by Hannah Barczyk

Iraq is unraveling.  Cities and towns are falling to the da’ash – the Islamic State of Iraq the Levant – almost daily, uprooting more than a million Iraqis.  The List Project has received scores of new requests for help from Iraqis seeking to flee the country.  The Embassy in Baghdad has evacuated its refugee program staff, meaning that the process – already glacial in its pace – is now frozen.

For more, please read our new op-ed out in today’s New York Times, with an update on the situation and our efforts.

Congress acted.  In passing the Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act with bi-partisan support, the legislative branch articulated a moral obligation to our Iraqi allies, an obligation they decided to honor by creating 25,000 Special Immigrant Visas specifically for U.S.-affiliated Iraqis.

In my book, I wrote about the unbridled joy I felt the day the bill passed.  A handful of us that had worked on the bill were patched through to Kennedy’s cell phone while he was on the Senate floor in the moments after passage.  I couldn’t believe it: America had confronted a problem, and the thousand Iraqis then on my list would be safe within a year.

5 years have passed since that day.  This coming Monday, the Special Immigrant Visa program will shut down, taking with it over 15,000 visas that were never given out, due to the incompetence and apathy within the Departments of State and Homeland Security, and within the White House.  Iraqis have been assassinated while waiting for an interview with a yawning federal refugee bureaucracy.

Next year will see the expiration of the Afghan Allies Protection Act, intended for U.S.-affiliated Afghans, taking with it a similar percentage of unallocated visas.

We should be ashamed.

Over the course of this year, the List Project, IRAP, and many other refugee organizations have been pushing for a re-authorization of this program.  We called Congressional staffers.  We wrote pieces.  We worked with journalists to raise awareness.  Each success came with an asterisk.  A 5-year renewal was included in the Senate’s Comprehensive Immigration Reform, which will go nowhere in the House.  A 1-year renewal is included in the Defense Authorization Act, which won’t be passed before the expiration of the program.

It is difficult to describe the magnitude of effort required just to keep this sinking ship of a program from going down entirely.   Even if it is re-authorized, belatedly, it would take something like 15 years to give out the remaining visas.

We are still receiving a steady stream of requests for help from Iraqis who are languishing in a system that seems designed to reject them.  Afghans are now writing in greater numbers.

We oftentimes are asked what normal American citizens can do to help out in this cause.  Today, there is a clear answer: please write to your Congressman and tell them not to let the SIV program for our Iraqi allies expire.

-Kirk W. Johnson

As you’ll see, “Omar” desperately tried to get someone within our refugee bureaucracy to pay attention to his increasingly fraught situation: he had received death threats from a militant organization that knew of his work as a forklift operator at an American military base.  Despite the fact that the war had ended and U.S. forces had departed, he was hunted throughout his hometown as he waited for some kind of help from the U.S. government.

Mayer Brown LLP, the List Project’s partnering law firm, has worked tirelessly on this case: since the airing of the This American Life episode, we received word that Omar’s widow and young son were finally approved for travel to America.  Our work to help the surviving members of his extended family continues, though.

To view the timeline of Omar’s emails, click here.

They will also unveil a web complement that we will link to when it goes public, in which you will be able to navigate the fateful correspondence between ‘Omar’ (one of the Iraqis whose story is recounted in the book) and the State Department.

Click here to stream the episode or find out a broadcast time on your local NPR station.

The List Project has been busy this week, though, as we reflect on the legacy of the past decade: millions of refugees, over 100,000 dead Iraqis, nearly 4,500 dead Americans, and an unknown number of wounded.  In discussing the plight of the Iraqis who stepped forward to help the U.S.,

• Last Saturday, a close friend of the List Project’s and one of the first names on the list appeared on NPR’s Weekend Edition.
• On Sunday, List Project Deputy Director Basma Zaiber appeared on MSNBC’s Up With Chris Hayes to discuss the war.
• On Monday, we debated #’s with a State Department official on KCRW’s To the Point with Warren Olney.
• On Tuesday, NPR’s Lourdes Garcia-Navarro profiled a U.S.-affiliated Iraqi for All Things Considered.

Today, the Wall Street Journal has an op-ed by Kirk W. Johnson about the fate of the Special Immigrant Visa program, as it applies to both Iraqis and Afghans who worked for the U.S.  (note: article is behind a WSJ paywall, so pick up a print edition if you’re not a subscriber).

