Rock Center

The students who became money mules for Eastern European hackers in the theft of $70 million from American bank accounts have remarkably similar stories.

The following account – Margarita Pakhomova’s story --  is based on multiple sources close to the investigation in the case the FBI calls Trident Breach:

In 2010, Margarita Pakhomova was a 20-year-old public relations student living in Pyatigorsk, a town in southern Russia.

In an effort to broaden her horizons, she, like many Russian students, applied to join a work/study program in the United States for four months.

To make a successful application, Russian students pay an agency $100 to get them a job offer in the United States. Some even pay $150 for a fake job offer to help land them a visa.

Margarita had heard horror stories about real offers turning out to be scams, so she opted for a fake offer and decided to wing it on arrival in the United States.

Bad idea.

In May 2010, after shelling out $3000 for plane tickets and paperwork, Margarita traveled with four Russian friends to New York.

After getting lost on the New York subway, Margarita and her college friends found a place to stay in Brooklyn. It was a $400-a-month grimy basement.  They started looking for work.  Since they spoke little English, they bought Russian newspapers every day, turning straight to the job sections. Most of the ads seemed to ask for “dancers” or workers for questionable credit card businesses.

Some friends of friends told Margarita that if she and her friends get really stuck, they could call a special phone number.  

Two months into her big New York adventure, Margarita was broke with no money for food and rent.

She had already heard of people who were receiving cash and wiring it overseas. They were making good money and it didn’t seem illegal to her.

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Out of desperation, she called that special phone number and two young Russian men appeared. They invited Margarita and her friends to restaurants and clubs, took them around the city and became their friends.

The two Russian men started telling Margarita about all the money she could make, the places she could see, the things she could do. At the time she was down to her last $20, so she opted in. She emailed the two men some passport photos and waited.

Margarita received multiple new, shiny fake passports, Greek and British with fake names.  They were so professionally made she couldn’t tell them apart from real ones.

Her handler told her she could open four bank accounts under one passport and so she opened accounts in Manhattan with Chase, Bank of America and Wachovia. 

Once the illegal deposits showed up in her accounts, her handler would call and tell her they were going to work. He would pick her up, drive her to the bank and tell her to withdraw the cash and then wire it to Russia or Ukraine by Western Union. While the maximum withdrawal Margarita made was $15,000, she knows other mules who took out up to $50,000 a day. Some made enough on their commission that they were able to buy cars within a week. Margarita made about $4000. 

On the day she was supposed to leave New York and head back to Russia, Margarita was tipped off that some of the money mules were being rounded up. In a panic, she headed for the airport.

But something was wrong. Airport security was a nightmare. First, Margarita was told her bag was too heavy. Then she had her purse searched by TSA officers, who claimed they were looking for a computer or cellphone. Margarita later learned these were stalling tactics as, at the time, she had no idea the FBI was bearing down on her.

At the boarding gate, six FBI officers dressed in sporting clothes rushed toward her and arrested her.

At her Federal trial, Margarita was charged with conspiracy to commit bank fraud and false use of passports. She was convicted and sentenced to pay more than $42,000 to the victims of her crimes, along with three years of supervised release, which never happened, because Margarita was deported to Russia.

Editor's Note: Click here to watch Richard Engel's full report, Easy Money. The report aired Wednesday, Mar. 21 on Rock Center with Brian Williams.

Rock Center

It was a crime of staggering sophistication by computer hackers who figured out a new way to get rich. 

In a case that became known as Trident Breach, the hackers stole $70 million from the payroll accounts of some 400 American companies and organizations – all from the safety of their homes in Eastern Europe.

“I think it’s the perfect definition of organized crime,” said FBI Executive Assistant Director Shawn Henry.  “It’s very well organized.  It’s very well-structured.  It requires many people operating in unison, in a collaborative way.”

