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January 18, 2007
Lost in Translation
This article is a must read from the front page of the WSJ today:
AMMAN, Jordan -- Cocky, cheerful Ali Adil thought he found his calling as an interpreter with the Third Marines, patrolling Iraq's most dangerous ground. The pay was good and he loved bantering about women and rock 'n' roll with young Americans. By helping Marines root out insurgents, he believed he was building a peaceful and just Iraq.
But since July -- when a suicide bomber drove an explosives-filled tanker into a building his unit was guarding -- the 20-year-old Mr. Adil has faced a different future. After suffering severe burns, he has undergone nine skin grafts at a hospital in Amman and lives in a dormitory with a dozen other wounded Iraqi interpreters -- "Terps" as the Americans call them.
Looking to avoid adding refugees, Jordan wants the Iraqis to leave the country when they are released from the hospital and no longer need postoperative treatment. The interpreters look at a return to Iraq as a death sentence. Their absence from home already may have endangered their families. "When someone is gone for a while, and nobody knows if he's really dead, the militias start asking, 'Is he with the Americans?' " says Mr. Adil, who says his family routinely receives death threats from Shiite militias in his old Basra neighborhood…
Hobbling on crutches or rolling through their days in wheelchairs, the Terps see themselves as combat veterans of America's war, which should entitle them to medical care, pensions and safety. Most want to emigrate to the U.S.
After lobbying by the U.S. Marine Corps, Congress approved a special immigration program for translators in 2005. But just 50 slots a year were granted, which must be shared between Iraqi and Afghan applicants with at least a year's service with U.S. combat troops. More than 5,000 locals have served in Iraq as interpreters…
The wounded Terps sent here for treatment -- about 100 last year -- stay weeks or months. The hospital's management asked that the facility's name not be published for fear of attack.
Amputees are the norm. Diyer Hassan arrived in November, still in a coma after leaving Iraq, where he had been on a predawn Baghdad patrol with the U.S. Army's 26th Infantry. The 20-year-old awoke in a hospital room to discover his legs amputated just below the pelvis. He had been working to raise cash to finish at Baghdad University and earn an accounting degree.
In a nearby room is one of the oldest Terps, Rabeh Khafaji, a 52-year-old Shiite nicknamed "Marcos." He was close to troops he patrolled with and says he "adopted" his 23-year-old platoon leader, Lt. Emily Perez. Told recently that she died in the same explosion that took both his lower legs, the former merchant seaman clutched Ms. Perez's photo to his chest and sobbed, "My beautiful child."…
…pressured to leave Jordan, unable to return to Iraq, where they fear their names already are on a hit list, but barred from the U.S.
"If I tell [doctors in Iraq] how I am wounded, I am killed in one day," said a 27-year-old translator from Karbala, who requested that only his first name, Haider, appear in print. "The militias rule the hospitals in Iraq," he added, as fellow exiles in the Amman dormitory nodded in agreement...
Terps are especially vulnerable, says Enrique Kelly, casualty manager for U.S. defense contractor Titan. "The interpreters are on no one's side," the retired U.S. soldier says. "The Shi'a hate them, the Sunnis hate them. The Americans don't trust them because they could be infiltrators. As soon as they lose our protection they'll be hunted down."
Mr. Adil and his brother figure they'll never qualify for visas. Neither knows any senior military officials, and Amjad doesn't plan to stay in Iraq long enough to apply. He wants to move to Syria where several Terps already have found haven. "I told my mother this was the end for me," he said as he prepared to return to his Marine base after a vacation in December. "She cried. She doesn't want any of us to do this anymore."
For his part, Ali expects to leave Amman by the end of this month. Rather than return to a translator job in Iraq, he plans to wait for his settlement, which he figures will be about $20,000. He thinks that ought to be enough to hire a smuggler who will lead him to a path other Iraqis have followed to Tijuana, Mexico, then on to San Diego.
There he's confident he'll be allowed to petition U.S. authorities for asylum, or at least find someone in Southern California's growing Iraqi community to put up bond if he's jailed. He's also counting on help from former Marine mates, many of whom live in San Diego County.
"I risked my life with the Marines," he says. "How can they refuse me?"
Posted by Peter Mork at January 18, 2007 9:46 AM
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