To Be a Friend Is Fatal

by Kirk W. Johnson

  Throughout the long withdrawal, the List Project implored the Obama administration to put contingency plans in place to protect our Iraqi allies. But this White House has always maintained a sterile detachment when it comes to Iraq: they had campaigned in 2008 on getting out, and planned to campaign in 2012 on the fact that they’d gotten out. It wasn’t their war going in, and they weren’t about to make it their war on the way out.

  So they convinced themselves that Iraq was in better shape than it was and pulled out, seemingly secure in the knowledge that the American public wouldn’t give them too hard a time if the country unraveled. Samantha Power cashed in her “rock star” humanitarian credentials for an ambassadorship to the United Nations. Her confirmation hearing was an embarrassing waltz away from the words that once drew so many of us close:

  Senator Ron Johnson: You said a country has to look back before it can move forward. Instituting a doctrine of mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors.

  Samantha Power: Thank you, Senator . . . Let me start just by saying what I should have said perhaps at the beginning before, which is I have written probably two million words in my career, a million, two million; I’ve certainly lost track. There are things that I have written that I would write very differently today, and that is one of them. Particularly having served in the executive branch—

  Senator Johnson: So your thinking has changed on that, then?

  Ms. Power: My—again, serving in the executive branch is very different than sounding off from an academic perch. Yes.

  Senator Johnson: Good. I appreciate your answers. Thank you.

  Ms. Power: Thank you, sir.

  Thank you, Ambassador Power.

  Maybe if Hillary wins in 2016? people ask me.

  With an estimated 1.5 million Iraqis uprooted by the recent violence, the UN has upgraded the situation to a level-three disaster—its most severe designation. I fall asleep most nights to the sound of emails ringing into my inbox, with subject lines imploring “Please Help Me,” “Please help!!!!!!! Please help!!!!!!!!,” and “Need Support Please”—those from about a dozen families over the past twenty-four hours alone. There’s next to nothing that can be done for them.

  Of the ninety Iraqis with whom I worked during my time in Baghdad and Fallujah, eighty-five were forced to flee the country, three were assassinated as collaborators, and two remained to wrestle the fates. One of them is holed up in his apartment with his wife, his five-year-old daughter, and a Colt pistol, which will do little to protect them against ISIS militants.

  The other, Jalal, fled to Turkey on Tuesday with his wife and three young daughters. He’s lucky, in a way, as all flights out of Baghdad are now booked solid for another month, but his voice carried only defeat. “I’ve lost all the hope in everything. I left everything back there—my car, my house, everything. We have to run away for how long? One year? Two years? For how long? I’m thirty-seven. I have been in this drama for ten years. I’m fed up with everything. I need to raise my daughters. I need to secure their lives, secure their future.”

  Many years ago, Jalal applied for a Special Immigrant Visa. “I sent them emails and emails and emails, but those people are really getting on my nerves.” Shortly after To Be a Friend Is Fatal was published, the US government shut down, and the program expired: all Jalal ever hears back is that his case is in “administrative processing.” After frenzied lobbying by the List Project and many others to renew the legislation, the White House agreed to an extension of the program, but only for 2,500 more Iraqis. That number, seemingly selected out of thin air, represented the bureaucratic coup de grâce: the preexisting backlog would claim the full 2,500 slots, leaving all those who weren’t lucky enough to already be in the queue to fend for themselves.

  “The last interview was in October 2010. We are now in 2014! Four years, you’re doing administrative processing? What the hell have you been doing for four years? We’re being killed here, kidnapped and tortured.”

  Jalal has given up on the promise made by our country to Iraqis like him: “It’s a game. I don’t believe it anymore.” His daughters are traumatized by the war. His middle daughter, eight years old, is incontinent due to fear.

  Jalal is angry. “The Americans left the country. They left us behind. Is this what I deserve? I have been serving the US government, and they left me behind. Where’s the US now?” He was hoping that the current crisis would lead them to finally grant his visa, but he said, “They’re just ignoring us, and that’s it. It’s the same story as Vietnam.”