At the beginning of 2008, the group of hackers compromised hundreds of thousands of Americans computers using a malicious computer “Trojan” bug called ZeuS. When computer users clicked on certain attachments and e-mail links, ZeuS infected their computers.

ZeuS is designed to zero in on users’ bank information. For example, when a user visits a bank website, ZeuS knows; and since it is a key logger program, it records the user's keystrokes as he or she enters usernames and passwords. It then sends that information by instant text message to waiting hackers, who then have access to the compromised accounts. 

Henry is one of the country’s top cybercrime fighters. He says Americans are increasingly prone to “virtual gangs” prying on people’s personal data stored on their computers.

“We have organized groups that have developed internationally where groups of people have come together, each with a very specific capability and skill, who have never met each other in the physical world, but they meet online in a collaborative way,” he said. 

Henry says that the security breaches have the potential to be more than just criminal acts. They could pose a national security risk.

“There are foreign intelligence services that are aggressively pursuing American technology.  They’re aggressively pursuing American strategy.  They’re looking at the American military, the American consumer, the American corporations, research and development organizations, laboratories, educational facilities,” Henry said.  “The amount and value of data that is on the network is at an unprecedented level.  Our adversaries know that that data is there.  It’s information and information is valuable."

Money Mules Help Hackers Get $70 Million

In the Trident Breach case, the hackers were able to get their hands on the cash by turning people into money mules.  

Beginning in late 2008, they created some 3000 money mules, many of them unwitting Americans, by luring them into work-at-home jobs requiring "employees" to open bank accounts. 

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“The first money mule activity we started seeing was people who would receive an email saying, ‘You can get a work-at-home job’ and the work-at-home job would be something like transaction manager for an international company,” said Prof. Gary Warner of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who teaches a program that combines computer forensics and justice studies. 

Warner is also a member of the little-known FBI-affiliated group called InfraGard, comprising some 50,000 members across the United States who keep an eagle eye on U.S . critical infrastructure: power plants, water supply, security and financial services…and the internet. Warner said the hackers transferred cash from business payroll-type "ACH" (Automated Clearing House) accounts to the mule accounts and the mules sent the cash by Western Union or MoneyGram to Eastern Europe, taking eight or 10 percent commission.

Warner said that when the banks started to get wise to the hackers’ work-at-home schemes, and set up roadblocks, the hackers then recruited dozens of students, mainly from southern Russia, to be a new breed of money mule. 

“It’s still a little gray whether the students who were recruited knew that they were being recruited for crime,” Warner said.

The hackers obtained fake passports for the students, U.S. J1 work/study visas, and packed their new mules off to the United States. The students opened multiple bank accounts, mainly in the New York area, where they received stolen cash. Then, just as the mules before them had, they wired the cash back to their bosses. 

University Professor Helps FBI Crack Cybercrime Case

So stealthy was their ZeuS operation, neither the hackers nor the mules had counted on getting caught. But, using complex data mining techniques, Prof. Warner established links between ZeuS-infected computers and traced the origins of the mass infection to Ukraine; and many of the hackers and their mules were caught.

But 18 mules remained at large in the United States. And after the FBI published a wanted poster of the students, Warner’s students began using what they’d learned in class to track the criminals.

“So the students used the techniques we had taught them during investigating online crime [class] and began crawling Facebook pages and VKontakte, which is a Russian version similar to Facebook and were able to quickly identify profile pages of almost all of them, at-large mules,” Warner said.

Warner’s students discovered one of the students-turned-mules had brazenly posted pictures of herself with a wad of hundred-dollar bills. Another had posted a picture of himself dressed in an “I ❤ New York” top, arms aloft, celebrating in a bar with his friends – some of whom turned out to be other money mules. And another was pictured standing next to the new car he has presumably just bought.  

Though all the mules – except one – were arrested, that does not necessarily mean the end of the money mules, says Gary Warner.

“ZeuS infections are rampant still today.  There are probably millions of computers in the United States that have active Zeus on their machines right now,” Warner said.

