April 18, 2007
New York Times
Op-Ed Contributor
Hounded by Insurgents, Abandoned by Us
Anthony Russo
THE crisis over Iraq’s refugees is the first major policy
issue in which Iraqi civilians are front and center. We debate
how the surge looks today or how oil will be distributed tomorrow
on the banks of a swelling river of human misery: two million
Iraqis who couldn’t bear to live in Iraq anymore, and
another two million displaced internally but too poor to flee.
This week, representatives from dozens of countries and international
nongovernmental organizations have gathered in Geneva to discuss
what might be done in the wake of the largest population shift
in the Middle East since 1948. The world is asking what George
W. Bush, who started the war in Iraq and presides over the
country that historically accepts more refugees than any other,
will do for these desperate people.
Many of them will most likely be denied refuge in the United
States because, under the Patriot and Real ID Acts, they are
tarred with having provided material support to terrorists — in
the form of ransoms paid to kidnappers to secure a family member’s
release. Last month, Congress tried to create a waiver for
those who provided material support “under duress.” Lamentably,
it was killed by Senator Jon Kyl, who said he’d respond
with legislation to “provide relief from terrorism-related
immigration bars to ... groups that do not pose a threat to
the United States.”
Are we so imprecise in our fifth year of this war that our
government cannot distinguish between those who worked and
ate alongside us and a member of Al Qaeda?
Consider Rita, an Iraqi Christian woman who worked for the
Coalition Provisional Authority and helped manage the TIPS
Hotline, which Iraqis can call to share critical information
about wanted terrorists or pending attacks on the United States
military. Her supervisor, Bernard Kerik, wrote in a recommendation
letter that her “courage to support the coalition forces
has sent an irrefutable message: that terror will not rule,
that liberty will triumph, and that the seeds of freedom will
be planted into the great citizens of Iraq.”
But Rita’s courage was repaid by insurgents who abducted
her 16-year-old son at gunpoint on his way to school one August
morning. Terrorists demanded $600,000 for his release. She
doesn’t know how much her husband ultimately paid the
kidnappers because he divorced her, blaming her work for the
American government for the calamity that had befallen the
family. He took her traumatized son and daughter to Syria,
and she hasn’t seen or heard from them since. When the
death threats became unbearable, she fled to Jordan.
Appallingly, Rita’s family cannot be resettled in the
United States because of the material support bar. Unless the
secretary of homeland security himself applies a waiver for
her, she’ll never reach American soil. Does this woman,
who lost everything because she worked for the Americans, who
had a security clearance from our government to work in its
embassy, pose a threat to the United States? If she does, then
who doesn’t?
After all this time, we see hearts and minds as bombs and
guns. If we cannot recover such basic distinctions, then we
have surely lost more than the war.
Five years before we invaded Iraq, one senator had the remarkable
foresight to speak about our responsibility to any Iraqis who
might help the United States: “If we would have people
in Iraq, or elsewhere in the world, trust us and work with
us, then we need to take care that the United States maintains
a reputation for trustworthiness and for taking care of its
friends.” He was even more direct about what was at stake: “The
world will be watching and judging how America treats people
who are seen to be on our side. We cannot afford to foster
a perception of unfairness that will make it more difficult
for the United States to recruit supporters in the future.” So
spoke Senator Kyl in 1998.
I thought I had witnessed the depths of our government’s
inability to rapidly help Iraqis during the year that I worked
for the United States Agency for International Development
in Baghdad and Falluja. That was until I went to Washington
in February with a list of all of my former Iraqi colleagues
who are now refugees because they helped us.
While the State Department bureau in charge of refugee resettlement
has been trying feverishly to respond belatedly to the crisis,
it is not equipped or authorized to act expeditiously. In her
Jan. 16 testimony to the Senate, the assistant secretary of
state for population, refugees and migration, Ellen Sauerbrey,
said that the plight of Iraq’s refugees was the bureau’s “very
top priority.” More than two months later, she reported
to the House that it could take six months (and likely longer)
before our Iraqi friends might find refuge here.
What kind of superpower can’t convert its “very
top priority” into a program that starts saving its allies’ lives
before their visas expire and they are forced to return to
Iraq? Rita is on my list, which has grown to include hundreds
of former colleagues and others who endured similarly shattering
fates because they believed in America enough to help us in
Iraq. They wonder if they chose poorly when they signed on
with us, and they are rapidly losing hope that the United States
will offer them a life preserver before it’s too late.
Those who paid ransoms for their lives or those of their loved
ones are scared to explain in their asylum applications the
chief reason they fled their country, because they worry it
will disqualify them — a perverse indication of the extent
to which our government has lost its way since we invaded.
This is not an issue President Bush can delegate anymore.
His bureaucracies are moving perilously slowly. They need the
leadership of an American president. How will the United States
help those whose belief in us cost them their country? We need
to honor the sacrifice of these Iraqis — and start recovering
the moral credibility our country forfeits each day they go
without our help.
Kirk W. Johnson was the regional coordinator of reconstruction
in Falluja in 2005 for the United States Agency for International
Development.
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