Boîte à idées

Comme nous l’avons signalé au début de ce travail, la littérature théorique sur la question des interprètes en zones de crise (qu’ils exercent auprès des forces armées ou des organisations internationales et humanitaires) frappe par son absence. C’est en effet un sujet qui après avoir attiré l’attention des journalistes n’attire que depuis peu celle des interprètes en général. On assiste de manière générale à une prise de conscience du problème qui amène peu à peu à la conception de projets et la réalisation de quelques travaux de recherches. Il nous semble qu’à l’heure actuelle, l’information brute sur le sujet commence à être suffisante pour envisager d’aller plus loin. La situation mérite d’être analysée et suivie de près en raison de caractère hautement polémique de cette zone d’ombre de l’interprétation. En effet, les linguistes sont indispensables dans les conflits actuels : avant, pendant et après, mais ils constituent aussi pour reprendre l’expression de M. Guidère leur « part inavouable » à bien des égards. Et ces incidents qui se soldent souvent par des exécutions pures et simple, ces soupçons¹²¹ dont fait état parfois la presse ternissent l’image de la profession. De la même manière, le silence de la profession sur ces interprètes de second rang est regrettable, comme le souligne Eduardo Kahane¹²².

Il conviendrait de profiter de ce gain évident d’intérêt pour faire avancer la réflexion sur cette question et envisager des solutions. L’une des solutions pourrait être de former ces interprètes et donc de concevoir des formations qui leur conviennent. De

121 Voir l’article du Monde en date du 27 août 2008 intitulé « Quatre soldats français auraient été ‘faits prisonniers avant d’être exécutés’ dans l’embuscade en Afghanistan », où la thèse d’une trahison de l’interprète est évoquée.

122 Eduardo Kahane in « Interprètes en zones de conflits : quel est exactement le fond du débat ? » (2008), op. cit.

nombreux outils ou modèles peuvent servir de base de réflexion à cette fin, comme nous l’avons vu précédemment. Mais face aux situations inédites il faut aussi savoir faire preuve d’imagination et d’ouverture d’esprit. Si les formations ou les recherches existantes ne suffisent pas ou ne traitent pas assez précisément certains points, il est essentiel d’aller puiser à d’autres sources. En effet, d’autres corps de métier exercent dans ces contextes, notamment le personnel médical, et semblent avoir déjà prévu un encadrement plus solide pour leur personnel. Les réflexions menées et les mesures prises par les médecins, les infirmiers, et le personnel travaillant avec les demandeurs d’asile visent à faire face à un certain nombre de difficultés que les interprètes rencontrent aussi. Leur démarche peut tout a fait être étudiée, reprise et adaptée aux spécificités du métier d’interprète. Autrement dit, il nous semble essentiel de cultiver une forme d’interdisciplinarité afin de cerner les difficultés au plus près et d’évaluer les différentes solutions possibles en s’appuyant sur l’expertise d’autres acteurs.

Conclusion

Les conflits modernes ignorent frontières et frontières linguistiques, pour reprendre l’expression de Barbara Moser-Mercer et Grégoire Bali. Or, que ce soit durant la phase de préparation, pendant le conflit lui-même ou la période de reconstruction qui s’ensuit, les frontières linguistiques sont une réalité. Ainsi la victoire d’une guerre ou la réussite d’une mission humanitaire dans certains contextes ne dépendent pas seulement de la logistique mais aussi de la capacité à appréhender linguistiquement et culturellement le contexte. C’est pourquoi les interprètes, traducteurs et linguistes en tout genre jouent un rôle essentiel dans le déroulement tant des opérations militaires que des activités humanitaires, ils sont indispensables mais restent souvent dans l’ombre.

