Hit men target Iraqis working for Americans
Toolbox
By SABRINA TAVERNISE The New York Times - Published: September 19, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq — One by one, they are dying. Gunned down on the highway on their way to work. Shot point blank in front of their homes. Cornered in their cars.
Iraqis who work on American military bases are on the front lines of a secret war being waged by the country's violent insurgency. The killings are highly personal. Gunmen come to the homes and neighborhoods of the employees — translators, cleaners, clothes washers and carpenters — and shoot, often from expensive cars with expensive guns.
The killings, less visible than the high-profile kidnappings but just as lethal, single out ordinary Iraqis and send a chilling message not to cooperate with the American occupation. They are crimes that the police, so overwhelmed with daily violence, rarely even bother to investigate. It is hard to say how many have died this way.
The American military does not release figures, nor do the American contractors that employ many of the workers. But in just the Dora neighborhood in southern Baghdad, based on figures from two local police stations as well as interviews with family members, between 12 and 14 workers have been killed since early August. Three of them died within the past 10 days.
Just as startling are the numbers of translators killed. Since January, about 52 have died in Baghdad, Fallujah and Ramadi, a person familiar with the death count said. More than 45 of the deaths were in Baghdad.
"There's been a spike in the last three months," said the person, who insisted on anonymity.
Even so, Iraqis continue to work for the Americans. Jobs are scarce, and interpreters can earn $400 to $500 a month, a healthy wage in Iraq. Even the $150 a month the laundry workers earn is much sought after.
The slayings have terrorized neighborhoods. In the Dora, a wave of killings began in June, when five people in a minivan riding to work at an American base were hit and killed by a mortar round. In another incident there, three washers were shot to death as they were negotiating a taxi ride to work in the morning.
"They were killed because they were working with the Americans," said Rima Yusef, a relative of a 21-year-old laundry woman who was one of the victims. Another of the victims, a 25-year-old named Dureid, was on his way to his first day of work as a clothes washer, his mother said.
"There are so many, so many," who have been killed, she said.
Translators, who are often out on patrols with American soldiers, face a particular risk, because of the highly public nature of their jobs. During the reporting for this article, for example, both the translator and the driver received death threats.
"It's getting really dangerous," said a translator named Waell, who left his job at Forward Operating Base Falcon in Dora last month, because of the mounting risk. His boss, he said, "meets Sheiks, imams and officials."
"I have to meet those people every day," he said. "I don't know who to trust."
Some do not even tell their own families where they are employed, to keep relatives from worrying. Ziad, a translator who works for the Ministry of Defense, said he tells his family that he works in a private company. His sister was forced to quit her job at the American-run Baghdad airport, when their mother discovered she was working there.
Families of the victims are tormented by thoughts of who did the killing.
"Until now, I don't know why," said Muhammad, 59, an English teacher whose son Douraid worked for an American contractor and was shot to death in August in an upscale neighborhood in Baghdad. "That's what makes it terrifying."
Patterns in the killings provide a few clues. The gunmen are often well dressed and approach the victim while driving, victims' family members said. The car of choice is a BMW, Mercedes or Opal. The weapon is often a 9 mm MP5 submachine gun, which is easily hidden and commonly used on soft targets like hostages.
At Falcon, the biggest danger is the entrance to the base, workers said. Employees suspect that the gate is being watched, and a number of the shootings have taken place along the road leading up to it, a lonely stretch of highway that is the only access for Iraqi employees. A notebook with names and addresses of the base's interpreters was found in a car that was stopped along the road last year, said Waell, citing reports from the base.
"That highway, it's the place people get killed," said Layla, a 23-year-old translator whose brother, Keis, was shot to death on the road on Sept. 7 as he was driving home from his job at the Falcon base.
One wrong move on the road can be lethal. Waell's school friend Atimad, also a translator at the base, was killed when she decided to take a taxi after her uncle could not come to fetch her. Five men in a white Kia parked in front of the cab killed her, he said.
"They grabbed her out of the car, shot her and just left her there," Waell said. "No one could do anything about it."
In all, Waell counted five close friends at the base who had been shot and killed since May.
A sixth from a different base was shot and killed in front of his house on the night of Sept. 10, he said.
"We used to say, 'Oh God, you've got to be kidding,"' he said of his colleagues' reactions to the news that someone they know had been killed. "Now, we're used to it."
"When someone tells me my friend got killed," he added, "I'd just say he was a good guy. That's it. Nothing more."
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Translators expressed deep disappointment with the way the American military and their employer — the Titan Corp. — has handled the danger. Interpreters are referred to as "terps," and are replaced in a seemingly endless flow of manpower as soon as they are killed.
An American military spokesman said legal restrictions "do not allow us to pay compensation to Iraqi civilians who work on our base and are killed off base by criminals."
"We do everything we can to protect soldiers and innocent civilians working on our base," said the spokesman, Maj. Philip Smith of the 1st Cavalry Division.
A Titan spokesman said Friday that the company had no comment.
Layla said she begged American administrators at the American-run hospital in central Baghdad to admit her brother, who was still alive after being shot but whose condition was rapidly deteriorating because he was being treated in an ill-equipped Iraqi hospital.
She said she was told that she had to collect her brother's documents before he could be admitted. But there was not enough time, Layla said, and her brother died a short time later.
"I've been working for them for about a year and a half," she said. "I wasn't asking for a house, for a visa, for a trip abroad. I was just asking them to save a life.
"He works for the army washing soldiers' clothes, and they can't save a life."
In the case of Atimad, "she's just gone," said Waell, who described the attitude at the base as: "We can easily get another one. There are 3,600 of them."
"They say they care about you, but they don't," Waell said.
Layla said she would continue her translating job in the International Zone, a sprawling area in central Baghdad that is the base of the American administration here. She is looking for a room there, to avoid the high risk of having to travel in and out.
Her two brothers, however, quit their jobs with Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, last week.
Waell agreed.
"I'm not going anymore," he said. "I'm done."
"They keep calling every three or four days. I just want them to leave me alone."
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