To Be a Friend Is Fatal

The Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind

By: Kirk W. Johnson

Narrated by: Kirk W. Johnson

In January 2005 Kirk Johnson, then twenty-four, arrived in Baghdad as USAID's only American employee who spoke Arabic. Despite his opposition to the war, Johnson felt called to civic duty and wanted to help rebuild Iraq. Appointed as USAID's first reconstruction coordinator in Fallujah, he traversed the city's IED-strewn streets, working alongside idealistic Iraqi translators - young men and women sick of Saddam, filled with Hollywood slang, and enchanted by the idea of a peaceful, democratic Iraq. It was not to be.

As sectarian violence escalated, Iraqis employed by the U.S. coalition found themselves subject to a campaign of kidnapping, torture, and death. On his first brief vacation, Johnson, swept into what doctors later described as a "fugue state," crawled onto the ledge outside his hotel window and plunged. He would spend the next year in an abyss of depression, surgery, and PTSD - crushed by having failed in Iraq. One day, Johnson received an email from an Iraqi friend, Yaghdan: "People are trying to kill me and I need your help."

After being identified by a militiaman, Yaghdan had emerged from his house to find the severed head of a dog and a death threat. That email launched Johnson's mission to get help from the U.S. government for Yaghdan and thousands like him abandoned in Iraq. The List Project has now helped more than 1,500 Iraqis find refuge in America. To Be a Friend Is Fatal is Kirk W. Johnson's unforgettable portrait of the human rubble of war.

©2013 Kirk W. Johnson (P)2013 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Kirk Johnson is one of the few genuine heroes of America's war in Iraq.... Johnson's story is about America's shame, and also its honor. This is an essential book." (Dexter Filkins, author of The Forever War)

A tough man with an even tougher story.

An "ordinary" person who accomplished extraordinary greatness with his commitment to help refugees! BRAVO ZULU!

Heartbreaking but important

This is a heartbreakingly sad tale of bureaucratic negligence and political cowardice by both the Bush and Obama administrations. The US government abandoned the Iraqi citizens who tried to help the US in the aftermath of the war; those are left to fend for themselves against the insurgents who all too often kill and terrorize them. It is very simply and movingly told by Kirk Johnson, who worked with these Iraqis and then worked against the system to try to rescue them. Highly recommended.