Iraqi POWs Get a Howdy in New Hampshire Town : Relocation: U.S. Army sergeant is sponsoring the former enemies. They have jobs and local sweethearts.

It’s square-dancing night at Karl’s Fine Food, and the place is rocking.

The room is a swaying sea of faces, mainly older and white; men in black Stetsons and string ties; women with flared skirts and heavy makeup. Out there in the middle of the swirling hips, looking as conspicuous as all get out, is Ali Abdul Hassan.

But he joins right in, keeping step, doing the “honky tonk stomp” and the “cowboy hip hop.” He’s smiling and they’re smiling and everyone is whirling and promenading their partners--and nobody seems to remember or care that Hassan was once the enemy, an officer in the Iraqi army, a man trained to turn his artillery battery on the U.S. ground and air forces in Operation Desert Storm.

Sitting proudly at a nearby table is Eric Marsh, an Army master sergeant during the Persian Gulf War who for the last year has been Hassan’s sponsor in the United States. Thirteen days ago, he also took in Hassan’s two brothers, both of them Iraqi soldiers, too.

But then, ain’t this America?

U.S. veterans around the country--and almost 100 lawmakers in Washington--are angrily demanding that the Administration stop spending taxpayer money--estimated at between $4,000 and $7,000 per person--to resettle up to 4,000 Iraqi prisoners of war and their families. But the government’s unusual experiment seems to be working in this tiny New Hampshire town. And some people in Belmont suggest that other communities think again before jumping on the anti-resettlement bandwagon.

Even the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post has no objections to the Hassan brothers moving to town, taking local jobs in construction and local girls as sweethearts and trying to make a go of it in American society.

“We just feel that the Iraqi soldiers were no different than our soldiers,” said post commander Frank Bedard, a veteran of World War II.

He said he knows that the relocation of Japanese or German soldiers to this country in 1945 would have been unthinkable, but he sees the situation today as different.

“It is the government of Iraq, not the people, that we have the problem with,” he said. “And like any soldiers, they were just doing what they were told.”

Marsh, now an engineer in the Army Reserve, has no patience with those who say it is wrong to allow the Iraqis into this country, particularly when many families are still grieving from the loss of U.S. soldiers killed or wounded in Desert Storm.

Marsh is 53 and married for the second time, and the three Hassan brothers who live with him in his truncated chalet just outside of town have become something like a new set of teen-age sons. Originally from Boston, Marsh acknowledges that his dander and his brogue get heated up when he hears calls to close our borders to the former enemies.

“These critics want to . . . moan, but they don’t have a thing to bitch about,” he said. He noted that when tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers surrendered in the desert before and during the Gulf War, it made possible a safer and quicker end to the conflict for the United States and its partners in the United Nations-led coalition.

“It meant that that many fewer bullets were fired at American troops,” Marsh said. “It meant we had to send fewer of my friends in my unit back in body bags.”

He also dismisses the notion that these “unwanted refugees” are taking jobs away from Americans. He said Hassan was hired at a $300-a-week construction job only after the position was advertised for two months with no takers. “These guys want to pay their own way,” he said.

Ali Hassan is 30 years old, a scrawny young man who spent 10 years in the Iraqi military, rising to the rank of lieutenant. His brothers, Naseer, 36, and Mohamed, 28, were also conscripted into Saddam Hussein’s army. All three fought in and believed in Hussein’s “holy war” against Iran during the 1980s.

But things changed.

They said two other brothers were executed by Hussein when they refused to join his Arab Baath Socialist Party. Suspicion was cast on the three surviving brothers, with Iraqi officials questioning whether they also might be disloyal. Then came the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August, 1990, and the tense standoff in which Iraqi arms were pointed at the U.N. forces.

Before the fighting actually began, the Hassan brothers, like many other disillusioned soldiers, simply put down their weapons and walked away.

Ali described how three days before the start of the ground war in February, 1991, the brothers hopped over a little wooden gate and, their hands held high, turned themselves in to U.S. troops.

“We weren’t worried,” Naseer said. “The United States’ airplanes had dropped these papers from the sky that said: ‘Welcome. You will be safe if you surrender. If you want political asylum, you must put your guns down.’ ”

Added Ali: “We just didn’t want to fight anymore.”

Certain that their fate would be death if they repatriated to Iraq, the brothers searched for some way to leave the prison camps in Saudi Arabia and gain passage to another country.

Ali said he wrote to Australia, Britain and France but found no sponsors. Then he remembered Marsh.

“I met him at the camp, and we would talk and drink coffee and tea,” Ali said. “We talked about TV, politics, sports. We talked about life in Iraq and life in America.”

Marsh had gone back to New Hampshire by the time the brothers were searching for a new home. Ali sent him a plea for help. “Do you still remember an officer called Ali?” he wrote in his letter. “I still have no bright idea about our future.”

Marsh answered the letter immediately. “Yes,” he wrote, “I will do all I can to get you over here with us. I will start immediately to get the process started. . . . I am in touch with all of my soldiers. They will also be pleased to hear about you.

“Please be patient,” he added. “Time will quickly pass and we will share tea again.”

Eleven months ago, after passing security clearances, Ali was flown to New Hampshire. Marsh met him on the Tarmac; the two former enemies hugged. Tears were shed, especially when an airport concessionaire handed Ali a T-shirt emblazoned with New Hampshire’s motto, “Live Free or Die.”

Marsh was paid $392 in government assistance to help buy Ali new clothes and other provisions. Ali said he already has paid back the $775 in transportation costs incurred by the government to bring him here, as he is required to do. He also pays Marsh $75 a week in room and board.

Ali’s new girlfriend, Paula Freeman, is the daughter of one of Ali’s co-workers at the construction company (She is the one who insisted they learn square dancing.) He recently learned to drive, purchased a battered Ford Escort and already has got his first speeding ticket.

He has given speeches in his still-rough English to civic groups around town, including Marsh’s Reserve unit. Marsh introduces him as his good friend, “Ali Baba.”

On political matters, he is not a great admirer of George Bush; he criticizes the former President for not extending the Gulf War into Iraq and capturing Hussein. While he harbors no plans to return to Iraq, he also does not want to relinquish his Iraqi citizenship to become an American.

One final thing: At the square dance, he refuses to wear a cowboy hat. But he will do-si-do, even if his brothers think he looks silly.

“This is America,” Ali said with a grin. “In America, you can do everything, and have everything you want. I came here because I wanted to be happy.”