Death and Taxes

by Eric Martin

Jim Henley looks at a picture of an Iraqi soldier wearing a mask that covers most of the face and takes note of the quality of "victory" in Iraq:

It’s 2009. Iraqi soldiers still wear masks to hide their identities. From other Iraqis.

Actually, it's worse than that.  Those Iraqis that have worked with the US during the course of the occupation are now voicing fears that their lives could be in jeopardy if...their government learns their identities.  Spencer Ackerman explains:

In the United States, it would be a mundane tax form, with standard provisions for cataloging an employee’s tax obligations. Full name. Citizen ID number. Address. Phone. Specifications about any children.

But Form D/4a from the Iraqi Ministry of Finance is sending waves of anxiety through the community of Iraqis who work as linguists, translators and interpreters for the U.S. military in Iraq. For the “terps,” as many U.S. troops and diplomats call them, the form is a prelude to a disaster. Unless their identities are kept a closely guarded secret, they fear, they and their families will be hunted by insurgents, militias and death squads — many of whom are tied to or work for the Iraqi government — for collaborating with the U.S. military.

Several weeks ago, Global Linguist Solutions (GLS), the company that holds the contract with the U.S. military to provide translators, entered into negotiations with the Iraqi government about what their new obligations are for withholding employee taxes once the U.S.-Iraqi Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) — which, among other things, gives the Iraqi government increased authority over U.S. contractors — goes into effect. The company said emphatically that it has no intention of turning over identifying information for its roughly 7,000 Iraqi employees. “We’re not providing any personal identification information,” said company spokesman Douglas Ebner. “We have not done so up to now, and we’re not going to change.”

But many of these contractors don’t trust GLS to keep its word. Some are considering fleeing Iraq entirely, raising the prospect of U.S. service members losing their ability to talk and listen to Iraqis. “We either quit,” said Garrison, the pseudonym of an Iraqi interpreter, in an email, “or sign our own death warrants by turning the information [over] to the ministry.”

Terps go to extremes to safeguard their identities...When leaving U.S. bases to accompany troops on missions, it’s common for them to wear ski masks and wraparound sunglasses in the burning Iraqi heat, their hands covered in flame-retardant gloves so as not to leave behind so much as a fingerprint. Some don’t tell their families how they earn a living; others actually live on U.S. bases.

And for good reason: those who help the U.S. in Iraq are targets for insurgents, as are their families...

“There’s no future for us here,” a translator calling himself Big King Paul told me in Baghdad’s Khadimiya neighborhood in March 2007. “The terrorists know us. We can’t live in this country.”

In several cases, the terrorists are within the Iraqi government itself. Insurgents and militia members have infiltrated the ranks of the Iraqi police, and to a lesser extent, the Iraqi army — a systemic problem that retired Marine Gen. Jim Jones, now President Obama’s national security adviser, identified in an influential 2007 report. Many political parties in Iraq, including aspects of the Shiite-dominated governing coalition, possess their own militias. And there remains a thriving kidnapping market in Iraq, creating a temptation among Finance Ministry bureaucrats to earn extra money by turning over case files on GLS employees to terrorists and criminals.

“Everyone knows the Iraqi police and all Iraqi security forces are either corrupt or [have] got something to do with militias or terrorist or insurgents,” said another Iraqi interpreter in an email.

Indeed, the very finance ministry that seeks employee identification information is run by a man named Bayan Jabr, who has ties to the Badr Corps militia affiliated with one of the major Shiite political parties, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council. In fall 2005, Jabr served as interior minister when U.S. forces discoveredthat the basement of the interior ministry was used as a torture chamber for Sunnis by Iraqi police officers. At the time, Jabr defended himself by saying, “Nobody was beheaded or killed.”

It's 2009.  Iraqi interpreters still want to hide their identities.  From the Iraqi government.

Comments

[Ugh]

It's 2009. Iraqi interpreters still want to hide their identities. From the Iraqi government.

If the Iraq war were a child, it would be in the first grade.

[Ugh]

There are college students who were in junior high school when we invaded Iraq.

[Gary Farber]

We defeated the worldwide Axis powers in four years, two thirds of the time the Iraq war has been running.

At least Iraqi oil revenues were able to pay all our costs. And most Iraqis are thankful.

As if.

[Ugh]

Jeebus, thinking more about this. In March 2003, I was unmarried, living in Boston, didn't have a job and didn't own a home. Both my Grandfathers were still alive. My sister was living in Utah and my brother in Texas, both unmarried, childless, and non-homeowners. My parents still owned the house I grew up in.

Now? I'm happily married, own a home, on my second law firm, and living in DC. Both my grandfathers have passed away (as has my wife's last grandparent). My brother and sister have gotten married, bought homes, and my sister has a child and is ~2 months away from her second; he moved to Utah and she moved back to Iowa. My parents sold my childhood home and are now living their second condo after the first didn't take.

But we're still in fncking Iraq.

[cinco]

Why are you still harping on about this? Don't you remember - Mission Accomplished!

[Gary Farber]

Now, now, six years later, Bush admitted "Mission Accomplished" was a mistake, so that's okay, then.

[bedtimeforbonzo]

Thanks for the clarification, Eric.

That being the case, if I were the Eagles, I'd offer CB Sheldon Brown -- Lito Sheppard's stock is way down, and we have a very good young corner to replace Brown -- and I figure the Cardinals have Breaston to replace Boldin.

[bedtimeforbonzo]

Ugh: That really does put things into a time-narrative perspective.

(lj: I just emailed you and hilzoy on my latest URL misadventure, which, thank God, I seem to have fixed.)

[cleek]

There are college students who were in junior high school when we invaded Iraq.

and they love America more than anything else in the whole world. the same way a generation of Americans would love an invader.

[KCinDC]

You're depressing me, Ugh. For me, 2003 was just yesterday, and my life is shockingly unchanged since (not that I want any deaths to bring variety). I think I was in a quagmire the entire Bush administration. Well, I did become more politically involved.

[spockamok]

Not that this accusation will stop people from going after people who worked with the U.S., but alot of the killers themselves will be hypocrites. Many of them made their own compromises with the U.S., took advantage of the invasion to enhance their power, and otherwise did not act as unequivocal resisters.

So, the killers will rationalize what they do to the less well-connected, less well-protected "collaborators" as some form of patriotic justice. But it will be largely arbitrary bullshit.

It's actually some of this stuff done against people under the name, "punishing collaborators" (Kuwaitis saying "get out you Palestinian collaborators" after their liberation for instance) as an independent category, that's made me thing it's really important to be careful with that explosive charge. Looking back, probably some people who collaborated with the Nazis and who got hit with patriotic revenge after the war probably were not any more unsympathetic than these interpreters. It's a big waste of human resources, and a chance for sadism and blackmail, when patriotism is used to make "collaboration" a crime independent of other more serious crimes.