WRMEA Archives 2006-2010 - 2008 December

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2008, pages 18, 39

Special Report

From Baghdad to Washington, DC: An Asylum Seeker’s Story

By Dr. Salam Al-Iraqi

 
  • An Iraqi doctor checking a civilian’s wounds at a hospital in Fallujah, Iraq, Sept. 3, 2004 (AFP Photo/Faris Dilimi).
   

MY NAME is Salam. I am a medical doctor who was born in Baghdad, Iraq 30 years ago. My wife and little daughter in Iraq are facing great danger because I provided translation and medical consultations to the coalition forces during “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” I am now seeking freedom in the United States. In order to protect my family back home I am using a pseudonym to tell my story.

When I graduated from medical school in Iraq, I began an internship in a capital city hospital in one of my country’s governorates, the equivalent of an American state. Five months later “Operation Iraqi Freedom” began, and with it the “liberation” of Iraq’s governorates. At the hospital where I worked, I was soon treating the war causalities.

I believed this war would free Iraqis from Saddam Hussain, who persecuted Iraqis for 35 years, and bury his Ba’ath Party. I hoped we’d begin a new era for my country, and that a transformed Iraq would spread love and peace, instead of war, to the entire world.

With the fall of Saddam’s regime, however, the city where I was living and working descended into chaos. Looting broke out, and the doctors in my hospital faced the looters armed only with our stethoscopes. Local residents, who honored the work we’d accomplished in the hospital, tried to protect it, but on April 7, 2003 we were overrun.

After many attacks on our hospital by the looters, it occurred to me to ask the U.S. troops who were surrounding the city to help us. I asked the religious leaders who were trying to protect the hospital to come with me, and at sunset we traveled to a barricade by ambulance, flying a white flag.

Upon our arrival I was pushed to the ground and searched before I was able to explain, in English, that our hospital needed guards to protect the medicine and equipment from looters. The soldiers not only rejected my request, but told me to leave or I could be shot.

The next day I appointed myself to work for my country alongside U.S. troops because I could see that both sides needed a better understanding of each other. I worked as an unpaid volunteer for the next nine months!

I was able to help the U.S. Army, and then the Marines, achieve many things, including:

  • protecting the city’s hospitals and food storage buildings;
  • eradicating fedayeen and Ba’ath party resistance groups;
  • removing 10-20 tons of bombs, bullets, missiles and other weaponry. I personally informed U.S. troops of the presence of this weaponry in various locations around the city;
  • installing NGOs in the city’s hospitals;
  • establishing an agreement between U.S. troops and the city’s loyal Iraqi security forces in order to work together to protect the city;
  • protecting, with the help of U.S. troops, Iraqis performing religious rituals, as well as protests, in the streets;
  • placing Iraqi guards in the hospital—the first step in creating an Iraqi police force in the city;
  • arranging meetings between U.S. troops and city security personnel including, later on, the governor;
  • eradicating a significant amount of corruption within the hospitals;
  • organizing the physicians to conduct physical exams for 2,300 Iraqi police recruits at the hospital;
  • transferring Iraqi civilians wounded by U.S. troops to the U.S. military hospital;
  • launching a professional exchange in which U.S. military doctors conducted medical rounds at the hospital with Iraqi medical students and teaching physicians. In July 2003 we also held oral graduation exams, conducted by the joint teaching staff of Iraqi and American military doctors; and
  • repairing hospital infrastructures.

Because of my work with the Americans, I received six different types of threats and other mistreatment over the last five years—the last and worst of which came in January 2007. As a result of those threats, I was forced to move around Iraq from city to city, hiding my history helping Americans. I kept in touch by e-mail with a friend in the U.S. Navy, a former lieutenant commander doctor I’d worked with, after she returned home. She advised me to get out of Iraq immediately. Seriously, I told her, I could not escape from Iraq because I am poor and from a poor family, and I’d married recently.

Saying I shouldn’t worry about money, because if I stayed longer I would be killed, my American friend sent me money so I could leave. In late December 2007 I traveled to Southeast Asia, where I applied for refugee status. With my friend’s help I also applied for a B1/B2 visa to the U.S. so I could attend her wedding in California. Unfortunately I missed her wedding, but after waiting four months I got the visa and am now living in Washington, DC. My American benefactor has spent more than $10,000 to help her Iraqi friend, and she is still supporting me. This angel from America who helped an Iraqi is also my sponsor.

In March 2007, I began writing my autobiography, which I finished in Southeast Asia. I hope it will help Americans see Iraqis in a very different way from how they are portrayed in mainstream media reports.

In November 2007, when I was still in Iraq, I contacted The List Project, <www.thelistproject.org>, a non-profit founded in 2007 to help resettle Iraqis who are imperiled due to their previous affiliation with U.S. forces. This NGO, founded by a great American, Kirk Johnson, is trying to help Iraqis like me who worked with U.S. troops. They assigned me attorneys in Washington, DC and in Florida, Christopher Nugent and Nathan Adam, from Holland and Knight, to assist me in obtaining political asylum in the United States. They are also trying to arrange for my wife and daughter to join me. I miss them so badly! I haven’t seen them for the past nine months.

Please, America, try to think of me and other Iraqis who have helped your soldiers. Please support our journey to freedom. For more information, please contact the Washington Report or e-mail me at < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >.

Dr. Salam Al-Iraqi is a pseudonym for a doctor who visited our office while awaiting asylum in the United States. If you would like to help him publish his book, contact the Washington Report or e-mail him directly < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >.

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