Cette opacité et ce silence qui les entourent ne sont pas seulement une question de confidentialité, ils dissimulent aussi souvent une méconnaissance du métier d’interprète ou de traducteur, tant de la part de ceux qui le pratiquent que de ceux qui y recourent. L’impact des interprètes sur l’issue de la communication est souvent sous-estimé. Les personnes travaillant avec des interprètes sur le terrain reconnaissent cependant volontiers qu’un interprète expérimenté facilite véritablement la communication alors qu’un interprète ad hoc peut enrayer la circulation du flux d’information. De la même manière, les responsabilités endossées par les interprètes

dans des situations extrêmes sont elles aussi sous-estimées. Or, il est difficile de faire valoir une profession, de délimiter le rôle de chacun et de défendre une déontologie du métier lorsque ceux qui l’exercent n’ont pas pleinement conscience qu’il s’agit d’un métier à part entière qui implique un ensemble de responsabilités.

Face à ce constat, ce travail visait à rendre compte de l’expérience de son auteur en tant qu’interprète en mission pour le CICR afin de cerner les difficultés de l’exercice dans ce type de contexte. Il s’agissait avant tout de proposer un cadre de réflexion en s’appuyant sur des exemples concrets. Dans un premier temps, nous avons présenté le contexte d’exercice, c’est-à-dire le CICR, afin d’expliquer quel rôle qu’y jouent les interprètes pour ensuite regarder de plus près en quoi consiste leur travail au quotidien.

Cet exposé nous a permis de dresser une typologie des difficultés rencontrées afin de réfléchir dans la dernière partie aux solutions envisageables pour y faire face. Un grand nombre de difficultés résultent sans aucun doute du manque de formation, mais aussi parfois du manque de ressources humaines. En effet, s’il est difficile de trouver un interprète compétent anglais<>arabe, d’une origine qui garantit sa neutralité par rapport à sa région d’affectation, que dire alors d’un interprète pachtou<>anglais ou même amharique ?

Les réflexions proposées quant aux besoins et à d’éventuelles formations ne le sont qu’à titre indicatif. La difficulté principale consiste en effet à conjuguer rigueur et exigence à pragmatisme et réalisme. Une formation devra s’ancrer de plain-pied dans un contexte d’exercice relativement contraignant (matériellement notamment). Il nous semble que peu à peu les bases pour des projets futurs se posent, et que le constat du

manque de formation et de la nécessité subséquente d’y remédier sont presque communément admis. Dès lors, on peut se demander comment organiser des formations ? Qui les organiserait, et pour qui ? Sous quel format ? Plusieurs possibilités s’offrent et ne demandent qu’à être explorées, et éprouvées. Ce travail ne prétend pas offrir plus qu’un aperçu qui, peut-être, nourrira la réflexion de recherches ultérieures sur la question.

Annexes

Annexe I

Script de l’émission : Face the Facts, BBC Radio 4

FACE THE FACTS

And many came forward freely to work for the British and American forces and the Coalition Provisional Authority which would run Iraq until elections could be organised.

This week, however, we'll be investigating the price many of those Iraqis have paid for that help. And in particular the fate of many interpreters whose skills were so vital to the occupying forces. It's thought that around 6,000 interpreters signed up to work with the British and Americans. But by doing so, many fear that they signed their own death warrants too.

Because, regarded by armed insurgents as "collaborators", many have been deliberately targeted and brutally murdered. Others have been forced to flee Iraq or to go into hiding with their families. And yet when they've turned for help to the very forces which employed them - their pleas all too often have fallen on deaf ears. Even if they tried to protect their identity - especially whilst translating at crucial interrogations - by helping the

occupying powers, they themselves became targets.

LOAY

I remember one incident when we were up to arrest one of the [indistinct word] militia. I was wearing black balaclava but he just stood in my face and said: "If I know who you are I will kill you someday".

WAITE

And that was not an idle threat. The Ministry of Defence told us it only knows of four deaths among interpreters - which had occurred whilst they were working alongside British forces. But, as we'll be reporting, many more interpreters have been murdered on the streets, in their homes as a reprisal. In fact we estimate that as many as 250 Iraqi civilian interpreters who've worked for the coalition have been killed during the conflict. That's almost a hundred more than the death toll among British soldiers.