Editor’s Note: Click here to watch Richard Engel’s full report, 'Easy Money,' from NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams.

By Anna Schecter
Rock Center

UPDATE: Exchange organization ERDT, Educational Resource Development Trust, has released a statement in response to our reporting. Attorney Michael Sidley said the organization "never engaged in a cover-up of any sort...it was the conduct of ERDT which led to the arrest of Mr. Meyer."

Dozens of high school foreign exchange students have been raped, sexually abused, or harassed by American host parents in towns and cities across the country, an NBC News investigation has found.

In one of the most egregious cases, at least four exchange students were sexually abused over the course of two years by the same host father, even after the first victim sounded alarms.

“He said ‘this is American culture,’ and I should get used to it,” Christopher Herbon of Germany told NBC News in an exclusive interview broadcast on Rock Center.

The organization that placed them with the host father has been accused of orchestrating a cover-up to protect its reputation over the safety of the students. 

Every year more than 25,000 teens from around the world come to America as part of a program overseen by the State Department that is hailed as an integral part of U.S. diplomacy.

Most of those teens have a great experience and cases of sexual abuse are rare. But NBC News’ investigation found two major flaws in the system.  A lack of oversight can allow sexual predators to take advantage of the program. And when sexual abuse does happen, there is evidence that the students are sent back to their home countries with little or no support from the exchange organizations or the State Department.

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There are more than 80 organizations that pay a fee to get the State Department’s stamp of approval as a "designated sponsor organization." That distinction allows the organizations to place the students with host families for one academic year.  Each organization in turn must follow regulations designed to protect the students from harm.

 

The host families do not receive any compensation, but the students’ parents can pay more than $10,000 for their child’s year abroad. The largest organizations for which there are records take in an average of seven million dollars each year, according to an NBC News review of their Internal Revenue Service filings.

The more students they place, the more revenues for the organizations, and critics say the financial incentives create an environment ripe for abuse.  

"These sponsoring agencies make a lot of money for each of these kids.  The profit margin is very big, and they’re motivated to get them into some house, somewhere, without the proper vetting.  So it's a perfect storm.  It's sort of abuse waiting to happen," said attorney Irwin Zalkin, who along with attorney Andrea Leavitt represented Herbon and three other exchange students sexually abused by a host father and local coordinator for one of the organizations.

GUILLAUME’S STORY

In August 2003, the year before Herbon came to the U.S. as an exchange student, 18-year-old Guillaume L. of Belgium was excitedly packing for his American adventure. He asked that his last name not be used in print.

Guillaume’s parents paid the equivalent of $10,200 for their son's year abroad.  A Belgian agency, World Education program, made the arrangements with an American organization called Educational Resource Development Trust, ERDT.

Guillaume was hoping to live in New York or Los Angeles, but instead ERDT placed him in run-down trailer in rural Arkansas.  His host father was 34-year old Doyle Meyer.

Meyer, his then wife Gigi, and a former exchange student were sharing the cramped trailer when Guillaume moved in.   

“When I first came there, I [had] a little bit of disappointment about the place … and I said to myself, ‘Well, you're here now.  You just have to accommodate yourself and….make the best of it and take it,’” Guillaume said in an exclusive interview with NBC News’ Rock Center.

Guillaume said within a month of his arrival, Meyer started talking about sex, touching and hugging him, and unsuccessfully trying to get him to sleep in his bed with him.

“He would hug me, well, trying to hug me a lot.  He would take my hands and he would ask me to lie on his chest when he was watching TV,” he said.  

He said Meyer bought alcohol and marijuana for other exchange students living nearby, showed them pornographic films, encouraged them to show him their genitals and once measured a male student’s anatomy with his bare hand.  

On a trip to Washington, D.C. with ERDT students and coordinators, Guillaume said Meyer allowed students to videotape two teens having sex, and watched the tape with them. 