A quick look at the numbers, drawing from data posted by the State Department at www.wrapsnet.org

The List Project was founded nearly six years ago to protect these brave and endangered Iraqis, who were branded as traitors by their countrymen.  Many were assassinated, kidnapped, tortured, and forced out of their country.  When the civil war erupted in 2006, millions of Iraqis fled, but few countries wanted to offer them asylum.

In 2007, the  List Project worked with Senator Kennedy, who led a bi-partisan coalition of Senators in passing the Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act.  Among the many intended products of that legislation was the Special Immigrant Visa, created specifically for Iraqis and Afghans working for the United States.  It opened up an astonishing 25,000 visa slots, to be allocated at 5,000/year to Iraqi interpreters.  The day that the legislation passed, we at the List Project naïvely thought that our mission to protect the thousands of Iraqis on our list would be completed within a year.

How wrong we were.  2013 will not only witness the 10-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, but the 5-year expiration of the SIV program.  Of the 25,000 visas promised, only about 5,500 were granted, a success rate of about 20%.  Unless it is reauthorized, the remaining slots will disappear.

As of December, the List Project has learned that there is a backlog of at least 1,500 Iraqi SIV cases – meaning several thousand Iraqis who wait for some sign of life in the bureaucracies.

This is not an abstract policy debate.  Even in the post-war Iraq, the Iraqis upon whom we relied are in great danger.  The List Project continues to receive a steady stream of applications from Iraqis, who continue to receive death threats and escape assassination attempts.  Last month, a former Iraqi employee of USAID narrowly avoided assassination by fleeing from gunman who were trailing his car.  Just two weeks ago, an Iraqi received this death threat, which included a round from a Kalashnikov – a familiar tactic.  But unless their case is expedited, they could be looking at a wait of two years before they find safety.  This is how the world’s only superpower repays them for their service: with a promise on paper, strangled by red tape.

On March 5th of this year, several members of Congress signed onto a letter to President Obama urging him not to forget these Iraqis.  They also called attention to the thousands of Afghans who served alongside our troops.  If the Iraqi SIV program has been a failure, the Afghan program is even worse.  As the United States accelerates its plans for withdrawal, these Afghans will almost certainly be left behind.  Over the past 12 months, there has been an average of only 20 Afghan cases cleared each month: several of those months saw zero or only 1 case cleared.  We can expect the backlog of cases, around thousands of individuals long, to grow as more and more bases are shuttered throughout Afghanistan.

Some members of Congress are currently circulating draft legislation that would reauthorize these programs, a commendable step.  But if the past six years have taught us anything, it is this: unless the President prioritizes this, the Executive Branch agencies under the his authority will continue to flounder along.  Congress has routinely led on this issue, passing bills that are then rendered impotent by bureaucratic delay.  A simple reauthorization to the program is necessary, but we should not kid ourselves: if the pace at which SIVs have been granted holds, it will take more than a decade – 2023 – to issue the remaining visas.

It pays special attention to the case of one Iraqi who tried desperately to summon America’s help.  ‘M’ worked for the U.S. Army’s 501st Brigade Support Battalion and applied for a visa nearly a year before the end of the war.  But every letter he sent to the refugee resettlement bureaucracy was met with an auto-reply, asking for the name of his American employer.  Despite having sent numerous letters of commendation he’d received from bosses in U.S. Army, the bureaucracy doubted his service to our country.

When he finally submitted the email address of his American supervisor, who instantly verified his work and supported his visa application, M believed help was soon on the way.  He was in a bind: militias in his town knew who he was, had issued threats shortly after our withdrawal, and M was forced to shuttle between safehouses with his wife and 5-year-old son while they waited for the visa.

But when a long period of silence ensued, he wrote back to the refugee resettlement bureaucracy and asked for an update.  They sent him an auto-reply, asking for the name of his American supervisor, even though they had already communicated with and received verification months earlier.  M continued writing desperate letters in search of anything other than an auto-reply.  When he received a new death threat in the spring of 2012, he forwarded the letter to the U.S. Government, begging them to evacuate him to Jordan or Turkey.

In June of this year, six months after the withdrawal, he was found decapitated on a street not far from his home.  When his brother, who has also received a death threat on account of his relationship to M, wrote to the U.S. refugee bureaucracy through M’s email account to ask for help, he received an auto-reply asking for the name of an American supervisor who could verify M’s work.

The List Project is now trying to assist M’s widow, young son, and brother in their visa appeals, but our confidence in the bureaucracy to recognize an urgent situation is increasingly frayed.

