Iraq and A Hard Place

Iraqi interpreter masking identity, photo by Ann Scott Tyson


When the first phase of the war in Iraq was over, and the occupation began, the United States turned to Iraqis for myriad forms of help. We needed people as translators, teachers and to fill various other staff positions. Thousands upon thousands of Iraqis stepped forward to offer their services.

In the last few years, those same Iraqis have been targeted for death, their family members threatened. Many have already been killed. Most have fled the country and are temporarily as refugees in countries like Jordan and Syria. They have applied to come to the U.S.

But the US, who was eager to use their services, is far less eager to help them in return, according to last night’s 60 Minutes story titled The List.

Here’s some of the text of the opening:

The refugee crisis in Iraq is among the biggest humanitarian emergencies in the world. Millions of Iraqis have fled the war, many marked for death because they worked for the United States. They were translators, office workers, many other things, but now the enemy has branded them as collaborators.

When that happened in Vietnam, the U.S. brought more than 100,000 refugees to the states. But today, the U.S. government, which was so desperate for Iraqi workers, is not so eager to help them now.

….One young American named Kirk Johnson has jumped into this breach. All he wanted to do was rescue one of his Iraqi co-workers. When he did, a thousand more pleaded for help and Johnson began “the list.”

“The people on my list have been tortured, they’ve been raped, they’ve lost body limbs. There’s one guy on my list who’s been thrown out of a moving vehicle. And all of this because they helped us. They came every single day to try to pitch in, in our efforts there,” Johnson tells [Scott] Pelley.

Johnson says we owe these Iraqis “speedy resettlement” in the United States.

The U.S. failed to grant that speedy resettlement. So Johnson has taken it upon himself to plead the cases of some of an estimated 100,000 Iraqis who worked for America.

So far, Johnson has been able to help 86 of the refugees. That leaves only about 99,914 to go.

For more details, check out The List Project.

A year ago, a lot was written on this issue, like this from CNN, and here’s an Op Ed by Johnson written last year for the New York Times. And, George Packer reported on the issue a in 2007 for the New Yorker.

A year later, little has changed.