Inside Iraq Blog - Times Online - WBLG

'I don't want my kids to watch me slaughtered like a useless sheep'

Scared, alone and in fear of their life, scores of Iraqi interpreters who worked for the British Army have been in touch with The Times since the newspaper launched a campaign in August to highlight their plight.
Here are some extracts from emails and telephone conversations that offer an insight into the world of these people, many of whom live each day like fugitives, terrified of being found by militiamen, tortured and killed.
Mr I.K. Salman left his job as an interpreter in March 2005 after gunmen raided his house in Basra. He moved his family to Syria, hoping to gain refugee status and be resettled elsewhere. Mr Salman is still waiting for help.
“I worked with full loyalty for the British Army, risked my life and my family’s lives. Now I found myself forced to leave my own country, brutally cut from my roots. I have lost my career and finally here I am neglected in Syria, jobless and within a few months [when the money runs out] homeless,” he said.
“Believe me, it would be better to be beheaded in my own country than have the feeling that I have been cheated like a useless idiot. The only thing that stops me from going back to Iraq is my family. I don’t want my kids to watch their father slaughtered like a useless sheep.”
Mr Salman believes that an offer from Britain of financial compensation will not be enough to secure his family’s future away from the threat of militia death squads. Similarly the option of entering a special refugee programme will also not be a quick fix as the process is long and the outcome uncertain.
“We all do believe that money, whatever the amount will be, or resettlement in Iraq will not protect me or my family from facing a callous end,” the 43-year-old wrote in an email.
“All I want from the British Government is to have the option of ‘exceptional leave to remain’ in the UK.
“I don't want to be a heavy burden on the British economy and community; I'm a well qualified translator, an English language teacher and I can work there to earn my living and cover the household expenses. I do believe that I deserve what I'm looking for and my kids deserve a better future than having their father's body lying in the rubbish like a scabby dog.”
The father-of-two added: “If I am given the desired option to leave to the UK, if will be like a rescue operation for me and my little family.”

"300 shits"

In case you ever had any doubt about what to do with tissue paper then this piece of advice, spotted in Iraqi Kurdistan, should help you out.

Odd-sounding English-language signs, names and slogans in foreign countries always make me giggle – clearly I am never going to grow up.
One company name caught my eye repeatedly while I was in the Kurdish north of Iraq over the past few weeks.

Arcelik, a leading Turkish household appliance manufacturer, has outlets and billboards advertising its services all over the region.
I also liked the look of this small store with big ideas.

As it happens, I’ve similarly been on the receiving end of the translation joke. As a university student in Japan, I found out that my name means “fatso” in Japanese.
A standard introduction would go something like this: “Hajimemashite, Debu desu”, which translates as: “Let me introduce myself, my name is fatso.”

Dialysis not working well for Habib

Habib, the young Christian Kurd whose kidneys have failed, is not responding well to dialysis treatment at a hospital in northern Iraq. He needs a kidney transplant fast and you can help.
Anemic, with blood that clots too quickly and weak veins, his body is struggling to cope with the tubes that are inserted on a regular basis to flush out his organs.
“Also the flushing gives him difficulty breathing,” said the 21-year-old’s mother, Nadema Mosa, her face strained with worry and exhaustion.

“If he stays on the dialysis he is going to have side effects. When he goes for the flushing it is good because it numbs him but in the end it is going to exhaust him,” she said, speaking from next to Habib’s bed on a kidney ward at Hevie Hospital in the Kurdish city of Duhok.
“Every day we try a new piece of equipment and it does not work.”
Lying on one side with bandages around his neck – the only place where doctors could find a good enough vein to insert a dialysis tube – Habib is desperate for help.
“Nothing has really come out of this painful process I have been through,” he said.
“The longer they continue the dialysis the more they are going to torture me. Every day they stick something in me. The only answer is a transplant as I cannot continue with this illness.”
Unfortunately the family, which fled Baghdad to a village on Iraq’s volatile border with Turkey last year after being persecuted by Islamic extremists because they are Christians, lacks the funds to pay for the treatment.
They only managed to start the dialysis, which is supposed to keep Habib alive until a kidney donor is found, thanks to a $400 donation from a stranger. That money will soon run out.

Kurdish kindness and English language TV

The first time it happened was when I arrived in Iraqi Kurdistan and checked in at a hotel in Irbil, the regional capital.
The porter who showed me to my room bounded over to a television set at the foot of my bed and scanned the channels until he found one playing an English-language, kung fu fighting movie.
He then looked over at me and smiled politely as if to say: “I hope you feel more at home now that you can hear a bit of English.”
Well-meaning gestures and acts of kindness were something that I experienced every day while in the Kurdish north of Iraq.
From being invited to join a mountain barbeque after I interrupted the festivities by quizzing some of the guests on the risk of shelling in the area to being offered a boiled sweet from an impossibly poor family, the constant generosity made me wonder whether people in Britain would behave in the same way to a stranger.