Watch the op-doc:

In 2009, the Afghan Allies Protection Act passed, opening up an additional 1,500 Special Immigrant Visa slots for Afghans who had served as interpreters and other critical functions.

During Congressional hearings on the fate of Iraqi allies upon America’s withdrawal in July 2010, I noted that the State Department’s web page offering guidance & application instructions for Afghan interpreters was still “under construction,” a full year after the passage of the 2009 legislation.  While we have been principally concerned with protecting Iraqis on our list, it was clear that the Afghans would be facing a severe, if not worse fate.  Many have written to us for help over the years.

What I didn’t know then, was that in February of 2010, then-Ambassador in Kabul Karl Eikenberry cabled the State Department to ask them not to implement the Afghan Allies Protection Act.  Despite the fact that Congress had already expressed its intent to issue 1,500 visas each year, Eikenberry stressed that “This act could drain this country of our very best civilian and military partners: our Afghan employees…If we are not careful the SIV (Special Immigrant Visa) program will have a significant deleterious impact on staffing and morale, as well as undermining our overall mission in Afghanistan. Local staff are not easily replenished in a society at 28 percent literacy.”

The effect of the cable was immediate and lasting: the Special Immigrant Visa program, which has been dramatically under-implemented for our Iraqi allies, was effectively euthanized for the Afghans serving the United States.

And now, with the timetable for withdrawal established, the Washington Post reported last week that “[o]f the more than 5,700 Afghans who have applied for U.S. visas under a special program tailored for those who have supported the American war effort, just 32 have been approved, the State Department says, leaving the rest in limbo as foreign forces begin their withdrawal.”

All you have to do is pay a visit to the State Department’s Wrapsnet website, which posts the monthly numbers of visas.  For the current fiscal year, the monthly average of Special Immigrant Visas granted to Afghans is 4 per month.

While we continue to fight on behalf of the Iraqis who have been left behind, and who stare into a process that takes years to navigate, it is increasingly clear that U.S.-affiliated Afghans have a grim future….

-Kirk W. Johnson

           Mr. M, a73-year old Iraqi man suffering from Alzheimer’s, is one of those people whose cases have been pending for years with the IOM. Mr. M applied to the IOM a couple of years ago. All that he wanted was to come to the U.S. and be reunited with his son, S, who came almost a year ago. While waiting for his security clearance to be completed, Mr. M was attacked in his home by a gang of men. The men were looking for Mr. M’s son, but despite his desperate pleading, the gang bound his hands behind his back and beat, and kicked him with their shoes (the marks are clearly shown in the picture). Mr. M was left crying on his bedroom floor, where his son-in-law found him the next morning. After reaching out to the IOM and asking that Mr. M’s case be expedited, Mr. M was issued a travel date and arrived in the United States safely this month.

            Many thanks to the IOM team who worked hard to get this gentleman safely to the U.S. less than a month after we reached out to them. The big questions remain: What about those who can’t reach out to us? What about those who are losing their lives while waiting? Can’t you expedite the cases of those who write to you reporting a threat? Or do they have to survive the attack first? Not everyone is lucky enough to survive!

Tha List Project Team

Although large scale militant activity is on the rise and rightly garners the most media attention, it could be argued that there are few better gauges to indicate the level of renewed violence than those reports coming from Iraqis who worked with the United States. That they are again being so openly targeted points to either a reemergence of armed groups, many of whose members have been released or escaped from Iraq’s rampantly corrupt prisons, or from a sense of invincibility after ongoing attempts by Iraqi security forces to subdue the remaining violence throughout the country continue to fall flat.  Weekly, dozens upon dozens of supposed militants are apprehended, yet the bombings and killings persist.

At the same time militancy increases in Iraq, many who have left the country for another in the region while waiting for a third country to resettle them are being forced to return.  The reasons are varied.  Many simply cannot afford to live in these countries anymore.  An example of this would be Jordan, where many Iraqis cannot afford housing and cannot find work, and in most cases are not even acknowledged by the government.  In the case of Syria, the conflict there is growing ever more dysfunctional and taking on sectarian tones.  Iraqis who were welcomed to a degree by the state while Assad firmly held power are now distrusted, and even far away from the borders of Iraq, some Iraqis are under target once again.

A not so veiled threat anymore: "To the (American) client. Examine this. We will wash your faces and bodies in it." "It" is sulfuric acid.