Thousands of Iraqis risked everything to work for the U.S.-led occupation because they believed in democracy. Serving as interpreters, civil society experts and reconstruction contractors, they set out to build a new Iraq.
Today, they are targeted by insurgents as "traitors" and marked for death. Because their pleas for refuge in the United States have fallen on deaf ears at the highest levels of government, they are fleeing their homes and joining millions of Iraqi refugees in what has become the world's fastest-growing humanitarian crisis.
Frustrated by the government's abandonment of its "Iraqi allies," a small group of Americans is taking matters into their own hands. Led by Kirk Johnson, a former USAID employee in Baghdad and Fallujah, a coalition of private citizens, soldiers and lawyers is compiling a comprehensive list of those in gravest danger, and one-by-one, doing everything they can to help these Iraqis start new lives. THE PROMISE OF FREEDOM is a documentary feature that traces the intersecting stories of U.S.-affiliated Iraqis and the Americans who believe it is an urgent moral obligation to help them.
The film follows their difficult journeys from Iraq to Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and for some, on to their new homes in America. Through their eyes, we will see the Iraq War in a new light.
