Death Threats Make Progress Difficult in Iraq

Dec. 2, 2004 -- -- Iraqis who cooperate with U.S.-led efforts to rebuild their country run a terrible risk. Anyone working with Americans is a potential target for the insurgents.

In the northern city of Mosul, dozens of Iraqi National Guard troops have been killed in the last two weeks -- because they were helping Americans.

In the last month there have been attacks on police in nearly every major Iraqi city.

Today many Iraqis are afraid to work with Americans because of the campaign of intimidation.

"We're having a hard time keeping interpreters because they are being threatened," said Army Capt. Matthew McGrew. "If they find out who they are, the AIF -- the anti-Iraqi forces -- threaten to kill them or kill their families."

One Iraqi man, who spoke to ABC News through a translator under condition of anonymity, says he loved his work as a U.S. Army translator -- but now he's afraid.

"We were helping the soldiers to understand our life itself," the man said, "because it is totally different than their own lives."

The man says he left his job after a year, worried that it had become too dangerous.

Those fears were realized when he received a chilling, increasingly common death threat on his front door -- an envelope with a bullet inside.

"Once I saw that envelope I felt, 'Now it is my turn'," said the man. "Everything in my life is going to be turned upside down."

Now the man lives on the run, afraid even to visit his family.

"My mom started crying as if I am dead," he said. "I was alive physically, but spiritually, I was almost dead."

Iraqis in almost every walk of life are under attack.

Hameed Al Sadoon is the head of European Studies at the University of Baghdad. He says he knows of 60 professors who have been killed, and says more than 75 from his own university have fled the country.

Though Sadoon says he has not received any threats himself, he has changed the way he teaches.

"I watch what I say in class," Sadoon said, "because I don't really know who the students are."