The students slept two to a bed in a local motel, and Guillaume said he was assigned to sleep in the same bed as Meyer, who tried to massage his stomach and touch his genitals. Guillaume said he jumped out of the bed.

Once back in Arkansas, Guillaume said he tried to report the molestation and Meyer’s irresponsible behavior to his local coordinator, Pat Whitfield.  He said he set a time to meet with Whitfield, but she called Meyer and invited him to sit in on the meeting.

“So I couldn't say anything I wanted [to say]. But they were like best friends and [Meyer] went to talk to her first,” said Guillaume. 

Guillaume said Meyer became intent on having him expelled from the program in order to silence him. He said Meyer reported him to ERDT executives for driving a car (against the program’s rules) and smoking marijuana, both of which Guillaume admits. 

ERDT did expel Guillaume.  Back home in Belgium, ashamed and shunned by his own family for being kicked out, he found the courage to write an email to ERDT staff detailing what happened to him and other students and warning them that something must be done to protect other students.

“I think that something must be done to stop that as fast as it is possible…because [one] day or another something bad is going to happen,” Guillaume wrote in the email.

After receiving the email, ERDT did not go to the police. Instead, the organization launched its own investigation led by staff who later admitted in a 2010 deposition that they had no experience with an investigation of alleged abuse.

“SWEPT UNDER THE RUG”

Plaintiff attorney Andrea Leavitt said ERDT circled the wagons, protecting the reputation of the organization over the safety of the students for whom the organization was responsible.

“There are no disclosures to parents for the children coming in. There are no disclosures to the kids.  There are no warnings.  Everything is swept under the rug, concealed.  Absolutely every parent's nightmare,” Leavitt said. “They begin to circle the wagons.  And rather than protect the vulnerable kid, they start to protect themselves from liability and exposure,” she said.

ERDT executive Kelli Jones wrote to her staff asking for anything “positive” they knew about Doyle Meyer as she was preparing a report for the Belgian exchange company, WEP.

In August of 2004, two months after Guillaume sent his email, Jones wrote to her staff saying that Meyer should know that ERDT “went to a lot of work, time, and energy to clear his name and support his good reputation.”  She went on to disparage Guillaume, writing, “As far as I’m concerned it may not be over with yet. [Guillaume] may rear his ugly head again.” 

ERDT decided Meyer should not be a host father the following year, but would remain working as a coordinator, whose job it is to supervise students.

According to fellow coordinator Theresa Benevides and host father David Krenn, Meyer was known as a “high placer,” meaning he was able to find an above-average number of families to host students. 

“He placed almost 20 kids. He was very valuable to ERDT because he brought in so much money,” Benevides said. 

A SECOND ROUND OF ABUSE

During the fall of 2004, Meyer served as 16-year old Christopher Herbon’s coordinator.   Herbon said he was unhappy living with an unfriendly elderly couple with no children, isolated in a remote area. He told this to Meyer, and in early 2005 Meyer arranged for the teenager to move in with him.  By this time, Meyer had separated from his wife and was living with another current exchange student on the outskirts of Little Rock.

Herbon said Meyer began to give him alcohol and Oxycontin shortly after he arrived.  He said Meyer would press him to show him his genitals once he was intoxicated, and even gave him male enhancement pills.

“I was afraid that if I wouldn't make him happy, he would kick me out, and that I would be sent home.  I didn't want to disappoint my parents. I was very afraid that he would send me home because my parents would be very disappointed,” he said.

In addition to Herbon, Meyer was sexually abusing other exchange students that academic year.  When one of them finally told Benevides, she alerted the police and Meyer was arrested in May, 2005.

“KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT”

When word got out about the arrest, Benevides said ERDT executives flew to Arkansas and told the local coordinators not to speak about the abuse.  She said at a meeting convened in Arkansas, Jones told her, “Keep your mouth shut.”