  As in Saigon, the embassy is emptying out. Anne Richard, the Assistant Secretary of State in charge of the refugee bureau, informed me that the embassy has now evacuated the few staffers who processed refugee petitions, so Jalal’s case will remain frozen in 2010. Another family on my list who applied in 2009 has been in “administrative processing” for three years. Last year, gunmen entered their home and locked the mother and the toddler daughter in the bathroom while they forced the father to his knees, pressed a rifle to his temple, and gave him his final warning. Another Iraqi, who applied six years ago, finally reached the stage of the process where he was required to submit his passport to the embassy. As ISIS picks off cities on Baghdad’s periphery, he’s wondering how he can get his passport back in order to flee.

  This is what is on offer from the largest embassy on the face of the planet, built for a billion dollars and evacuated in a heartbeat.

  The airwaves are once again choked with American bile, a shabby score-settling over who was right a decade ago and who really lost Iraq. And once again, the human cost is of incidental importance: the mounting death toll and reports of mass exodus are only mentioned to undergird each side’s righteousness, not to marshal support for increased humanitarian assistance. Those who opposed the war point to the violence as proof that they were right. Those who supported it point to the violence as proof that Obama was wrong to ever withdraw. Nobody points to it and says we should help them, because the Decent Interval has passed, and no Americans really give a damn about Iraq.

  Kirk W. Johnson

  June 2014

  Los Angeles

  Acknowledgments

  The shelves sag with books on Iraq, good and bad, triumphant and beleaguered. I set out to write a book about Iraqis, who care little about the legacy of David Petraeus or the surge or whether Bremer was the right man. Their lives have been rubbled by our war, which America is well on its way to forgetting. I hope I have done something small to illuminate their story.

  Acknowledgment is far too frail a word to thank all the people who have helped this book along its way, too feeble to thank the thousands of Americans who have supported the List Project over the past seven years. I must say up front that there is simply not enough space here to thank everyone who played a part in this story, and I beg their forgiveness if I’ve neglected their names.

  My agent, Katherine Flynn, cleared away the low-hanging clouds over this project the first afternoon I met her. She believed in the story at a time when nobody wanted to hear the word Iraq.

  Paul Whitlatch calmly managed my first-book neuroses, shepherding an unwieldy herd of pages into the Scribner pen. I am indebted to him for his patient guidance and enthusiasm for this project.

  I worried that by the time I finally wrote this book I would be too numbed by the daily stream of tragedy in my in-box to care about these stories. There never would have been a List Project without Yaghdan. He pulled me from my cave of self-pity and never gave up on me. My brothers and I are lucky to call him the fourth Johnson brother. Hayder reminded me why I was so motivated to help in the first place. He is the better human we all wish to find in ourselves and others. My special thanks to Zina and Tara and all the others who shared their incredible experiences with me.

  The hundred Iraqis who risked their lives to work alongside me at USAID have never received a just reward. Those who died never
will.

  The founding law firms of Mayer Brown, Holland and Knight, and Proskauer Rose deserve unending praise. Weil, Gotshal & Manges, Dechert, Crowell & Moring, Kaye Scholer, and Steptoe & Johnson joined the List Project at a critical moment. Marcia Maack and Chris Nugent were indispensible, tireless, and above all, friends. Special thanks to Eric Blinderman, too. There is no happiness in this story without the contribution of these lawyers, whose groundbreaking work saved the lives of more than 1,500 Iraqis on the list. My list will not be the last, and I hope that their efforts can serve as a model for confronting future crises.

  My Iraqi sisters and colleagues: Tona Rashad, Basma Zaiber, Ban Hameed, and “E”—the guardians of the list—deserve sainthood in any and every religion. I never imagined when I met them during my first days at USAID in Baghdad that they would wade into the tragic trenches of the crisis every morning for more than half a decade, for meager pay and insufficient recognition. They know the truth of what they accomplished. The rest of us are all bystanders.

