iraqi soldiers jumped into a white Nissan pickup truck piled high with rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47s, night-vision goggles, ammunition and body armor, all freshly stolen from the battalion’s armory. The plan was to ambush the two Marines and six soldiers sleeping in their bunks next to their Iraqi counterparts and then escape in the ensuing chaos.
Tipped off to the plot a few days earlier, Zacchea called on his most trusted interpreter to help root out the Iraqi turncoats and set a trap to catch the assassins in the act.
More than two years later, the interpreter who helped foil the plot and save Zacchea’s life now lives with the Marine officer and his wife in their modest suburban Connecticut home amid other New York City commuters and a world away from the sectarian violence enveloping Iraq.
Returning the favor
The interpreter — referred to here only as his U.S. military-given code name “Jack” in an effort to protect his family still living in Iraq — is one of a growing number of Iraqi interpreters turning to their Marine connections for help, desperate to escape the death sentence awaiting anyone identified as a collaborator with the U.S. military.
Thus far, Jack has avoided being pegged as a “murtad,” the Arabic word for “apostate,” a person that betrays his religion or cause and a title that many insurgents use to vilify Iraqis who work with Americans.
Jack saw his family suffer after insurgents discovered that his brother-in-law served in the Iraqi police force. Had Jack’s sister not seen an explosive round come through the window of the house where she lived with her husband, children and another sister and somehow hustled everyone out before it detonated, they probably would all be dead.
But the explosion demolished the house and forced Jack’s entire extended family, who lived in the same village and feared a similar attack, to move 150 miles south, away from their hometown on the northeast outskirts of Baghdad.
Beads of sweat form on Jack’s forehead as he discusses his family. He is nervous giving details about them and requests that the names of the towns they lived in not be named. To protect his identity, Jack has told only his father and two of his 10 siblings he worked as an interpreter, he said. Everyone else gets the same story: He’s traveling somewhere in Iraq on business for the construction company he worked for before the war started.
Jack figured it was only a matter of time before he was identified, especially after Arkan, another interpreter with the 5th Battalion, was killed about a year ago.
Insurgents followed Arkan as he drove through Baghdad to his ex-wife’s apartment to drop off their son. After he walked out of the apartment and got back into his car, he was riddled with bullets.
Jack served as an interpreter to both Marines and soldiers for 3½ years, but he decided last year it was time to leave. Sitting at Zacchea’s dining room table, Jack, 36, said he foresaw no future in Iraq. He hoped the U.S., the country he’d served since 2004, would return the favor and grant him a visa.
Zacchea, who was wounded in Fallujah and received a Purple Heart, is now a member of the Individual Ready Reserve. He left Iraq more than two years ago but never lost touch with the man who helped save his life. The pair e-mailed each other any time Jack got a break from his translating duties and had access to the Internet.
“I used to worry,” Zacchea said. “[Jack] would sometimes not have access to e-mail for months at a time, and I would be very worried about his health and safety.”
Visa woes
Jack turned to Zacchea for help to get the necessary paperwork to come to America. After a failed attempt to acquire a student visa, he applied for one of the 500 special immigrant visas for which the Pentagon can nominate an Iraqi or Afghan that worked with the U.S. each year.
The number of visas was boosted from 50 to 500 this summer after congressional hearings about Iraqi immigrants last January — which included testimony from an Iraqi interpreter — drew national attention to the difficulty the increased number of Iraqi and Afghan interpreters have had in getting a U.S. visa.
The criteria for the special immigrant visa dictates the nominee must have worked for the U.S. for more than a year, received a security screening, paid a $375 fee and been recommended by a flag officer.
“Getting that flag officer’s signature is the hardest part of the process,” said Brian Watson, an attorney with the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, who is working with three Iraqi interpreters trying to gain special immigrant status. “There are so many of these translators, but not nearly as many generals to write recommendations.”
It took a year — and a signature from Army Brig. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard — to fight through the administrative paperwork to obtain the visa, but Jack and Zacchea were finally reunited after not seeing each other since Feb. 28, 2005. Jack arrived at the Newark, N.J., airport the first week of October after receiving his special immigrant visa at the U.S. embassy in Damascus, Syria, and flying to Qatar and then finally to New Jersey.
Now, he’s waiting for his green card to arrive before beginning the job hunt, hoping to eventually earn enough money to bring his wife to America.
Jack spoke to her only sparingly while he served as an interpreter and hasn’t spoken to her since June. He says that’s for her safety.
Finding work
Texas state lawmaker and former Army Capt. Allen Vaught, who has helped one of his Iraqi interpreters move to America and is in the process of helping two others, said finding work can take months. It was four months before Hussein Albayti, Vaught’s success story, received his green card, which many people mistakenly think must be obtained to work legally in the U.S.
Even with his sponsor’s connections to the Texas statehouse, Albayti had to settle for low-paying hourly jobs, including work at a chicken factory with illegal immigrants. Vaught said the translator became so frustrated with his new life in Texas, he came close to boarding a flight back to Iraq just so he could find a job.
“Unless someone opens up their home and their wallets, there is no other financial assistance, and it’s going to be really tough for them,” Vaught said.
Watson said it’s a common misconception for the interpreters looking for a job to wait for their green card when they simply need to apply for work authorization on their special immigrant status, which takes much less time to get approved and will allow them to get a job faster.
Jack rarely leaves the in-law apartment the Zaccheas set up for him on the ground floor of their split-level home, where he waits for his green card and the appropriate documentation to apply for medical insurance and a driver’s license. He hasn’t experienced much American culture since he arrived, but he frequently watches the news on the television in his bedroom for updates on Iraq.
“I came here to look for a better life,” Jack said. “Especially for us that worked with U.S. forces, it’s difficult to get any opportunity in Iraq. Even the government of Iraq doesn’t sympathize with us. If I show them my I.D. card as an interpreter, I wouldn’t be safe.”
As for the other Iraqis who Zacchea worked with, the officer said he hopes to help more travel to the U.S., especially the Iraqi officer who first tipped him off to the assassination plot. Zacchea said he feels America has an obligation to help the Iraqis risking their lives to work with U.S. troops, and must do a better job of opening their doors to them.
In the meantime, Jack continues to look for a job to help restart his life. But he can’t stop thanking the Marine who helped pull him out of an uncertain future in Iraq.
“His body is here, but his mind and his thinking never left Iraq,” Jack said. “We felt that.”
Ellie