Baghdad, Iraq
Ehab Alkuttab: "I was told that your future will be safe with us and nothing bad will happen to you."
Yaghdan Hameld: "We were very proud. We were showing off our badges. Look we are working with Americans we are working with this company we are working with that company."
Ehab Alkuttab: "Day after day we start to hear about people being shot and being slaughtered and being abducted for working for the U.S government."
Iraqi displacement total since 2003: 5 million
Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress: "Since 2003 nearly five million Iraqis have been displaced by the conflict. For many Americans the Iraq war is fading from the headlines. We don't hear about it in the news but for these five million Iraqis, of those, thirty thousand to about a hundred thousand work with the United States. We call them U.S. affiliated Iraqis."
George Packer, staff writer, The New Yorker: "We promised them something as individuals. There was an implicit bargain. You come to work with us we'll take care of you. You run these risks for us we'll watch out for you."
Kirk Johnson, Executive Director, The UST Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies: "We have a moral and urgent obligation to help those Iraqis who are in danger because they helped us"
Ehab Alkuttab: "His brother is abducted. They don't know anything about him. Eight months ago he was abducted. His father was killed in Iraq two months ago. A week ago he received a telephone call that they abducted his uncle."
George Packer: "These are Iraqis who sat with Americans, with American supervisors and helped us try to rebuild Iraq or to try to pacify Iraq. They're marked. They might as well have the letters USA branded on their forehead."
Yaghdan Hameld: "This time it was personal. They notice me, they identify me, they give me a threat."
Brian Katulis: "It's a small country. People know each others' business. It's very hard to hide your story. These Iraqis have had to lead double lives for years now but sooner or later it's bound to come out."
Ehab Alkuttab: "My father he was like 'What have you done to us? What have you done to your family? Look what have you done to us. Now we are all in danger. Now we have to leave this house because of you.'"
Brian Katulis: "To this day these individuals have not received the attention that they deserve."
George Packer: "We ask them to leave the country they're currently in, Iraq, where we have the largest embassy in the world, to become refugees."
Natalie Ondiak, research associate, Center for American Progress: "This process is taking far too long. It takes sometimes six months to two years for Iraqis to make it through the red tape."
Ehab Alkuttab: "This is what happened to me or to the majority of Iraqi people running away from their country. And fleeing. OK welcome to my embassy guys where I'm going to receive my passport today. See I am now an important person. Red Cross this is an international community all around the world. They're getting me out. You know they do that for prisoners of war and hostages. So I have been a hostage and they're going to take me. They're going to take me away. They're going to bring me home, back home. Yeah, that's now my home. Wow."
Natalie Ondiak: "We at the Center for American Progress realize that the paperwork and the bureaucracy are very very important for protecting the United States, however people should not be left to die while they're waiting for their papers to be processed and this is too often the case."
Ehab Alkuttab: "I know that a lot of Americans might not understand how they were born in America. They'll never understand. And probably one day my grandchildren they'll never understand what happened. They'll think that it was just ... they were so lucky God chose them to be born in America. Now I understand that no American should feel that it's just by luck, or by coincidence he was there. There was a story behind him."
Ehab's story is unique, but these stories are far too rare. The United States needs to reexamine its approach to U.S. affiliated Iraqis.