  Julie Schlosser absorbed the daily mania involved in running an organization and steered the List Project through many rocky straits as the chair of its board, and never let me know if I was overburdening her. Whenever my spirits sank, she was there with encouragement and brilliant counsel. I doubt that I’ll ever be able to thank her adequately, but I’ll keep on trying.

  Special thanks to Ann McKittrick Horn and Matt Walleser for putting up with me as a long-distance boss and for keeping the List Project humming throughout it all.

  Board members Paul Rieckhoff, Gahl Burt, Meena Ahamed, Frank Wisner, Gina Bianchini, George Packer, and Chris Nugent have each helped the List Project in enduring ways.

  My deepest thanks to the anonymous donor whose generosity sustained the List Project for years. I hope I get the opportunity to say that to you in person one day.

  Judge Mark Wolf, Marc Kadish, Tim Disney, Steve Hanlon, Whitney Tilson, Rena Shulsky, Sami David, Tom and Jan Thomas, Barb Toney, Drummond Pike, Jane Levikow, Yvette Diaz, Lorin Silverman, Dana and Sky Choi, Harlan Loeb, Peggy Nelson, and many others have been unfailingly generous over the years. There are far too many others to name here, but I hope they recognize the ownership they have in the List Project’s successes.

  Gratitude to the tireless Beth Murphy, Kevin Belli, Sean Flynn, and the Principle Pictures team, who spent years filming a documentary on the plight of our Iraqi allies and the List Project’s work.

  I am continually inspired by the passionate activism of Netrooters Liz Henry, Maddy Marx, Janice Kelsey, Phil Sweeney, and so many others who opened their homes and lives to newly resettled Iraqis.

  I have also learned greatly from Michel Gabaudan, the late Ken Bacon, and the rest of the wonderful team at Refugees International.

  Senator Kennedy, rest in peace. Lale Mamaux and Marlene Kaufmann remain a fearless presence on Capitol Hill, working with Representative Alcee Hastings and Senator Ben Cardin. Janice Kaguyutan and Sharon Waxman, thank you. Representatives Gary Ackerman, Earl Blumenauer, and many others in Congress understood what was at stake, and tried to do something.

  I am immensely grateful to the institutions that permitted me to work and learn from the company of far greater writers. Special thanks to Gary Smith and the lovely staff of the American Academy in Berlin, Michael Knight at the Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Corporation of Yaddo.

  Since we first communicated nearly a decade ago, my friend George Packer has never failed to teach and encourage me. It is one of my greatest honors to have fought the good fight alongside him.

  John Wray, T. Christian Miller, Anne Hull, James Wood, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, David Finkel, Dexter Filkins, Azar Nafisi, and Nancy Updike have all been part of a council of elders, bucking my flagging spirits at various points over the years I spent thinking about the book.

  Thanks to the doctors, surgeons, and emergency room staff at the Centro Medico in Bournigal. I’m sorry I was so nasty.

  Tom Hadfield has been there, bottle opener at the ready, to brainstorm, support, cajole, nudge, distract, console, celebrate, and all the other things the greatest friends do. Along with Max Weiss, Shirley Feldman Weiss, Jesse Dailey, Tim Nelson, Eddie Patel, Justin Sadauskas, Zeba Khan, Christen Hadfield, Naila Ladha, Arie Toporovsky, Barbara Helfgott Hyett, Sherine Hamdy, Usman Khan, James Weatherill, Sharon Yang, and Deb VanDerMolen, I am lucky to have the friends that I do, and even luckier to realize that listing them all here would eliminate any remaining space. They have kept me sane in their own ways, bringing joy to my days, and I’m forever grateful that they endured years of talk about refugees and “moral imperatives.” Thank you for opening your couches during the worst and best of it all.

  Loubna El Amine put up with the many deadlines and moments of doubt, periodically abandoning the comforts of Princeton and Beirut to hike down mountain valleys in New Mexico and wade up trout-filled rivers in Montana with me, Xunzi in hand. In the peaks and troughs she set things straight and kept me happy, which is all I could hope for. Marie-Josée Cantin, whose work as an attorney brought thirteen Iraqis on the list to safety, came into my life like an October eclipse. I'm not sure she realizes just how stuck with me she is, and how lucky I feel for that.

