from the Vilayet of Mosul:
Insignificant Pennsylvania politician 'Bryan Lentz' is for whatever reasons of his own, one by one, assisting with the transplant of Kurdistan and northern region Ismaeli who have aided the United States to relocation inside the United States; re:
http://articles.phil...mosul-residents
Beginning with 'translator' Safa Ismael
(110 Windsor Avenue
Upper Darby, Pennsylvania 19082),
soon followed by a number of other Northern Iraqi Ismaeli formerly with ties to the US Military during the Occupation:
Iraqi interpreter labeled a traitor, finds refuge in Philadelphia
June 15, 2010
By Joelle Farrell, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer
For nearly two years, as more and more Iraqis came to view U.S. soldiers not as saviors but as jackals, Safa Ismael showed up for work outside the concrete barricades surrounding the U.S. military base in Mosul. He didn't quit when fellow interpreters were executed in busy markets or shot dead in their homes. He didn't give up when he was chased through the city, when neighbors screamed "traitor" in his face, when insurgents put his name on a list of collaborators. Instead, Ismael bought a gun and slept with it under his pillow. And still, every day, he returned to the gates to translate for American soldiers building schools, wells, and a fledgling government for the northern city.
To the soldiers of the 416th Civil Affairs Battalion - among them a Philadelphia Municipal Court judge and an assistant district attorney in the city - he was a marvel. "That kid had a lot of guts," said Patrick Dugan, the judge. "Safa would keep coming back." When a car bomb nearly killed him, Ismael knew he had to leave Iraq for good. So he wound up in Philadelphia, through the efforts of Dugan and other soldiers with clout, including Bryan Lentz, a former assistant district attorney of Delaware County, and Jeffrey Voice, a US Army Lieutenant Colonel from Northeast Philadelphia. Ismael became the first person granted asylum in the United States under a revised law allowing for resettlement of Iraqi and Afghan interpreters. "It's something that we owed him," said Dugan, then a sergeant. "He protected us. He kept us alive. The least we could do was get him here and give him a fresh start." Only now, five years later and working in the Linguistic Data Consortium at the University of Pennsylvania, does Ismael, 30, feel safe enough to speak publicly.
He worries about his mother and eight siblings. A visit home is risky. "I'm sure terrorists will bring back their lists and say, 'This hasn't been checked off yet,' " Ismael said. "I don't want to bring trouble to my already troubled family." But Ismael has a family here as well. "If you could've seen the joy of the people who were meeting him at the airport, the tears," Dugan said. "It felt so good to see him here safe." When he landed in November 2005, Ismael, his forehead cut from the car bombing only weeks before, was stunned at the sight of seven men with whom he had served. "I didn't expect at any point in my life that I would see them all together . . . waiting for me," Ismael said. When troops invaded Iraq in March 2003, many Mosul residents embraced them. Ismael had no fear in approaching the U.S. military to offer his services as a translator. As a third-year college student majoring in English-Arabic translation and interpretation, he considered it a kind of internship. "I wanted to one day speak the language fluently, to one day not have to read the subtitles of movies," he said.
Ismael worked first with Marines and members of the 101st Airborne Division, whose interaction with Iraqi civilians was often at the end of a rifle. It wasn't until the 416th, an Army Reserve unit, arrived in January 2004 with a mission to win hearts and minds that Ismael found his niche. At 6-foot-3, he quickly attracted notice among the troops. He warned soldiers heading into dangerous neighborhoods. He explained history and political rifts. He agreed to translate, even in meetings with known insurgent collaborators, like the police chief of Mosul.
"We couldn't function without translators" in Iraq, said Pennsylvania State Representative Lentz, then an Army major who worked with Ismael nearly every day. "He wasn't trained as a CIA agent. He was a 20-something kid." In time, the soldiers trusted Ismael so much that they had him eavesdrop on other interpreters suspected of ties with insurgents, Voice said. In 2004, the government began to lose control as insurgents infiltrated the police and Iraqi army. Gunmen assassinated a governor working with the soldiers. Insurgents abducted an Iraqi who worked closely with Lentz and executed the man in a busy marketplace.
Friends warned Ismael that his name had been written on a list of "traitors" posted on a mosque door. He began taking multiple cabs to the base after he was chased in his car leaving work. He ran a red light and crashed in a traffic circle, causing a scene that scared off his pursuers.With his perseverance came a grim realization: It was too late to turn back. "Had I quit working with the Americans or not, at that point I would have still faced the same danger," he said. "Once you're in, you're in." As the 416th prepared to leave Iraq in October 2004, insurgents roamed Mosul. They set up checkpoints, killing at will. An interpreter and a childhood friend of Ismael's was shot dead when he answered the door. Ismael hid at home. During the holy month of Ramadan, in November, he chanced a visit with a friend who had also worked with the military. Later, he called his friend's cell phone. The man's mother answered, weeping. Her son had been kidnapped. Ismael fled to Syria and later to Egypt, where he has relatives. But he returned to Mosul in February 2005, determined to finish his degree. Again, he hid at his home most of the time. Then a friend and fellow interpreter who had spent a year in the United Arab Emirates was killed when he returned to Iraq to visit family.
Ismael knew his time was up. Lentz, Voice, and Dugan helped him secure a six-month visitor's visa to the United States. Lentz, a Delaware County state representative, called in a favor. He asked Dino Privitera, a lawyer friend from his days at the county District Attorney's office, to help Ismael gain asylum.
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Edited by Ahmed Ismael, 22 December 2011 - 04:02 PM.
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