A letter to the senior diplomat in the State Department on behalf of a family facing persecution in Iraq. The Halabi family has served, and still serves, both the Government or Iraq and the United States Government in teaching, athletics training and refugee support.

1. The United States Department of State
2201 C Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20520
September 11, 2017
Attention:Mr Simon Henshaw
Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration
Re Asylum Status of the Family of Mr. Khalid Halabi (together, the ‘Family’)
Mr. Khalid Halabi, 58 years old – Baghdad, Iraq
Mrs. Zainab Halabi, 48 years old – Baghdad, Iraq
Ms. Maryam Halabi, 24 years old – recently married, Baghdad, Iraq
Mr. Ammar Halabi, 21 years old – Baghdad, Iraq
NOTE: Mr. Ali Halabi, 28 years old, is a United States Permanent Resident residing in
Washington, D.C. Ali will become a naturalized U.S. Citizen on March 19, 2018.
Dear Assistant Secretary Henshaw,
Purpose of this letter. This letter seeks to re-establish and then expedite asylum applications
to the International Organization of Migration (I.O.M.) # IZ-129918 (Khalid Abdulhafeedh
ALHALABI) and IZ-202658 (Maryam Khalid Abdulhafeedh ALHALABI) on behalf of the
members of the Halabi family referenced above.
Importance of this petition. As I reflect upon the waning years of my life, I remain grateful that I had
the privilege to serve my country in Iraq, variously working in military strategy, capacity transfer and
community development in Baghdad, Balad, Samarra and Tikrit. That service remains both a high and
low point for me. The high point was the enthusiasm exhibited by so many Iraqis in trying to re-build
their country.
The low point was the nearly free reign of evil men who not only opposed Coalition efforts but sought to
maim, kidnap, kill and rape fellow Iraqis for sport or profit. The United States has made some effort to
protect those Shi´ite families most vulnerable to the depredations of Sunni insurgents, later ISIS, for
collaborating with the “occupiers”.
On the other hand, Sunni families remain even more vulnerable to Shi´ite revanchists who have turned
the Ministry of Interior into an institution of death, rape and torture as it daily visits incalculable misery
on innocents of every sectarian variant and level of Iraqi society. In 2004, I watched as and advisor
‘present at the creation’ of this misuse of the rule-of-law at the expense of a minority population in Iraq.
Delayed status of this urgent case. As stated above, this letter seeks to re-establish and then
expedite I.O.M. asylum application # IZ-129918 (Khalid Abdulhafeedh ALHALABI) and IZ-202658
(Maryam Khalid Abdulhafeedh ALHALABI) of the Halabi family. This paperwork was first filed over six
(6) years ago, on the 27th of June 2011, with the International Organization for Migration, the operating
agency of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
The Halabi family has suffered a steady increase in threats and persecutions for a decade, as detailed
in the attached Annex. Despite the taxing travails besetting it, the application of the Halabi family
continues to languish with no reasonable explanations for the delay. Recently, an ailing Mrs. Zainab

2. Halabi was denied a tourist visa to visit her son, Ali, in Washington, DC as if she were seriously at risk
of abandoning her husband and two adult children in Baghdad.
Why this petition matters. This treatment of a family whose members served the United States or their
countrymen with distinction for years but are now trapped in peril is certainly not to be countenanced by
their supporters in the United States, including officials in several Federal agencies.
Please eliminate the paper-jam that is increasingly leaving a good family at the mercy of very bad
people. I look forward to contacting you directly and imminently.
Very truly yours,
Edward J. McDonnell III, CFA PMP
Birmingham, Alabama
860-690-1740.