  How was I fortunate enough to be born into the family I have? The small kingdom of oak and animals and foreign languages on our dead-end street in West Chicago allowed me to venture into the world filled with naïve hope for what it might be. My grammie opened the planet’s doors to us. My mom, who forbade the word boring in our house, taught us to search for joy in life and to love others. My dad lived a life of service that made me proud to have the name I do. My brothers are my best friends, and life would have been unbearably gray without them. Soren taught me to love knowledge. Derek taught me to love friends and to read people. My sister-in-law, Carolyn, has been as close a friend as there is. Ever has brought much happiness to our family. I don’t know if my nephews and nieces Vivian, Anders, Ever T, Owen, Berend, Virginia, and Charlie will ever be allowed to read this book, but I hope they learn one day what amazing parents and grandparents they have.

  I have put them all through hell in my life, but somehow they still love me.

  Glossary of USGspeak

  People

  CTO: Cognizant Technical Officer

  EXO: Executive Officer (in a USAID mission, the third-ranking official)

  FSN: Foreign Service National (Iraqi employee)

  IDP: Internally Displaced Person

  LES: Locally Engaged Staff (Iraqi employee)

  MAM: Military Age Male (any male of fighting age)

  Muj: mujahid or mujahideen, insurgent

  RSO: Regional Security Officer

  TCN: Third-Country National (non-American, non-Iraqi employee, e.g., from Jordan)

  Terp: Interpreter

  Expressions

  Coordinating: hosting meetings referenced in “ramping up” or “looking into”

  Interagency Discussions: attending meetings referenced in “ramping up,” but in a different building

  Looking into: see “ramping up”

  Ramping up: “We haven’t started doing anything concrete yet, but have had several meetings.”

  Your patience assists us in facilitating the process: “Please stop asking us for updates on your case.”

  Agencies/Bureaus/Programs/Groups

  CMOC: Civil Military Operations Center

  CPA: Coalition Provisional Authority

  DHS: Department of Homeland Security

  DOD: Department of Defense

  DOS: Department of State

  IOM: International Organization for Migration (the traditional OPE of the State Department)

  IRMO: Iraq Reconstruction Management Office

  ISI: Islamic State of Iraq

  KBR: Kellogg, Brown & Root

  MEK: Mujahideen-e Khalq

  NDAA: National Defense Authorization Act

  NSC: National Security Council

  OPE: Overseas Processing Entity (organi
zation contracted by the State Department to conduct refugee screening)

  PCO: Project and Contracting Office

  PRM: Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (at Department of State)

  SIV: Special Immigrant Visa Program

  UNHCR: UN High Commissioner for Refugees

  USAID: US Agency for International Development

  USCIS: US Citizenship and Immigration Service

  USRAP: US Refugee Admissions Program

  Miscellaneous

  LZ: Landing Zone

  MOAG: Mother of All Generators

  MWR: Morale, Welfare, and Recreation tents on military bases

  Further Reading

  General History of Iraq

  Al-Askari, Jafar Pasha. A Soldier’s Story: From Ottoman Rule to Independent Iraq. Arabian Publishers, 2003.

  Batatu, Hanna. The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq. London: Saqi Books, 2004.

  Davis, Eric. Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005.

  Khadduri, Majid. Socialist Iraq: A Study in Iraqi Politics Since 1968. Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, 1978.

  Khadduri, Majid, and Edmund Ghareeb. War in the Gulf 1990–91: The Iraq–Kuwait Conflict and its Implications. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

  Nakash, Yitzhak. The Shi’is of Iraq. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.

  Iraq War and the War on Terror

  Baker, James A. III, et al. The Iraq Study Group Report. New York: Vintage Books, 2006.

  Bobbitt, Philip. Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-first Century. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.

  Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.