WHEATLEY

The interpreter is on the frontline, it's actually the interpreter who is standing talking to Iraqis in the street or maybe even the insurgents.

WAITE

So they're literally the voice of the British forces?

WHEATLEY Interpreting - which represents some 3,000 members in 40 countries across the world. Members whose role goes far beyond merely translating one language into another.

WHEATLEY

The interpreter offers a method of communication that brings trust and understanding in very, very difficult circumstances. They understand the Iraqi culture. An interpreter is also a local knowledge specialist. They're one of the key factors in bringing democracy to these countries.

ALI (Phone call) WAITE

This is Mr Ali - we're withholding his real name because he fears that

revealing it could jeopardise the lives of both him and his family. He's 65 years old, and, before the war, was a successful and well paid computer systems analyst in Iraq. Life changed dramatically, however, after both he and his 27-year-old son took jobs with the British Forces, and then with the US and British led Coalition Provisional Authority.

Mr Ali enjoyed his job as one of the most senior of interpreters, but he also came to realise that doing it meant he had become a marked man among the armed militia groups who were opposing the coalition forces. Fellow interpreters began to be targets - his closest colleague and her husband were gunned down in the street. The husband was killed, and though his wife survived she has three bullets lodged in her body. We spoke to her for the making of this programme but her current employers wouldn't permit her to be recorded.

So Mr Ali was in no doubt about the dangers he was facing - and with which, one day last December, he was to come face to face when gunmen visited his family home.

ALI

It was about two o'clock in the afternoon and we were expecting visitors to come - my wife in the kitchen making cakes and dips and this and that.

When the door was knocked I thought it was the guests. So I walked to the door and my wife was behind me and we opened the door and there were three people - men - standing there with guns. They handcuffed us from behind, they put blindfold on our eyes and they put Sellotape on my mouth.

They were asking about the safe and the guns, whether we have guns. I was trying to reply to them but because of the Sellotape I couldn't do anything. But I felt somebody knelt in front of me and I think he inserted a knife to make a slit, so I could talk to him. At that moment my son came in and I heard my son saying what's happening, who are you? They saying we are from the Madhi Army and we are here because you cooperated with

So you thought you were going to die?

ALI

Yes I knew, I knew that my son and my wife. It seemed to me they want to try to put more pressure on me because they took their blindfold off my eyes. It's not easy to see a gun pointed at your son.

WAITE No.

ALI

I saw my son lying on his stomach with a hood on his head with a gun behind his back. My wife - I saw her blindfolded also. I couldn't sleep for a long time. The only thing I can tell you is God moves in a mysterious way.

He just - our time was not up.

WAITE

So what happened - they just went?

ALI

They just said okay, I don't think they need to be killed. While the other one said - Look we came here to kill them. So the boss, who was standing in the middle, I don't know, he just turned and said - Okay we'll give you four days, if I come back in four days and see you I'm going to kill all of you.

WAITE

Mr Ali knew the threat was serious. And so the family fled Iraq immediately - too frightened to even go to the bank to withdraw their savings. In fact, it was not the first time that Mr Ali had been intimidated. In January 2006 - two years after he quit working as an interpreter - militia gunmen had ordered he close down the shop he had opened because its customers included soldiers and coalition personnel. He knew that a so-called death list of "collaborators" had been drawn up by the Madhi Army - the armed wing of the radical Shi'ite movement led by Muqtada Al Sadr. And being such a senior interpreter, he was certain that his name would be on it.

So why did Mr Ali quit his comfortable life as a systems analyst before the invasion, to take a job with the Coalition Provisional Authority in the first place.

ALI

When the CPA started you've got to understand they inherit something bad;

you know they inherit poverty, they inherit no electricity, no water, not interpreting positions. He was pleased, he says, to see the back of Saddam and to help build a better Iraq in the fallen dictator's wake. A desire for a better future that inspired many Iraqis to offer their services to the coalition.