Meyer pleaded guilty to first degree sexual assault and served four of a six year sentence. When NBC News reached him by phone at his mother’s Arkansas chicken farm, he refused to comment on this story, saying that his parole was almost up and he wanted to move on with his life.  

In a statement to NBC News, ERDT's lawyer, Michael Sidley said the organization "never engaged in a cover-up of any sort...it was the conduct of ERDT which led to the arrest of Mr. Meyer."

In 2010, attorneys Zalkin and Leavitt filed a civil suit against ERDT on behalf of Guillaume, Herbon, and two other students. ERDT settled the case for an undisclosed amount without admitting liability. 

Kelli Jones, who has since been promoted to President of ERDT, declined to comment on this story.   But in a 2010 deposition, she told Leavitt that she did not consider Guillaume’s account of Meyer’s behavior to be sexual abuse, but rather  “immature idiotic boy behavior.”

The ERDT regional coordinator who handled the investigation is still in the same job. Whitfield, who was Meyer’s friend and fellow coordinator, was fired.  She is now working for another exchange organization hosting and placing students in Arkansas. Whitfield  declined to comment on this story.

STATE DEPARTMENT DEFENDS THE PROGRAM

When asked why ERDT is still operational after a case like this, State Department spokesperson Toria Nuland said that ERDT was one of the organizations that helped the Department draft new regulations in recent years to better protect exchange students from abuse.

“They have been complying as we've strengthened the regulations with the improved standards, which is why we've kept them on our rolls.  They themselves were horrified and victimized by this situation,” Nuland said.

In 2009 the State Department asked the Inspector General to investigate Youth Exchange Programs following a series of reports of mistreatment of exchange students. 

The Inspector General’s scathing report found “insufficient oversight of the youth exchange programs at all levels.” It said communication among staff “borders on unprofessional,” there was a “lack of human and financial resources” in the office running the programs, and an “erroneous assumption” that the exchange organizations monitor themselves.

Nuland said that as a result, the Department increased staff overseeing the program, dropped a number of organizations from the list of designated sponsors, and implemented new regulations to more thoroughly check out host families.

In addition, Nuland said that before exchange students come to America, they now receive a package of information about their rights, and what they should do if they encounter any problems in the U.S. or problems with the host family.

“We are strengthening the checks on the front end, staying with the kids so intensely during the program,” she said.

The State Department did not have a central log of complaints until the 2009-2010 school year, but issued NBC News its data from the 2010-2011 year that showed sexual abuse or harassment was reported by less than one percent of the total number of high school students who spend a year at an American high school. They said that percentage includes any and all harassment, even if it did not involve a host parent. 

“The vast majority of high school foreign exchange students have an enormously gratifying, rich, fantastic American experience that lasts with them for a lifetime,” Nuland said.

But problems in the program persist, and ERDT is not the only organization involved.  Rock Center’s investigation found fourteen different organizations where students had alleged being sexually abused or harassed by a host parent.  Several of the organizations have faced lawsuits for placing students in harm’s way.

Rock Center's broadcast includes an interview with a student who says he was sexually abused by his host father this past Christmas.

Nuland said that from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's point of view even one child abused under these programs is one child too many.  

“Our standard has to be zero tolerance.  So to the degree that which we still have cases reported we are not there yet.  Are the reforms that we've put in place sufficient?  I think we need to watch that over the next couple of months and see where it goes.  But we are absolutely committed to continuing to tighten these regulations and improve this program until we get to zero.”

Editor's Note: Click here to watch Kate Snow's full report, Culture Shock, which aired on Rock Center with Brian Williams.

More from Rock Center:

• Resources on the Foreign Exchange Program
• Critics blame State Department for turning a blind eye to sex abuse
• State Department: Fifty teens allegedly sexually abused or harassed by host parent last year
• State Department defends foreign exchange program

The Associated Press reports from Osan air base, South Korea — As a sleek black U-2 roared back from a mission, Pontiac muscle cars zoomed along the runway to help it touch down using a low-tech method dating back more than half a century to when this Cold War-era aircraft was cutting-edge.

