Cover Story: From Baghdad to Doraville

Ahmad Ali wants no part of Iraq’s sectarian war. Raised in a mixed neighborhood in Baghdad, Ali didn’t even know he was a Sunni Muslim until he was 18 years old. He didn’t know what the words Sunni or Shiite meant. In his mind he was, and is, simply a Muslim and an Iraqi who, despite the war that has torn his country apart, wants only to live in peace with his neighbors.

For now, his wish has been granted. Sort of. He lives at peace with his neighbors. Only his neighborhood is no longer in Baghdad. It’s in Doraville.

Ali left Iraq in 2006 with his wife and two children. As hard as he tried to avoid the country’s sectarian bloodbath, the war kept finding him. Rather than fight or die, he fled.

Ali and his family are just four of the more than 4 million Iraqis forced from their homes by the chaos and brutality that followed the March 2003 U.S. invasion.

The Iraqi refugee crisis is one of the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophes. In this century, only the genocide in Darfur has sent nearly as many innocent civilians running for their lives.

Yet despite our government’s oft-expressed concern about the welfare and safety of Iraqi people, the United States has turned its back on the Iraqi refugee crisis. The United States gave refuge to just 1,608 Iraqis last year, 43 of whom now live in Georgia. By contrast, Sweden, a country of 9 million people that played no part in the invasion, has accepted 31,300 Iraqis since March 2003.

Relative to other Iraqi refugees, Ahmad Ali and his family got lucky. Stranded in Syria without work along with more than 1.5 million other Iraqi refugees, the United States granted the Ali family asylum in December. He only got into the United States, he believes, through the recommendation of friends he made during his career as a journalist and English-Arabic interpreter for various Western news outlets in Iraq.

Ali spoke to Creative Loafing over a two-week period. He discussed his youth, his initial enthusiasm for Saddam’s overthrow, his disappointment at the U.S. occupation and the violence that forced him to become a refugee.

Ahmad Ali is a pseudonym. To protect members of his family who are still in Iraq from reprisals, Creative Loafing agreed to change his name and omit some details that may help identify him, including photographs. Ali believes at least four people, including members of his family, have already been killed as retaliation for his association with the Western media.

CL has read Ali’s journalism and spoken to two of his former colleagues at a Western news organization, who confirmed his relationship with them.

Ali was brought up in a middle-class neighborhood in the south of Baghdad. The majority of the neighborhood was Shiite Muslim, but Ali’s family is Sunni Muslim – one of many Sunni families in the area.

To be very honest to you, I didn’t know I was a Sunni and my best friend was a Shiite. Both of us didn’t know about being Sunni or Shiite until we reached 18 years. It’s a funny story.

In Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s rule, the law says when you reach 18 you have to join the army. If you were studying, what you need is to get a letter from the school or the college and give it to the recruitment center. They process your papers in order to say that you don’t have to join the army until you finish your studies.

The man who was supposed to get me the letter was stealing my money. I was bribing him because the office was very crowded. I was patient with him for one week, then I got mad and hit him. They took me to a police officer. He did ask me whether I was Sunni or Shiite. I didn’t know what it means.

I went back to my best friend and asked him. He said, “What? What does this mean, Sunni or Shiite?” We went to his mother and we did ask her about it. I told her the story, and she said, “I’m not gonna answer you. Leave this. It’s not serious.” At that time we realized I am Sunni and he is Shiite.

My parents never made a distinction. If they did, I would know I was Sunni. My brother got married to a Shiite woman. His son, who was kidnapped after the U.S. invasion, also got married to a Shiite.

To be honest, my family is not very religious. I think I can call them modern, conservative Muslim. They’re not very religious. But they stick to Islam’s rules.

In August 1990, Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait. Iraq withdrew after the U.S.-led Gulf War the following year.

I was a student when the Gulf War started. I was with friends. We were eating lunch. It was chicken. We could hear through the radio that the Iraqi army entered Kuwait. Everybody got mad. I was against the Kuwaiti royal family but that doesn’t mean you should go to Kuwait. They are Muslims. It is prohibited in Islam that you should invade your neighbor.

I was stunned by the invasion. But I didn’t like the Americans’ way of dealing with it – bombing and killing innocent people because of Saddam. Always I am against war and violence.

In the mid-1990s, Iraq’s economy was devastated by a U.N. economic embargo that remained in effect until the U.S. invasion in 2003. During this time, Ali began work as an interpreter for tourists and, eventually, foreign journalists. He had learned English as a child by reading newspapers.