ALDERSON

They very much believed that this was the bright new hope. We had come to bring stability because if - as one of them once put it - if the British and Americans if they can land a man in the moon well they can bring us electricity.

WAITE

It was Andrew Alderson there who recruited Mr Ali, and dozens of others, to work for Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority. He's a Major in the Territorial

Army and was posted to a tour of duty in Iraq in 2003. Because of his background in merchant banking, however, he ended up being the chief financial administrator for Basra and the whole of southern Iraq with a budget of billions of dollars to help re-build the country. None of that could go ahead, he says, without skilled interpreters - although the recruitment process for them was somewhat unorthodox.

ALDERSON

You've got to try and figure out who's real and who isn't and who's got an agenda and who hasn't. So often it would be through word of mouth, once we'd found one person you'd find that - you'd think well okay I trust what you're saying, look 'em in the eye - there's no recruitment agency in Basra you can ring up and say look I'm looking for five interpreters wondered if you could help. Instead you've got to get out there and just pad the pavements.

WAITE

So there wasn't really a set procedure - it was pretty informal, had to be?

ALDERSON Yes, absolutely.

WAITE

Mr Ali was recruited in just this way, and spent an initial four months as a translator for the British Army. Then he was promoted to the burgeoning Coalition Provisional Authority.

ALI

I was in the middle between the Iraqis and the British. Appointments, finding out what was required. I used to go out and bring the information.

That is why the director always says to me you are my eyes and my ears.

WAITE

For all his hard work though - as the eyes and ears of the British - Mr Ali was intimidated, his shop closed down and a very real threat made on the life of both him and his family. And yet when they were forced to flee Iraq, and eventually made their way to this country in January this year, those self same British authorities were less than understanding when it came to Mr Ali's claim for political asylum and he was refused the right to stay here.

In his application he'd outlined why he had a "well founded fear of persecution" if he returned to Iraq - detailing the incident in which he, his son and his wife were all bound, gagged and blindfolded and had guns pressed to their heads. His British employer in Basra may have found him

"completely trustworthy". In its reply to his application, however, the Home Office clearly did not:

HOME OFFICE RESPONSE TO APPLICATION

Although it is accepted that incidents like you have described do happen in Iraq it is not accepted that this happened to you. Therefore you would not be able to justify a well-founded fear of persecution. It is believed that the

Madhi Army were only targeting your son and you exaggerated the risk to include yourself and your wife. In the light of all the evidence available it has been concluded that you do not qualify for asylum.

ALI

I don't have any proof, you know, except my wife's word, my son's word and myself because I was there with my wife when they came in and my son came later and we went through these ordeals - three of us. People living in front of me did see these three people going in and going out, they could link them to the militia.

WAITE

The Home Office also said that the threats from the militia were only directed at your son and not at you and your wife.

ALI

My car is a Caprice white and my son's car is BMW maroon. When they came to the house my car alone was in front of the house, myself, they came after me but it was a bonus when my son came later.

WAITE

And they got him too.

ALI

And they got him too, like I told the Home Office.

WAITE

And so when we first spoke to Mr Ali he was facing the prospect of having to leave Britain. Meanwhile, the ongoing perils for interpreters in Iraq are being highlighted in a series of video films, taken by insurgents, of their often bloody and brutal fate. Alan Wheatley, who represents interpreters around the world, has seen such a video, and the horrifying message the footage is meant to send out.

WHEATLEY

An Iraqi interpreter had been filmed being dragged out of his house into the middle of the street, his throat was cut with a blunt knife and he was stabbed in the chest a number of times and then died in the street. They film their death squads and then they circulate the movie and this is to warn others not to work for the coalition forces.

LOAY

In the beginning it was just $60 a month and it's nothing in Iraq.

In the beginning it was just $60 a month and it's nothing in Iraq.