These "chase cars" race down the runway at speeds of more than 120 miles per hour to meet each landing and guide the pilot down.

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They estimate the plane's distance from the ground in feet and radio that to the pilot — "Five ... five ... four ... three ... three" — until the plane is brought to a stall with about two feet to go and essentially drops down to the ground.

"It's notorious for being hard to land," the pilot said after climbing out of the cockpit.

But the legendary U-2 "Dragon Lady" remains one of Washington's most prized possessions on the Cold War's last hot front. Pumped up by a $1 billion overhaul, a trio of these piloted aircraft are proving they can still compete with the most futuristic drones on a crucial mission: spying on North Korea. Read more.

 

Editor's note: Photojournalist Kael Alford spent 10 months covering the invasion of Iraq and its immediate aftermath in 2003-2004. She returned this summer to see what has and hasn’t changed as the U.S. prepared to withdraw its troops. 

By Kael Alford

When I returned to Iraq for the first time in nearly eight years, I went immediately to the home of Karima Methboub to orient myself. It wasn’t easy to find. Like so many people in a country reshuffled by the cruelty of civil war, she had lost her home and, with all but one of her eight children, was eking out a bare-bones existence in a borrowed apartment in Baghdad.

Karima’s children were safe, and doing quite well considering what the family had been through, a first-hand encounter with the deep corruption and dysfunction of the new Iraqi government: Karima’s second-oldest son, Ali, had been arrested in 2007 in a roundup of suspected “Sadrists” – militant supporters of firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr --  at a local café, starting a three-year rollercoaster ride that left the family homeless and deeply in debt.

 

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I had met the Methboubs at the height of the “shock and awe” bombing campaign that launched the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. My life at the time consisted of rotating shifts in a drab hotel room with windows taped to keep them from shattering; anxious tours of destruction and bloody emergency wards on buses chartered by the Iraqi Ministry of Information; and nights interrupted by the nightmarish thunder of U.S. missiles incinerating targets a few miles from my bed.

 

I had an assignment for an American magazine to profile an ordinary Iraqi family and was introduced to Karima through an acquaintance. Though I had a government minder in tow, I felt relief almost from the moment I arrived at her dim and dingy apartment. Despite their financial hardships – she was a widow living on government rations – she insisted on feeding me a lunch of bread and a thin soup She reserved the largest chunk of meat for me as her guest, though I insisted on passing it to her youngest son, 5-year-old Mahmoud.

Karima allowed me free rein of the house on the days when I photographed the children passing time in the apartment and hallway with inventive games. By the end of our visits, I felt like one of her kids. Those days shared with Karima, her squirming children and a mustachioed government man were the closest thing to normal that I found in Baghdad.

When the capital fell to the U.S. Marines weeks later, I went to visit the Methboubs, something I also did frequently over the following two years. Their apartment became the place I went for direction, grounding and spiritual solace.

During our reunion this summer, Karima described the family’s hardships since my last visit in 2004, most of which were centered around Ali’s arrest and the nearly three years he spent in prison.

It happened after an Iftar feast during Ramadan in 2008, when Ali went to a neighborhood coffee shop to smoke a water pipe with his friends and his brother. Suddenly a joint patrol of U.S. forces and an anti-terrorism unit from the Ministry of Interior surrounded the café and told everyone to freeze.

“It was something so scary,” Ali told me this summer. He said he tried to slip a licensed gun he was carrying to his brother Mohammed, who was sitting apart from the main group. “They hit me on the back, then in the face and tore my lip. Then they pulled my T-shirt over my head.”

Then they took him to a prison in Amarah, a Sunni area of Baghdad.

He said he wasn’t charged, but was interrogated and tortured on a daily basis and eventually forced to sign a false confession connecting him to militia activities. He pulled back the hem of his jeans to reveal scars from puncture wounds in his shins where, he said, he was hit with a wooden board with a protruding nail shortly after his arrest.