3. ANNEX: Details Underlying the Appeal for the Halabi Family
Introduction. This annex lays out the exemplary actions of the Halabi family, of Baghdad, Iraq.
These people that have dedicated themselves to the New Iraq, a nascent democracy in a painful
parturition slowed by bloodshed, privation and early death for too many people. The duly filed refugee
appeal of the Halabi family has languished for six years. Truly and tragically, this is a family without a
country.
The Halabi History through 2003: a Stand against Dictatorship. As Sunni dissenters against
the tyranny of the Ba´athist régime, these people fled the country in 1994. One must keep in perspective
just how the ancien régime worked in Iraq. At the time this family left for Beirut, the Ba´athists were
closing in to take their eldest son, Ali, just five years old at the time, away from his parents for the
programmed socialization of fanatical devotion to Saddam Hussein; a practice taken out of the Nazi
play-book for cultivating the SS.
Mr. Khalid Halabi currently serves as a senior government official in managing athletic programs and
the development of the young across Iraq through the Ministry of Youth and Sports. Back in the 1980’s,
Khalid was assigned as head coach for the Iraqi national volleyball team after playing alongside his
teammates as several years. The national team earned a few international medals, for which he was
tortured for not being gold. In October 2006, Mr. Naseer Shamil, captain of the Iraqi national volleyball
team and close to Mr. Halabi, was assassinated in Baghdad, notwithstanding his renowned name in the
sport.
As a man of tolerance and peace, counting many Chaldeans. Assyrians, Sunnis and Shi’ites within his
circle of friends, Mr. Halabi wanted his children to be citizens of the world, as comfortable with other
religions as they would be with other peoples. Mr. Halabi also led a joint initiative between the Iraqi
Government and Coalition Forces in Iraq to advance a youth development program aimed at
rehabilitating juvenile detainees who had joined terrorist groups.
As the head of the family, Mr. Khalid Halabi made the courageous decision to forego his comfortable
life rather than see his children trained in fanatical devotion dedicated to murder, mayhem or any other
impulse of a dictator. The family stayed in Beirut for almost a decade (1994-2003), seeking out and
living in a diverse neighborhood with Christians and members of other sects within Islam. Though well-
received as good Iraqis, the Halabis were never fully accepted into Lebanese society. Like her husband,
Mrs. Halabi now devotes herself to not only her own children, but also to many others as a teacher and
school principal.
The Halabi History: Exiles Return Home as Strangers to their own land. Upon the initiation
of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the family re-settled in Baghdad in the Spring of 2003, but received a cold
welcome as their acquired Lebanese accents made them suspects in the eyes of those Iraqis who had
stayed behind. There also have been many reports that returning members of the Iraqi diaspora often
faced embittered responses from their countrymen who faulted them for leaving the country. The
Halabis, then, were a family without country.
Nevertheless, the Halabis soldiered on for Ambassador L. Paul Bremer’s “New Iraq”. This selflessness,
however, had a terrible downside. As a trusted Sunni senior advisor to the Shi´ite Minister overseeing a
predominantly Shi´ite Ministry of Youth and Sports, as part of a delegation to Egypt, Mr. Halabi was
kidnapped by an unknown Arabic-speaking heavily armed militia that attacked their government convoy
and left for dead in the desert with his manager, the Shi´ite advisor for the Minister at the time, now a
rising politician.

