Kurdish interpreter rewarded for serving the U.S. military

[Anthea]

Kurdish interpreter gets his reward for serving the U.S. military in Iraq
Living the American dream
Diana Nelson Jones Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Hardy Jab­bar was 19 when his cous­ins per­suaded him to use his English to earn what is in Iraq a for­tune: $1,200 a month. It was a great op­por­tu­nity — at great cost.

When he was cho­sen to be an in­ter­preter for the U.S. mil­i­tary in 2007, he be­came a marked man. In­sur­gent forces dis­trib­uted fli­ers that named in­ter­pret­ers. They knew he was Kurd­ish, al­ready a tar­geted mi­nor­ity. They knew roughly where his fam­ily lived.

He knew the risk that lay out­side the wire at Con­tin­gency Oper­at­ing Base Spe­icher near Tikrit. He might be stopped and killed, pos­si­bly by be­head­ing. Snipers had in­cen­tives, too: $3,000 for pick­ing off an in­ter­preter.

“We wore masks” on some as­sign­ments, he said. “We had nick­names. Mine was El­vis.”

To­day, five months short of his 30th birth­day, Mr. Jab­bar — who had never heard of the orig­i­nal El­vis — is liv­ing in Over­brook with his mother, one brother and the brother’s wife and two chil­dren.

He be­came a U.S. cit­i­zen in 2015, is an avid mem­ber of Steel­ers Na­tion and rides his Har­ley with friends on days off from work as a heavy ma­chine op­er­a­tor at Amer­i­can Tex­tile in Duquesne.

In 2009, he ap­plied for a Spe­cial Im­mi­grant Visa (SIV) to the United States in re­turn for his ser­vice. He col­lected a pile of tes­ti­mo­nial let­ters from of­fi­cers and sol­diers. One, from Carl Fields, an in­ter­na­tional po­lice ad­viser at Camp Spe­icher in north­ern Iraq, read in part: “I would hate to lose him as a fel­low team­mate. He is some­one I trust with my life.”

Tens of thou­sands of in­ter­pret­ers in Iraq and Af­ghan­istan who were prom­ised safe ha­ven in Amer­ica are still wait­ing. Their num­bers are dwin­dling while they wait.

“We’re los­ing one ev­ery 36 hours in Af­ghan­istan due to ret­ri­bu­tion,” said Matt Landis, who heads the Pitts­burgh chap­ter of No One Left Be­hind. “There will al­ways be more [in­ter­pret­ers] than No One Left Be­hind can help be­cause we don’t have the ca­pac­ity to help all of them.”

The or­ga­ni­za­tion has eight chap­ters. It was es­tab­lished in 2013 and has helped 2,782 in­ter­pret­ers ap­ply for SIVs.

Close to 20 in­ter­pret­ers and their fam­i­lies now live in the Pitts­burgh area, mostly from Af­ghan­istan.

In 2008 and 2009, Con­gress en­acted pro­grams to bring Iraqi and Af­ghan in­ter­pret­ers to the United States. The State Depart­ment re­ported it al­lo­cated 2,500 vi­sas for Iraqis through the end of 2013. As of last Sep­tem­ber, 1,846 had been is­sued. State is­sued 16,170 SIVs to Af­ghans last year. The wait to get here ranges from months to years.

Dur­ing the first go-round of court chal­lenges to the travel ban Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump im­posed in his first month in of­fice, Iraq was on the list, and hun­dreds of peo­ple who had SIVs were turned away at air­ports. Iraq is no lon­ger on the list, but the SIV pro­gram for Iraqis stopped in 2014. They now have to ap­ply through the U.S. Ref­u­gee Ad­mis­sions Pro­gram.

It could not be de­ter­mined whether that pro­gram moves pa­per­work more quickly.

As of last July, 11,000 Af­ghan in­ter­pret­ers and 13,000 fam­ily mem­bers were still in the ap­pli­ca­tion pro­cess, ac­cord­ing to a State Depart­ment re­port.

Ad­vo­cates ar­gue that if the United States doesn’t keep its prom­ise, in­ter­pret­ers will be harder to hire, put­ting U.S. forces at greater risk and un­der­min­ing the cred­i­bil­ity of fu­ture prom­ises.

In 2016, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., cas­ti­gated fel­low Re­pub­li­cans for im­ped­ing the pro­cess, say­ing, “People are go­ing to die. Don’t you un­der­stand the grav­ity of that?”

Mr. Landis said Af­ghan in­ter­pret­ers re­port ret­ri­bu­tions that in­clude kill­ing and kid­nap­ping of fam­ily mem­bers. The Tal­i­ban seek them out, de­mand­ing as ran­som the small for­tune in­ter­pret­ers earned in ser­vice to Amer­ica.

