Iraq’s parliament has recommended a ban on Americans entering the country in response to Donald Trump’s move to suspend US visas for its citizens, as would-be refugees pleaded for Trump’s decision to be overturned.



The recommendation does not appear to be binding on the Iraqi government, which is allied with Washington in the fight against Islamic State. However, it inflames a strong anti-US sentiment already present in Iraq, creating uncertainty for US aid workers, contractors and journalists who regularly travel there.

Isis has welcomed the US travel ban, with several of its members claiming on social media over the weekend that it would pit US-based Muslims against the Trump administration and fuel discord across the Islamic world.

Despite the prominent role of the US military in the war against Isis, there is a belief among many Iraqi fighters that the 2003 invasion abetted the group’s rise.

US-trained Iraqi troops and militia groups are now pushing into Isis’s last redoubt, between the western suburbs of Mosul and the Syrian border, with US jets providing air cover.

Iraqi translators who have worked alongside US troops are among those caught up in the travel ban. Two former translators said they saw the move as a betrayal, and said family members had warned them not to trust the US government.

Trump’s move bars valid visa holders from travelling to the US for an initial 90 days, leaving in limbo hundreds of Iraqis, among them 30-year-old Omar, who had been through an extensive vetting process.

“I have worked with the US army since 2003 and had never thought about leaving the country,” he said. “My work was good, the salary was good, until a while ago a former Jaish al-Mahdi [Shia militia] detainee who became a leader in some militia started looking for me because he thought I was a spy for the Americans.

“Without the help of some good people I would have been gone. They warned me, so I escaped my neighbourhood, but the next morning a man with same name as me was kidnapped. I was almost kidnapped two months ago but I was able to run away … This is why I decided to emigrate.”

The US has taken in more than 70,000 former Iraqi employees, contractors and family members since the 2003 invasion, and the immigration programme has surged since US troops returned to Iraq to fight isis in late 2014.

There are now more than 5,000 US troops on the ground, although few play a frontline role.

On Monday the Pentagon announced it would be creating a list of Iraqis who have worked alongside the US, which it said would be passed to agencies responsible for implementing Trump’s executive order.

“We have been provided the opportunity by the White House to submit names and we are working forward to do that,” a spokesman said.



Abdulrahman al-Ubaidi, 32, one of thousands of US army contractors at the height of the sectarian war in 2006, realised last year that the stigma attached to working for the Americans still posed a danger to him.

“As a result I lost two of my brothers, Abdulsattar and Bila,” he said. “I am currently internally displaced, my house is destroyed, I can’t protect my children or myself from the threats after working with the Americans. The risk to us is ongoing.”

Ali al-Ubaidi [unrelated], a longtime military translator now unemployed because of a war injury, said: “I signed up for the [refugee] programme because I was critically injured and on the run for a year because I was wanted by militias. Eventually I was injured … after they put a bomb near my garage door.”

He added that interpreters “do not represent any threat to the security of the United States” and described them as the “backbone of US army work in Iraq”.

“Today the US administration is abandoning us,” he said. “With this order of Trump we will be easy prey for the criminals. Isis and other groups are chasing us and aim to kill us, because they consider us as traitors.”

Hala Ziad Khaldoon, the daughter of a former translator who was granted refugee status in Iraq three years ago, arrived in North Carolina in December, a month before the Trump ban was imposed. “I am a new refugee,” she said. “And I don’t know what the rules will be for me now. Am I welcome, or not?

“I would say to those people still trying to get here that for their own safety it is worth it. There are human rights over here that we don’t have in our country. There are opportunities to rebuild themselves and start again. I hope they can feel what I feel.”

Additional reporting Saud al-Murrani