Immigrant returns to Iraq with U.S. Army

[unhappycamper]

Cpl. Aawss Zahed, 30, of Mosul, Iraq, is one of fewer than 20 Iraqis serving with the U.S. Army in Iraq.


Immigrant returns to Iraq with U.S. Army
By Seth Robson, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Friday, November 30, 2007

BAGHDAD — Aawss Zahed’s path to the U.S. Army started in the unlikeliest way.

The 30-year-old corporal is from Mosul, Iraq, and arrived in the U.S. in 2003, just as the war started.

“I was mad because the country I always dreamed of going to was the U.S. and a week after I got there the U.S. invades my country. I asked God: ‘Why didn’t they invade Syria or Morocco?’ ”

Zahed, who’s married to an American, got a U.S. green card and a job in a Michigan car-parts plant that paid $6,000 a month, money that helped him support family members in Iraq.

But in 2005, his aunt, who worked for the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, was killed. And his father, a former Iraqi army major general, was threatened and forced to flee to Syria. Several other family members also died in the violence sweeping the country, Zahed said.

On a trip home, he was horrified by what he saw. “I saw my old neighborhood and my people destroyed. It was not the U.S. Army who destroyed them. Some strange people came from outside the country and started destroying my hometown step by step and killing my people,” he said.


Rest of article at: http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=50616

[Maq]

1. IVAN nametag

Who is Ivan?

[unhappycamper]

2. Good question.

I was wondering the same thing myself.