Freedom Fighter Called “Terrorist” by INS
- 03.26.2008 - 10:34 AMKaren DeYoung published a story in the Washington Post that ought to embarrass anyone making decisions about who deserves permanent residence in the U.S.
Saman Kareem Ahmad is an Iraqi Kurd who worked as a translator with the Marines in Iraq’s Anbar Province. He was one of the few selected translators who was granted asylum in the U.S. because he and his family were singled out for destruction by insurgents for “collaboration.” He wants to return to Iraq as an American citizen and a Marine, and has already been awarded the Navy-Marine Corps Achievement Medal and the War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal. Secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter and General David Petraeus wrote notes for his file and recommended he be given a Green Card, but the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) declined his application and called him a “terrorist.”
The INS says Ahmad “conducted full-scale armed attacks and helped incite rebellions against Hussein’s regime, most notably during the Iran-Iraq war, Operation Desert Storm, and Operation Iraqi Freedom” while a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).
The KDP is one of two mainstream Kurdish political parties in Iraq. Kurdistan Regional Government Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani is a member of the KDP. The KDP fought alongside the United States military as an ally during Operation Iraqi Freedom. After Operation Desert Storm the KDP fought the Saddam regime after President George H. W. Bush called on Iraqis to do so. During the Iran-Iraq War, the KDP fought the Ba’athists because they were actively resisting genocide in the Kurdish region where Saddam used chemical weapons, artillery, air strikes, and napalm to exterminate them. And he’s a terrorist?
The Kurds in Iraq–unlike the Kurds in Turkey and the ever-popular Palestinians– did not use terrorism as a tactic in their struggle for liberation. They fought honorably against Saddam’s soldiers, not against Arab civilians in south and central Iraq.
The INS revealingly refers to the KDP as an “undesignated” terrorist organization. Which suggests it’s aware that the KDP isn’t a terrorist organization but has unilaterally labeled it as one regardless. The blogger Callimachus thinks it may be because the Patriot Act defines terrorism as “any activity which is unlawful under the laws of the place it was committed.” He correctly points out that Jews in Hitler’s Warsaw Ghetto were “terrorists” according to this brainless definition.
This is an absurd inversion of the already absurd “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” slogan. Usually this sophomoric claim is made by terrorists or by leftists who make excuses for terrorists. This time, the INS is calling an actual freedom fighter a terrorist.
Somebody should tell Vice President Dick Cheney. He met with the KDP’s Barzani himself just a few days ago. “That was a unique and interesting opportunity,” he said, “to go look at what’s happened in a part of Iraq that was obviously freed of Saddam Hussein’s influence when the U.S. went in there and established the Operation Provide Comfort at the end of the Gulf War, and then set up the ‘no fly zones,’ and so forth.” Someone might also want to inform President George W. Bush, who invited Ahmad to the White House in 2007.
It’s worth comparing this case with two others.
Sayyed Rahmatullah Hashemi was a spokesman for the Taliban in Afghanistan, yet he was admitted to Yale University in 2006, though he wasn’t given a green card, as far as I can tell. And just a few days ago, drug-trafficking prostitute and Brazilian national Andreia Schwartz was offered a green card if she would reveal what she knows about former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. But Saman Ahmad faces deportation to a country where actual terrorists threaten to kill him? The law (to say nothing of the INS) truly is “a ass,” as Mr. Bumble once observed.
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March 26th, 2008 at 1:42 PM
Sareem Kaman Ahmad, being in the US armed forces, has a congressman and two senators who ought to be all over this. I don’t know which ones they are, but someone in the district does. I have a feeling this will be sorted out. It is, indeed, very much too bad that it should have to take such intervention. The INS should be ashamed of itself.
March 26th, 2008 at 2:14 PM
INS is broken. Everyone who has ever had to deal with it knows it.
Well, so is DHS, but it has not had such a long time to build bad reputation.
March 26th, 2008 at 2:25 PM
I’m speechless…. Immigration officials are among the most clueless members of the government. Believe me, I know what I m talking about.
March 26th, 2008 at 2:39 PM
The INS has crap for morale, they know they are jerks, and they only change when they are caught and kicked back into line. Feral bureaucracy at its worst.
Please contact your Congressmen:
House: http://www.house.gov/writerep/
Senate: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Message to the Congress: This is in reference to the despicable treatment of Saman Ahmad, a Kurd who was awarded medals for his valor while in service as a translator with the US Marine Corps and is now seeking asylum and citizenship from the United States. Please assist the Immigration and Naturalization Service in attaining clarity by helping to understand that our best allies in Iraq, the KDP and PUK are not terrorists because they fought Saddam Hussein. There are a lot of good people who fought Saddam Hussein, and unless you are putting the US Marine Corps on your list of bad guys, we need to take the KDP and PUK off the terrorist organization lists.
Link this article.
March 26th, 2008 at 3:37 PM
“The bureaucratic mentality is the one constant in the universe.” (or something like that.)
Dr McCoy in Star Trek the Wrath of Kahn
Leave it to some stupid entrenched mid-level government bureaucrat that can’t read a damn newspaper to screw up a great story. Saman Kareem Ahmad has done something that many ignorant and lazy Americans have taken for granted; fight for freedom. Call it “faith”, but something in me tells me this will get fixed. They should start by beating whoever is responsible in the INS with a “stupid stick”.
March 26th, 2008 at 3:41 PM
simon hawkins “Well, so is DHS, but it has not had such a long time to build bad reputation.”
unless you count the history of government in general
March 26th, 2008 at 8:06 PM
what the INS realli needed is another layer of bureaucracy, even more clueless, on top of it. its own was not enough.
the first time i heard about DHS I said if you liked what govt security to this point, you’ll love it from now on when it’s even more bureaucratic.
oao
http://fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com/
March 26th, 2008 at 8:09 PM
Enough, already.
Are we living in some kind of alternate universe? Where we can let members of the M13 and other foreign gangsters into this country, show them carte blanche, and give them privileges that working class American citizens can’t even dream of–and a guy like Ahmad, who put his ass on the line for our country, is called a terrorist?
I’m losing it.
March 26th, 2008 at 10:17 PM
This is insane. The INS official who pulled this stunt should be fired and publicly humiliated, along with all of those who agreed with him/her.
March 27th, 2008 at 1:19 AM
Looks like this issues is being addressed…