One officer in particular, a major, was crueler than the others, he said.

“He shocked me (with electricity) in my ears, chest, even my sensitive places,” Ali said, adding that the torture finally led him to invent confessions. “I couldn’t handle it, so I admitted to anything … things I didn’t do, like I killed my cousin, my friends, I kidnapped a relative.”

At one point, he said, American soldiers visited the prison and documented how he had been treated. He was allowed to see a doctor eventually, but was still not released. (Ali’s account matches systematic problems in Iraqi prisons documented in a 2010 Amnesty international report.)

Ali was held for almost another year, the last six months at a local jail, where he was not treated as badly.

During her son’s imprisonment, Karima was beside herself.

“I was a crazy woman,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep at night, couldn’t work in the day. I could only think of getting Ali out of prison.”

It took nearly three years -- and almost $50,000 U.S. paid to multiple prison officials – to finally win Ali’s freedom, she said. The officials never took money at the prison, she said, instead arranging meetings in other locations to take the bribes.

Living on a diminishing widow’s pension, Karima said she had to sell everything she owned -- her apartment, furniture and family keepsakes – to raise the money. She also had to borrow money from relatives and isn’t sure how she will pay it back. The family now lives in the apartment of a sister who is living in the United States.

Ali finally got his day in court in early 2010 and was released when the judge found insufficient evidence against him.

His tribulations weren’t finished. Ali was lucky enough to get his old job back as a security guard at the Ministry of Electricity, but his superiors said he wouldn’t be paid until he could produce papers proving his innocence.

As of July, he’d been back at work for several months without receiving a paycheck. Ali said getting documents that say he’s innocent will likely cost more money that he doesn’t have. In the meantime, he keeps showing up at work and keeps his head down.

Karima’s is grateful to have Ali home and that her other children are OK.

Her daughter Fatima, 22, who had left school at age 12 to help Karima with the other children, was living at home again. Her marriage fell apart as a result of domestic abuse. Fatima’s husband, “was banging her head against the wall,” according to Karima.

Fatima’s uncles negotiated with her ex-husband’s family and reached consensus on the divorce.  That was nearly two years ago, but Fatima was still sleeping late and moping around the family apartment this summer. With only a primary school education, she can’t find decent work. She hopes to find a new husband, but divorce carries a stigma in Iraq, even when it stems from abuse.

Despite the family’s trials, Karima had one success story to share.

Her second-oldest daughter, Amal, was attending the American University in Sulaimani in northern Iraq (Kurdistan) on a scholarship obtained through the U.S. embassy and has survived her freshman year. 

When I first met Amal, she was already speaking English that she learned in school, and practicing with Americans she met. Another American journalist helped her apply for the scholarship at the university, a private school started by Kurdish Regional Prime Minister Baram Salih that offers instruction in English in hopes that a “neutral language” will help dissolve the divides between Iraq’s political and sectarian groups. 

After what happened to her brother, Amal said she hopes to work in Iraq as a lawyer one day, fighting corruption in the court system. She said the first time she told an uncle she wanted to be a lawyer, he asked ‘Why? All lawyers are liars!’. Amal replied “No, I want to be a good one!” Their devotion to each other first drew me to this family, and after eight years I could see how that dedication had sustained them through their struggles. “My priority is my family,” said Amal, sitting on her dorm room bed when I visited her at school. She had developed the force of character I recognized in her mother. “And second is my studies. I have to focus on my studies to make my family proud of me.”

More from the series:

Introduction: As U.S. withdraws, the people speak
For 'the Sheik,' U.S. pullout is cause for alarm
Patchwork electrical grid a symbol of country's disconnects
A new day for culture and consumer goods
For women, freedoms under fire
Suspicious minds in a squatters' camp
Colonel helped with the ‘Surge,’ then his past came calling

 

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