The most dangerous civilian job in Iraq

By Jim Krane

updated 1:31 p.m. ET May 21, 2005

It’s one of the most dangerous civilian jobs in one of the world’s most dangerous countries: translating Arabic for the U.S. military in Iraq.

One by one, little noticed in the daily mayhem, dozens of interpreters have been killed — mostly Iraqis but 12 Americans, too. They account for 40 percent of the 300-plus death claims filed by private contractors with the U.S. Labor Department.

Riding in bomb-blasted Humvees, tagging along on foot patrols in Fallujah or dashing into buildings behind Marines, translators are dying on the job, but also facing danger at home: hunted by insurgents who call them pro-American collaborators.

“If the insurgents catch us, they will cut off our heads because the imams say we are spies,” said Mustafa Fahmi, 24, an Iraqi interpreter with Titan Corp., the biggest employer of linguists in Iraq. “I’ve been threatened like fifteen times, but I won’t quit. A neighbor saw me driving and said, ’I am going to kill you.”’

Special targets
That fate befell Luqman Mohammed Kurdi Hussein, a Titan linguist and Iraqi Kurd captured by insurgents in October. A video of the 41-year-old’s beheading was posted on the Internet.

Another Titan employee, Sudanese interpreter Noureddin Zakaria, was luckier. He appeared as a hostage on an Oct. 30 broadcast by Al-Arabiya television, saying he had been captured in Ramadi. His kidnappers later released him.

In a more recent attack in Baghdad in late March, two carloads of insurgents gunned down five Iraqi women traveling home in a car from their jobs on a U.S. base. All were killed, the Iraqi police reported, and at least one of them was a translator.

The efficiency with which insurgents hunted down Titan contractors worries the U.S. military. As militants killed them in growing numbers, usually in ambushes off base, the Army and others began housing Titan workers on military bases or in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone.

“There was a period when it seemed translators were being targeted on a daily basis,” said First Sgt. Stephen Valley, a U.S. Army reservist who worked with Arab journalists in Baghdad. “There was virtually no way to protect these people.”

High number of deaths
Most Titan linguists now live on U.S. bases.

More than 4,000 translators work for San Diego, Calif.-based Titan, which supplies the U.S. military with Arabic- and Kurdish-speaking linguists. In April, Titan reported a 23 percent increase in revenues, or $559 million, a company record. Titan said its contract with the U.S. Army is its biggest revenue source, worth up to $657 million by the time it expires.

The human cost has been high. The U.S. Labor Department reports 126 death benefit claims for Titan workers in Iraq out of a total 305 for contractors as of mid-May. The Titan death toll includes 12 Americans, and possibly some non-translators, the company said, with another 149 wounded.

“This is a war zone. Our people are embedded with literally every military unit in Iraq, facing the same life-threatening dangers as our U.S. combat forces,” Titan spokesman Wil Williams said. “We have lost more personnel than any other American contractor covered by (U.S. government) insurance because of our unique, critical and dangerous mission, and because of the intensity of the insurgents who seek to discourage Iraqis from serving their country.”

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