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Playwright's Note
by George Packer
An Iraqi translator (right) translates procedures during a joint neighborhood patrol between Iraqi police with a special weapons and tactics team and U.S. Army soldiers. Because they are targeted as
In January 2007, I made my sixth trip to Iraq since the start of the war. My assignment from The New Yorker magazine was to write about the Iraqis who had gone to work for Americans—as interpreters, drivers, office managers, secretaries—and who were being hunted down by insurgents and militias for the crime of being “spies.” I found that the U.S. government was treating the peril in which these Iraqis found themselves as a bureaucratic nuisance.
The stories I heard during hours of interviews with Iraqis in Baghdad, Kurdistan, Syria, Jordan and Sweden, where some of them had become refugees, created a narrative of the war’s trajectory—from initial hopes, through acts of courage and sacrifice amid growing danger, to a slow, reluctant disillusionment. Even after the article was published in the March 26, 2007 New Yorker, their voices stayed in my head. I wanted to do these individuals and the moral complexity of their situation more justice than even long-form journalism can effect. Their stories became the bases for Betrayed, my first play. I hope that it will bring American audiences into the twilit world of those Iraqis who risked the most and lost the most.
Glossary of Terms
Jaish al-Mahdi, or JAM: The Mahdi Army, a hard-line Shia militia led by Moqtada al-Sadr.
Alaas (pl. alaasa): a new Iraqi term for lookouts and informers who work for militias and insurgents. Literally “the one who chews.”
RSO: The Regional Security Officer, in charge of security at the U.S. Embassy.
DOS: Department of State.
DHS: Department of Homeland Security.
DOD: Department of Defense.
MOI: The Iraqi Ministry of Interior.
Habibi: Arabic term of endearment.
Assassins’ Gate: One of the principal points of entry into the Green Zone, the American zone in central Baghdad, named after a U.S. Army unit positioned there.
Masalama: Arabic for goodbye.
Hijab: Arabic for veil, covering the head of a woman.
Sadr City: A large, overwhelmingly Shia area of northeast Baghdad, named after the father of Moqtada al-Sadr, a Shia cleric.
FSO: Foreign Service Officer.
FSN: Foreign Service National, a local employee of the U.S. Department of State.
Ansar al-Sunna: an extreme Sunni insurgent group.
Haram: Arabic for forbidden.
1920 Revolution Brigades: a Sunni insurgent group.
Askari shrine: An ancient Shia shrine in Samarra. It was blown up in February 2006, probably by al Qaeda, escalating Iraq’s civil war between Shia and Sunni.
Sadrists: followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, interchangeable with the Mahdi Army.