“We had in­ter­pret­ers who were the cream of the crop,” he said, add­ing that the mil­i­tary al­ready had vet­ted them. “They made great sac­ri­fices for us. On the of­fer that they can come here af­ter­ward, we are not do­ing well by them.”

No One Left Be­hind lo­cally works with three set­tle­ment agen­cies — Jew­ish Fam­ily and Com­mu­nity Ser­vices, the North­ern Area Multi-Ser­vices Center and Ac­cul­tur­a­tion for Justice, Ac­cess and Peace Outreach.

“We have vol­un­teers greet them at the air­port,” Mr. Landis said. “We help with hous­ing, drive them to ap­point­ments, con­nect them to other fam­i­lies who have come, help them get a driver’s li­cense, give them dishes, sil­ver­ware, tow­els.”

Mr. Jab­bar served with the 320th and 342nd Army mil­i­tary po­lice in Tikrit. He in­ter­preted be­tween the U.S. mil­i­tary and lo­cal po­lice.

“We had sev­eral po­lice sta­tions to visit ev­ery day,” he said, “and among the things we made sure they knew was to not abuse pris­on­ers.”

Mr. Jab­bar said his fear was “un­speak­able. You can’t say it in words. There were in­fil­tra­tors in the lo­cal po­lice. Every day was work and ev­ery day was dan­ger, from the time you left the base to the time you got back. There were [im­pro­vised ex­plo­sive de­vices] ev­ery­where. There were dead an­i­mals ev­ery­where and IEDs placed in dead an­i­mals.

“If I left to see my fam­ily, I was watched. I knew I could be stopped. You have to take your doc­u­ments to get back into the base but if you are stopped with your doc­u­ments on you … .”

He shook his head.

“I tagged along on flights from the base” to see his fam­ily ev­ery six months.

He first set­tled in Flor­ida. A sol­dier from his unit, from St. Peters­burg, of­fered him a place to stay and his wife of­fered him her 1988 Chevy.

“She said, ‘Just buy the in­sur­ance,’ ” Mr. Jab­bar said. “I had some cul­ture shock, be­cause we didn’t pay in­sur­ance or util­i­ties in Iraq. We didn’t pay taxes, health in­sur­ance — the gov­ern­ment pays all that.”

After four years in Flor­ida, Mr. Jab­bar came to Pitts­burgh with a woman he met while she was on va­ca­tion in Flor­ida. They mar­ried and then di­vorced, but Mr. Jab­bar said he feels rooted here. He stud­ied Ar­a­bic lan­guage and cul­ture at the Com­mu­nity Col­lege of Al­le­gheny County and hopes to get a mas­ter’s de­gree. He in­ter­prets and trans­lates on the side.

Sev­eral men in his unit keep in touch, in­clud­ing Jared Turner of Hun­ting­ton, W.Va.

“I couldn’t have done my job or re­ceived the per­for­mance eval­u­a­tions I did had I not had El­vis,” Mr. Turner said. “As much as he did for me, I would do any­thing for him, as a friend, a brother-in-arms. I was tick­led to death to know he had made it here.”

Mr. Jab­bar has five older sib­lings. One brother lives in Brookline. One em­i­grated from Iraq to Italy in 2000.

Vis­it­ing him in Rome last year, Mr. Jab­bar tracked down a Steel­ers bar filled with fans.

“The game was on at 2.30 a.m.,” he said, “and the bar­tender kept the bar open.”

Two sis­ters are try­ing to get out of Iraq, their visa pro­cesses just start­ing. His father has not been heard from since the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, when Iraq used chem­i­cal weap­ons against the Kurds.

Mr. Jab­bar said he has no loy­alty to Iraq. The Kurds there have been strug­gling for au­ton­omy since the Ot­to­man Em­pire dis­solved. In es­sence, he came to the United States as a man with­out a coun­try.

“Imag­ine if you were picked on at school, by kids and teach­ers all the time, op­pressed by the gov­ern­ment all the time,” he said, not­ing that Sad­dam Hus­sein was in power for 37 years.

“Say you got out,” he said, open­ing his arms, smil­ing, as if em­brac­ing his new life. “I am an Amer­i­can. I am liv­ing the Amer­i­can dream.”

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/ ... 1801230096

A safe man NOW after the risk of the total destruction of his extended family. I have met several such men in the UK and EVERY single one wishes he had NEVER been persuaded to interpret for the British Forces.

What the UK, and other countries who make use of Kurdish interpreters, fail to understand - is that Kurds have large close-knit extended families , ALL of whom are put at risk if a single family member works for the British/US forces.

Apart from one interpreter, all the others I have met had to be relocated in quiet areas far away from other Kurds. Because even here in the UK they live in fear of discovery. Their wives seldom go out. The men themselves are ashamed of putting their entire family networks at risk. ALL the interpreters I have met suffer from severe depression.