Illustration by Tom Bachtell

Ali is a self-described “agnostic Shiite” who lives in Baghdad. Karim lives in Sinjar, the badlands between Mosul and the Syrian border, in a town made up of Yazidis—believers in an ancient faith related to Zoroastrianism. Ali and Karim (they asked to be given pseudonyms) are Iraqis in their thirties, married with children. Both worked for the United States Army when there were American troops in Iraq. From 2004 to 2008, Ali interpreted for soldiers on patrol in tense neighborhoods, then helped in the training of Iraqi security forces. In 2009, he became a freelance journalist and a researcher for Western non-governmental organizations in Baghdad, including Human Rights Watch. Karim, an engineer, signed on in May, 2003, after American troops entered Sinjar, supervising water projects and the renovation of schools in areas too dangerous for the Army to reach. In 2005, he left his job with the American military and went to work for an American medical charity outside Mosul. Few Iraqis offer so many armed groups so many reasons to kill them as Ali and Karim.

Over the years, both men have been threatened repeatedly—by phone calls, by strangers appearing at their front doors, by carloads of gunmen. Once, travelling on a highway outside Tal Afar, insurgents fired AK-47s at Karim, who survived only because he was driving a faster car. In 2010, Ali had to leave his family and go into hiding, after Human Rights Watch issued a report on a secret prison, and a government spokesman proclaimed that an Iraqi researcher was feeding the organization lies. But Ali and Karim stayed in Iraq long after others in their situation had fled. Ali tried to downplay threats. “I’m the guy who believes if you hear the mortars whistling they’re already past you,” he said last week. “I worry about the mortars you haven’t heard.” He remained proud of his job with the U.S. Army, and liked working as a human-rights researcher: “I was dreaming of a better Iraq.” Similarly, Karim held on through the worst years of the civil war: “I always said, ‘It’s my country, I am an engineer, I have a future here.’ ”

Two years ago, Ali finally stopped dreaming. In May, 2012, he applied for a Special Immigrant Visa to the U.S.—a category created by Congress, in 2008, for Iraqis and Afghans who worked for the American government and military during the wars. In November, 2012, Ali’s application fell into “Administrative Processing,” a bureaucratic black hole that offers no further explanation, and remained there. Earlier this year, Karim also applied. The process has been notoriously slow and opaque, with thousands of visa slots going unfilled while thousands of applicants languish, their money and their hope ebbing away as they wait to be told whether they have a future in America.

Ali and Karim were still waiting last month when militant fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham attacked Mosul and other Iraqi cities. The army that Ali had helped the Americans to train collapsed with disheartening speed. ISIS slaughtered government workers and members of the security forces, and three of Karim’s Yazidi friends were killed—two border guards and a man who was in prison when the militants reached Mosul. “ISIS treats other religions two ways—kill them or transform them into Muslims,” Karim said. “He refused to transform into Muslim, and they killed him.” Karim is now trapped with his family and other Yazidis. Their town, he told me, is being defended by armed locals and around a hundred Kurdish militiamen, with the power cut off and gas and food supplies running low; ISIS fighters, positioned six miles away, have attacked several times. Karim thought about burning the documents that prove his service to the Americans; instead, he hid them in a small bag that he can grab at a moment’s notice. “It’s dangerous to be Yazidi in Iraq,” he said. “It’s even more dangerous to be Yazidi who worked for the U.S. Army.”

In Baghdad, Ali’s situation is hardly better. In the hysteria following the collapse of Iraqi security forces in the north, Shiite militias went through the city, setting up checkpoints, waving guns, and blasting religious music. Amid this mass mobilization, Ali completed work on two reports for Human Rights Watch that detail abuses by the Shiite militias against Sunni prisoners and others. Worried about reprisals, Ali is thinking of moving his family out of the neighborhood. “These people believe what they are doing is a holy fight,” he said. “They don’t like it if you call it a crime.”

Ali and Karim have persevered through violent years, but Iraq has never seemed more dangerous to them. There’s no way out: their path to Kurdistan is blocked off by ISIS forces, neighboring countries have virtually stopped giving visas to Iraqis, and the American Embassy in Baghdad has evacuated the personnel who issue refugee visas. Last October, five hundred and seven Iraqis arrived in America on Special Immigrant Visas; in June, the number fell to fifty-three, a nearly tenfold drop. Seventeen hundred Iraqis are awaiting action on their applications; the program expires in September. Tens of thousands of others have applied in the broader category of “U.S.-affiliated Iraqis”—so many that the waiting period for an initial interview sometimes took eighteen months, until the fall of Mosul stopped the process completely.

Becca Heller, the director of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project, said, “ISIS has exponentially increased the danger for anyone with a U.S. affiliation, while simultaneously diverting U.S. government resources from providing protection for those same people. We’re receiving over a hundred e-mails a week from people who think they’ll be dead by Friday.”

Last year, Congress became fed up with the delays, and specified that the government must decide on Special Immigrant Visa applications within nine months. Ali has been kept waiting for more than two years, with no idea why. “I’m trapped between the sky and planet Earth,” he said. “What should I do in order to convince them I’m in danger? Should I get shot?” This week, IRAP and the international law firm Freshfields are filing a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of Ali, asking a judge to compel the government to act on his case, on the ground of “unreasonable delay.” Heller said, “If they’re going to reject him, I want them to have to do it in front of a judge.”

President Barack Obama has sent several hundred American military advisers to help the demoralized Iraqi Army stave off ISIS. He has also declared the American war in Iraq over, and expressed skepticism that U.S. power could hold together a violently divided and badly ruled Iraq. But surely America has the capacity to save its Iraqi friends whose war never ended, before ISIS or the militias kill them first. ♦