4. Though it was the height of the sectarian conflict in Iraq, Mr. Halabi brushed aside any sectarian
differences and willingly risked his life also to save that of his manager who had bad vision and was
struggling to keep warm in the chilling cold of the desert. He simply refused to abandon his friend and
co-worker. That quiet heroism, easily overlooked in a harsh desert clime, paid off as both survived as
they made their way back to the robbed unarmed civilian delegation convoy.
Still devoted to the young people under his charge, Mr. Halabi re-joined the athletic delegation that was
attacked and continued to their initial destination, Egypt, only missing a day of service due to his very
close call. He remains a fine human being to this day but has never had the opportunity fully to grow
beyond that trauma.
With the exit of American troops in 2011 and the increasing evidence of P.M. al-Maliki making a grab
for a Shi’ite dictatorship aligned with Iran in a bloody symmetry to Saddam’s Sunni tyranny aligned with
the Saudis, the Halabis applied for asylum to the International Organization of Migration, the field
operations of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
After their years of generous service to fellow Iraqis, the Halabi family find themselves to be people in
dire need of the very aid they have given others for so long. Though familiar with living in Lebanon,
Beirut is no longer a workable option for this Iraqi family due to the deterioration of sectarian relations
and economic prospects across that failing state. Additionally, to go to Lebanon would forfeit the family’s
asylum petition.
In essence, Mr. and Mrs. Halabi as well as Maryam and Ammar would be going from the frying pan to
the fire with no way out. Unfortunately, like all but a very few of their countrymen, Mr. and Mrs. Halabi,
as model citizens of the New Iraq (i.e., clean from corruption) have been unable to save sufficiently.
Neither parent has been paid for months due to all resources going North to fund the fight against ISIS.
In the interim, their eldest son, Ali, is supporting them by substantially drawing down upon his salary as
senior human resources and talent acquisition manager for a U.S. government contracting firm to
support his beleaguered family members back home.
The Halabi History: Service and Destitution in a Chaotic Country. Nevertheless, the Halabis
have continued to discharge their responsibilities to a troubled country’s troubled youth. They have run
down their savings and can no longer afford the basic necessities as their protracted wait for relief
continues unaddressed after six years by officials who really should know better. They can longer cool
their home and keep current on their medicines. As stated before, Mr. Halabi continues to suffer from
untreated stress disorders – and the consequent damage to his immune system – from the traumas he
suffered from his abduction during the near-sectarian genocide in 2006 and 2007.
Mrs. Halabi is doubled over with arthritis, without medical relief, but still teaching. Mariam Halabi recently
married. Finally, the younger son, Ammar is impressionable and vulnerable at twenty-one. He remains
most at risk of being attacked or, worse, killed even as he is working to help the helpless around him.
Maryam’s recent marriage has not brought the elation most people rightly expect. The fact of the matter
is that this family is emotionally sallow after years of grinding indignity and increasing destitution in a
collapsing society where they are regarded as outsiders.
The Challenge for Those of Us in the United States. Many Americans would prefer to write Iraq
off as an unhappy chapter, a distinct national inconvenience with little impact upon the country over
time. That is a short-sighted notion that willfully overlooks the humanitarian obligation owed by the U.S.

5. to suffering Iraqis, like the Halabis, who either aided U.S. Embassy or Coalition military efforts or served
their country in key capacities.
America must function in an age of stress and uncertainty with national insolvency, economic decline
and geopolitical challenges everywhere. Contemporary U.S. governance is a régime of fear. So much
so that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad refused to give a tourist visa to Mrs. Halabi to visit her older son
in Washington, D.C. and, perhaps, to seek some treatment for her worsening arthritis.
The initial approval of the visa breezed through the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad as the junior visa officer
rightly took Mrs. Halabi’s passport to process the visa. The senior consular officer rejected the visa the
next day for reasons unclear. The risk of Mrs. Halabi going missing and over-staying her visa remains
an unsupportable rationale since doing so would entail a life-long teacher abandoning her children and
husband in Baghdad while jeopardizing her family’s pending asylum case with the I.O.M.
That indefensible decision will turn unconscionable as Baghdadis head into the months they aptly call
“flaming July and flaming August” with temperatures exceeding one hundred forty degrees during the
day and hovering around the triple digits at night. Additionally, once the ISIS stranglehold of Mosul is
completely broken, Iraq and Kurdistan may very well relapse into a civil conflict over who controls the
country’s second largest city, pitting Arabs against Kurds as well as Sunnis against Shi´ites. That conflict
will reverberate across the country, making the Halabi family in Baghdad wide-open targets for re-
awakened or returning Shi´ite death squads. The United States Government can avoid this fate for a
family who has served it well.
This case may seem like just another one among many, another burden of routine. It is not. The appeal
is on behalf of a family devoted to the American entreprise in Iraq for whom time is running out. The
parents have stayed the course on aiding Iraq’s increasingly vulnerable children. Two of the three
children have worked for the United States Government, either directly or through implementing
partners, and have done so with integrity and distinction. Now Ammar, the youngest of the three siblings,
started working with an international NGO in Iraq helping refugees. He is an amateur photographer and
his dream is to study photography in the United States.
Indeed and in fact, this Halabi family has served The United States of America at a level that exceeds
the level contributed by a great majority of native-born Americans. The American government has an
obligation – a moral imperative – to reciprocate the many years of the Halabi family’s good faith by
expediting this refugee claim, still in stasis after six years. Otherwise, the America we knew – the
America for which so many have sacrificed over two centuries – will no longer be the country founded
on an ideal, a city on the hill. The choice is yours and yours alone.