There was a newspaper in Iraq published in Arabic and English. I would read the Arabic version and compare it to the English. London is my dream city. I don’t know why. My father was going to London from time to time. He told me how clean it is, how well-organized it is, how English people are punctual.

After the war I worked at a hotel. I was helping foreigners hire taxis and translate for taxi drivers. I was working very hard. The embargo made lives very difficult for everybody. My father was able to work, but it wasn’t enough money. We were getting poor after we’d been rich. Life was paralyzed. The embargo was killing Iraqis, not the government.

In 2003, I started working directly with Western journalists. A driver for a Western broadcaster came to me and said, “I need your help to translate.” I was working illegally. During Saddam’s time, you needed to have permission to help journalists. But it was really chaos in Iraq because the war was coming. The government was busy preparing themselves.

It was only after he became a working adult with access to outside media that Ali began to understand the extent of Saddam Hussein’s brutality and the motives for wars he started or helped provoke between 1980 and his overthrow.

At that time, it was complicated. We didn’t understand everything about Saddam. Everybody agrees that Saddam was part of the CIA and he was getting support from the American government undercover. Everybody remembers when Rumsfeld shake hands with Saddam at his palace in 1983, as an envoy of the Reagan administration. He was motivated by the Americans to stop the Iranian Islamic Revolution. Because he was crazy, he did it.

I didn’t know about Halabja the 1988 gassing of Kurds by Saddam’s forces until the 1990s. The newspapers we had at the time were from the government. They praised the government. Iraqis almost made Saddam God on Earth.

Saddam was a disaster. He was mad. My opinion was that he should be overthrown. By Americans or by Iraqi people, I didn’t care who. I was dreaming of traveling freely, or criticizing the government.

In February 2003, Ali’s friends in the Western press had convinced him a U.S. invasion was inevitable. He warned his family, but they didn’t believe it would be an invasion. They expected it would be like 1991 or 1998, when the United States bombed but did not invade.

I was telling my relatives, my family that the United States is going to overthrow Saddam but they couldn’t believe it. They said, “Oh, you’re always making very little things very serious.”

I took with me a Western news correspondent he worked with to my house. He was begging my parents to move because we were living close to a military base, which everybody knew would be bombed. He was begging, but they wouldn’t listen.

U.S. forces invaded Iraq March 20, 2003, and rolled into Baghdad without strong opposition. Ali’s family survived the invasion. He thought things would quickly get better; his father believed otherwise.

My father was saying that when Saddam is overthrown we Sunnis will suffer a lot. I was arguing with my father. “Why? Why do you believe so? We’ve been living here among Shiites and they are friends to us. They are brothers. We support each other.”

He said, “I’m not talking about innocent people. I’m talking about the leaders. The stupid clerics. Where are they gonna come from? Iran.” He was right, I’m afraid to say.

I was telling my friends that we’re gonna live a nice life. After nine or 10 months, I realized the Americans had no idea what they were going to do. They made the enemies of the Iraqi people by stupid things.

The biggest mistake was disbanding the Iraqi army. Four hundred thousand men suddenly had no job. Four hundred thousand families were starving. When you have kids starving, you will do anything to feed them – join the militias, and excuse my language, join fucking al-Qaeda.

One year, the Iraqis were waiting for the Americans for something to be done – electricity, water, rebuilding. Iraqis saw nothing.

I was dreaming of getting rid of Saddam, but now if you ask me, I would rather live under his dictatorship. At least he was able to provide security. When my first child was born before the U.S. invasion, I was able to take her mom to the hospital. When my second child was born, you have to plan the drive four days in advance – not to be driving under curfew – otherwise you’re going to be killed by the Americans or the Iraqi police.

In 2003 after the collapse of Saddam’s government, Ali began to work for a major European newspaper – first as an interpreter and office manager, then as a bylined correspondent using a pseudonym. He reported from areas that Western reporters could not safely visit. It was during this period that Ali became a target – first because he was Sunni, but eventually for his reporting.

If you ride in the wrong time in the area, then you will be killed. The police are full of members of the Shiite political parties. When you get stopped by the checkpoint, they will ask you for your ID. If you are Sunni and you got stopped by Shiite, you’re going to be killed. And vice versa. Two of my cousins were killed because they were Sunnis.

My friend who is Sunni got stopped at a Sunni checkpoint. He had a fake Shiite ID. For $10, you can get a fake citizenship card. He got treated very badly until they were totally convinced he was a Sunni. It’s really scary. If it’s your day to be dead, then that’s it.

