Marine's Bid to Pierce Refugee Logjam

A Quest to Repay An Iraqi Interpreter And Father Figure

Days after fleeing Baghdad, and after his relatives had been gunned down and burned in their cars for collaborating with U.S. forces or their allies, Khalid Abood al-Khafajee reached Amman, Jordan, in December. There the Iraqi translator and his family joined thousands of refugees hoping for passage to Western Europe or the United States.

His odds weren't good. About 2 million refugees have poured out of Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003, yet only a trickle have managed to make it out of the Middle East. And the 60-year-old Abood was also seeking a way out for his wife, Batool, 59, and their two daughters, Nadia, 29, and Shaimaa, 23.

But Abood, a translator for Marines and for NATO forces in Iraq since 2003, had one advantage: More than 6,000 miles away, in Wrightsville Beach, N.C., a young Marine was working to bring the translator and his family to the United States.

Putting out dozens of calls and e-mails every day, Capt. Zachary Iscol, an Iraq veteran, spent months trying to unclog the bureaucratic pipeline between Jordan and the United States. Iscol's effort would culminate on Capitol Hill, where he would stand before a Senate panel and make an impassioned plea for his friend and former translator, plucking Abood's case out of a sea of names and faces.

Iscol explained how Abood had helped keep him and his men alive, translating for him in tense meetings with clerics and during bloody battles in Fallujah in 2004, when Iscol was 25. He was determined, he said, to repay the silver-haired translator who had become a father figure for him.

"I feel that I was able to bring 30 Marines back to their families alive," Iscol said. "Some of them may have been pretty beat-up, but they were alive. And that was down to Abood. I don't know how I could repay him for that. I'll be indebted to him for the rest of my life."

Under fire from Congress over its aid to Iraqis who have assisted U.S. forces, the State Department said in February that it would streamline its refugee program and resettle 7,000 Iraqis in the United States by the end of the fiscal year in September. State Department officials have since lowered the goal to 2,000. But figures released Friday revealed that 700 Iraqi refugees reached the United States over the past 11 months, leaving the department 1,300 short of its goal with one month left.

Abood and Iscol's unlikely partnership began in July 2004 in Nasr Wa Salam, a poor Shiite city near Fallujah. Iscol, then a second lieutenant, commanded patrols through a near-derelict territory littered with roadside bombs.

Iscol relied on Abood to interpret culture as much as words, the Marine said. Abood told him to avoid eating with his left hand and cautioned against showing his feet during meals -- breaches of etiquette in Iraq. Often, Iscol said, Abood would essentially take over meetings with local figures. "Respect really comes with age over there," Iscol said. "I was a 20-year-old kid. He was a 55-year-old guy with a white moustache."

Striking pacts with groups in the city, Abood helped keep Iscol's men from becoming targets, the Marine said. At least a dozen times, Iscol's platoon drove past roadside bombs that detonated seconds later, he said, as another convoy passed. Iscol is convinced this was because Abood forged ties with local factions, who in turn afforded Iscol's Marines special treatment. By the end of intense combat to take Fallujah, only one member of Iscol's platoon had been killed.

"The secret of counterinsurgency is you can't win it with bullets and grenades," Iscol said. "It's about forging relationships. . . . I needed Abood for that."

Abood tried to ease the pressure on the young Marine. "When I saw him sitting alone at night, I would go to him and talk about the stars," Abood said. "And [I told] jokes about the meetings [with] the sheiks and the imams."