EVERETT — On Wednesday night, when President Obama addressed the nation to muster support for military strikes against the Islamic State in Iraq, one family in particular was watching carefully.
Abdul al Tamimi and his family left Iraq as refugees on Sept. 22, 1991. Shia Muslims from Karbala, in south-central Iraq, they were fleeing reprisals from Saddam Hussein’s forces in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, when the U.S.-led coalition drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait.
The family arrived in the U.S. in 1994 after spending three years in Saudi Arabian refugee camps, and is now one of many families from Iraq who call Everett home. Al Tamimi estimates his family in the U.S. now numbers more than 100, including his seven children, four sisters, three brothers and all their children. Two more sisters remained behind in Iraq, along with a large extended family
But on Wednesday, with their home country again torn by sectarian warfare, they watched the speech on TV.
Abdul al Tamimi and his wife, Majdah, were joined by their son, Khalid, and family friends while they watched Obama’s speech live, dubbed into Arabic on an Iraqi satellite network.
When Obama announced the expansion of the American military offensive against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, even into Syria, they nodded with approval. And they chimed in on the president’s line that ISIS fighters aren’t true Muslims because they killed other Muslims.
“That’s what we need,” Abdul said.
“But they have to be a little quick to do this,” Khalid al Tamimi said, because taking too long would allow ISIS to gain more strength.
He also thinks Obama’s promise of another 475 military advisers to train the Iraqi army might not be sufficient to take back the country.
“It’s going to take a little more,” Khalid said, pointing out that when ISIS came to Mosul, the northern city they now hold, many Iraqi army soldiers changed sides.
Everett has one of the largest populations of Iraqi immigrants in the Pacific Northwest. The exact number of Iraqi immigrants in the area isn’t known, but Doaa al Maly, a family service assistant for the Everett Housing Authority, estimates more than 100 families now live in Everett.
Al Maly is from Samawah, in south central Iraq, and her family left the country at the same time as the al Tamimis.
She was five when her family fled the country, and she has no memory of living there as a child.
“I have no memories of Iraq,” she said. “I went back in 2012 and visited family and that’s where I got married and met my husband.”
She and other Iraqis of her generation grew up in America, but tried to maintain Iraqi traditions. She started wearing a hijab, a colorful headscarf, when she was seven, early for Iraqi girls.
“We were raised in this community, I don’t think any of us ever rebelled,” she said.
At the same time, the constant violence is a source of sadness and frustration for Iraqis of all generations, especially with the reports of women kidnapped as war prizes, murdered children, the slaughter of 1,700 captured Iraqi soldiers in Tikrit and the videotaped beheadings of two American journalists.
When Saddam Hussein was overthrown in 2003, Abdul al Tamimi and many other Iraqis in Everett staged a spontaneous parade downtown in celebration. Khalid al Tamimi, then 25, got a tattoo on his forearm of the map of Iraq.
Hopes for a return to peace faded in the ensuing civil war, however, and a temporary calm that pervaded toward the end of the American occupation collapsed this year with the rise of ISIS.
Abdul al Tamimi maintains that Iraq’s citizens have been the real victims of the decades of war that has gripped the country, a situation he views with a mix of frustration and sadness.
He strongly suspects that the Islamic State receives funding from Saudi Arabia, and that this is the latest continuation of the hostilities between Sunni and Shia that date back to just after the founding of Islam as a religion.
Both the Islamic State and Saudi Arabia are dominated by very conservative strains of Sunni Islam, although Saudi Arabia is nominally a U.S. ally in the region.
“Shia aren’t working with Daish,” he said, using the acronym for the Arabic name of the Islamic State. “We don’t like to kill other people,” he said.
The Islamic State, however, is targeting everyone: Shia, Sunni, Yazidi, Kurd.
“They have no respect for anyone,” Khalid said.
Abdul al Tamimi, who said his father was killed by Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1977 for being too outspoken, hopes the U.S. will be able to restore peace in Iraq, and keep Iraq together.
“America and Iraq are friends now. America must help Iraq,” he said.
Chris Winters: 425-374-3165; cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.
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