In 2006, Ali says he was threatened in-person by a member of the government over a story that was published by the European newspaper he worked for. Even though Ali didn’t write the story, it was perceived as critical of the government and he was viewed as a representative of the paper. Shortly afterward, he says, Shiite militias began to hunt him personally.

I couldn’t believe it. I called the government official back. He said, “Yeah, there is democracy in Iraq, but you need to be really careful.”

The insurgents came to my house, so I moved very far away and rented a room. I was pretending to be a taxi driver; I could not say I was a journalist or translator.

Again they came to my house and they killed the son of the owner of the house on my doorstep. It happened in July. I went back to my parents’ house, and moved my wife and kids to Syria.

Ali left his family in Damascus, Syria, and returned to Baghdad to work. He was covering Saddam Hussein’s trial in September 2006 when his wife’s brother was kidnapped by insurgents.

I received a call from my family saying they couldn’t get through to him. A week after, I got a call from the kidnappers from my brother-in-law’s mobile phone.

I wanted to introduce myself to the person talking on the phone, but he knew my name. I told him we would sell everything we have to pay ransom, but he said they didn’t want money. I told him it’s not my brother-in-law’s fault I work with the press, but he cut off the line.

We didn’t find his body yet.

I had already lost two cousins. When I lost my brother-in-law, that is why I decided to leave. I said to myself, excuse my language, Iraq is fucked up, that’s it.

During the trial, Ali fled to Damascus for safety. Saddam Hussein was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was hanged in December 2006.

He means nothing to me. The trial was all a joke and theater, to be honest. The decision had already been taken that he would be executed. It was a big shame for Iraqis. It was the first day of Eid al-Adha an important Muslim holiday. According to Islam, you’re not allowed to kill anybody on the first day of Eid. It was a big insult for all Muslims in general and all Iraqis in specific. They could have put it off for two or three days, and not published the video.

After his brother-in-law’s kidnapping, Ali rejoined his family in Syria. Syria’s government doesn’t allow Iraqis to work, so he quickly depleted his savings. With the help of American and European journalists he’d worked with, Ali and his family were allowed to move to the United States legally as refugees. He moved to Doraville in December.

I was highly recommended to come to the U.S., but it took more than a year. The process is very slow. They have a right, to be honest. They don’t know who I am. It’s true I am working for the press, but maybe I have a different ideology.

The expectation of Iraqis in the U.S. is very high. They do believe they are going to be rich. The reality is that life is difficult. It’s not cheap and the economy is hard. If you work hard then you will succeed. America is the land of opportunities.

Atlanta is a big city. Everything is huge. And people, the majority are very nice. They don’t care whether you’re Arab or Asian. But it’s not the city I was dreaming of. I didn’t dream I would be living in America as a refugee.

Ali and his family live in an aging townhouse located for them by the International Rescue Committee, a group that assists refugees with resettlement. The IRC pays or assists with rent for up to six months. The Alis don’t have much furniture, just some chairs and an old love seat. The family brought photos and keepsakes from Syria, but little else.

Unable to find work close to home, he took a temporary job at the end of January with the U.S. Army at Fort Stewart near Savannah. He helps train U.S. soldiers to understand Iraqi culture.

I didn’t have any other financial resources, so I took the job with the Army. I wasn’t convinced it was a good idea, but when I started working I realized it’s very important. I can teach soldiers how to treat people in Iraq and keep them safe. When they understand the values or the culture, everything will be OK for both sides.

During an exercise on the base two male soldiers were about to search two women. I ran quickly to them and said if you do this in front of an Iraqi male, you get killed. When you’re shot, your people will shoot Iraqis.

I feel I am doing the right thing. As I could see before in Iraq, little mistakes from U.S. soldiers would lead to death for both sides. I’m serving my country.

Ali would like to bring his parents to the United States, but cannot. To have a chance at claiming refugee status, his parents would have to leave Iraq and stay in Syria for nearly as long as he did. He cannot afford to support them in Syria, however.

I feel very sorry because now I can do nothing for my parents. I hate to remember this. They were depending on me financially. I was looking after them. Sometimes I feel very guilty. Every time I call them up, my mother cries.

Sometimes in my bed, I question myself – whether I’ve done the right or the wrong thing. I don’t know how they’re living. I don’t want to ask them because if they answer me, I’ll be getting crazy very easily.

I think Iraq needs 10 years in order to be revived again. When it is secure, when you can drive without being stopped by fake checkpoints or militia, and when you can sleep safely in your home, I’ll go back to Iraq.