No Refuge Here: Iraqis Flee, but Where?

New Yorker Lisa Ramaci-Vincent and Basra native Nour al Khal have never met face to face. The two correspond daily via phone or e-mail, and Ramaci-Vincent regularly sends al Khal much-needed funds to help her survive. Yet Ramaci-Vincent has made a crusade out of trying to get al Khal into the United States and has even testified in Congress on her behalf. Ramaci-Vincent is the widow of Steven Vincent, one of the first American journalists to die in Iraq; al Khal was Steven’s translator.

In August of 2005, Vincent, a freelance journalist, was kidnapped, tortured, and shot to death in the southern Iraqi city of Basra by militants dressed in police uniform. His abduction and murder came two days after a story about the infiltration of the local security forces by Iranian-backed Shia militias ran with his byline in the New York Times. Al Khal was also kidnapped and shot during the attack, but survived and was transported to a hospital in Baghdad. Fearing for her life, al Khal fled to a neighboring country upon her release, where she remains to this day (the exact location of which is kept private, for reasons of security).

“Before she worked with Steven, Nour had worked with the Guardian, the Dallas Morning News. She has impeccable credentials,” Ramaci-Vincent tells me a few weeks after testifying before a Senate hearing convened by Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter.

Lisa has lined up a job for al Khal in New York at the UN Bureau Of...