They risked their lives to help British and US armed forces. Now Britain is turning its back on the Iraqi civilians facing a tidal wave of hatred in their home land. By Neil Mackay

THE "aameel" are the pariahs of Iraq. The Sunnis want to kill them. The Shias want to kill them. Even the Iraqi police see them as traitors. That's what the Arabic word "aameel" translates as: traitor, agent or collaborator. It is used to describe the ordinary, civilian Iraqis who decided to work for coalition forces - the US and UK armies. The aameel have become the easiest targets for insurgents and religious extremists, and they have died in their droves.

These are people who risked everything - their lives and the lives of their families and children - in the belief that Britain and America would bring peace, democracy and wealth to the country they loved. Today, with Iraq in chaos and the UK on the verge of pulling out of the country, they are abandoned.

Not only is it almost impossible for an Iraqi who served with the British armed forces to secure refugee status in the UK, but Iraqis currently living in the UK and claiming political asylum are being returned in their hundreds to a country where death is ever present. Any Iraqi seen as a collaborator and who remains behind once Britain leaves its southern command in Basra is as good as dead.

Those in most danger are the interpreters. The men and women who work in the public eye with British and American armed forces.

More than 90 interpreters serving with the British military and diplomatic corps have been told by Downing Street they will get no special treatment. They will not get automatic asylum, despite the acute danger awaiting them when the troops pull out. Translators working for British forces in Basra have already been kidnapped, tortured and killed.

The British government's stance has scandalised the armed forces, with military brass saying it is a matter of honour and morality that the UK saves these people in return for the service they have given this country. Yet British political policy is condemning them to death.

Major Andrew Alderson says his interpreter was held by militia while guns were pointed at his wife and children. He was told to get out within three days. "Yet, when I took up his case with the Home Office," said Alderson, "he was immediately turned down for refugee status."

J Kaiby, an interpreter, has been forced to live inside the British command post at Basra after an attack by an armed gang on his home. "Anyone who works for the coalition in whatever way is under the threat of attack," he said. "No-one shows any mercy to an interpreter when they catch one. They will cut him into pieces to show other people this is the fate of anyone who works with the coalition."

Not only is the UK government refusing to help Iraqis who endanger their lives every day to help British soldiers, it is also sending back more refugees to Iraq than it did before the war. The proof is contained in government statistics.

Latest figures show 1415 Iraqis - including 170 children with no parents - applied for asylum in the UK in 2005. Of those, only five were granted asylum. That's just 0.35% of all Iraqis asking not to be sent back.

Immigration figures show that when Iraq was under Saddam's rule - and at peace - it was far easier for an Iraqi to find a safe haven in Britain. After the invasion it became almost impossible for one of its nationals to gain asylum in the UK. In 2002, the year before the war started, 715 Iraqis were declared refugees and given asylum; in 2003, the figure was down to 70; the following year, it had dropped to 10, and in 2005 it stood at five.

The number of Iraqis not recognised as refugees but granted exceptional leave to remain in the UK on humanitarian grounds also plummeted. In 2002, the figure was 8195; in 2003, it was 2155; in 2004, the number had fallen to 185, and by 2005, it was down to 155.

The number of people returned each year to Iraq has also increased with the pace of the growing violence. In 2002 - the year before the war - there were only 195 Iraqis deported; in 2003, the figure was 280; in 2004, the number had grown to 770, and, by 2005, 1040 were sent back home. One of the few nations to see more of its people than Iraq turned down as refugees and forced to return to their home country was Afghanistan.

When Britain is compared with other coalition members, its record of care for the Iraqis who put their life on the line to work alongside UK forces is woeful. Denmark airlifted 200 Iraqi translators and their families to Copenhagen ahead its troops pulling out of Iraq last month.

The country took the decision after one of its interpreters was murdered in December. Bo Eric Weber, the Danish ambassador to Iraq, said: "They had been working for us for about four years and those who felt their security in Iraq was threatened have been granted visas."

The Home Office has been wrong-footed by its hard-nosed approach to immigration. "We are extremely grateful," a government official said last night, "for the service of locally employed staff in Iraq and take their security very seriously. We recognise there are concerns about the safety of former employees. Government keeps all such issues under review and we will now look again at the assistance we provide.

"The total number of Iraqis who have worked for us since 2003 with a claim to assistance could be 15,000. We therefore need to consider the options carefully."

However, asked to provide information about these 15,000 people, Ministry of Defence officials were stumped. They didn't know what they'd worked as, who they were or where they were from. Some military sources say the figure is vastly inflated and a possible scare tactic employed to trammel up worries over a flood of Iraqi refugees coming to the UK.

Amnesty International's UK refugee programme director, Jan Shaw, said the organisation opposed any forcible return of asylum seekers to "any part of Iraq. In postconflict situations people should not be returned unless there is stability and a durable peace - neither of these is true in Iraq".