Posted on 12/30/2020 2:18:01 AM PST by xomething
"I am frightened. You can feel the threat. At any time, someone will hit the door of my house and shoot five bullets," Ali says. "One bullet for me, one bullet for my wife and three bullets for my three daughters."
Ali (not his real name) is terrified that Iraqi militiamen will target him and his family because he worked for the British army as an interpreter.
He knew it would be dangerous work, but he says he was happy to do it out of a sense of patriotism.
But when the US assassinated top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, as well as a senior Iraqi militia leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Ali's work suddenly became far more dangerous. He no longer works for the coalition forces, and feels abandoned to his fate by the British, as they withdraw from Iraq.
I meet Ali and his colleague Ahmed (also not his real name) in the safety of a hotel in Baghdad, on the condition of anonymity.
They look frightened.
"We didn't know where to go or who to turn to. We have come to the BBC and all we want is that the British people and the UK government hear our voices, our story," Ali says.
When they began to work with the British army in Iraq two years ago, they say they were told that they were now members of one big family. That was enough for them to feel a deep commitment to their foreign partners.
They were part of a group of eight interpreters who worked with the British special forces that had come to Iraq under the US-led international coalition against the Islamic State (IS) group.
The UK's Ministry of Defence says that over a six-year period, British troops helped train more than 120,000...
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Blames everything on the U.S. for daring to fight.
I had an Uber driver once who had recently come to the United States from Afghanistan. I was wondering how he could get a Visa to come here, The only work he was doing was Uber. He spoke Farsi. Apparently he had served many years as a translator for the US military. Eventually, it became a dangerous job, because there were people who wanted to kill him for helping the US military. So he had a special type of Visa, so he could come here and work.
Plenty of natives who worked for colonial administrations were hung out to dry when the colonizer withdrew; when Portugal withdrew from Guinea-Bissau 7,500 blacks who fought for them were executed (after independence). The Harkis (Algerians who served in the French army when it was a colony) faced reprisals as well.
We owe them...
When I hiked the Appalachian Trail a while back I came across an Asian gentleman at a campsite who sat alone and separate from the other campers. I went over and struck up a conversation with him. Turns out, he was in that picture on the roof. He told me some amazing stories about his family escaping Vietnam in the last days. On that particular day, his brother — who was a Vietnamese pilot — went out on a mission and told his family he would be joining them at the embassy for their departure. He never came back, and they never saw him again.
Amazing bit of history. I cringe when I think of the loyal folks the US has left behind...but I’m glad some have been brought to America.
Right - and for the Hmong in Laos it came even faster (the South Vietnamese had two years after we left).
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