AMY GOODMAN: Now, 30 years after leaving Iraq, Sami Rasouli is returning home. Last month, I had a chance to sit with Sami Rasouli in Minneapolis to talk about this decision. He had become a U.S. citizen, had a successful job here, but is returning home instead. He had made this decision after taking a vacation in Iraq, or rather, visiting his family there a while ago, and it was there that he decided that he had to be in Iraq. This is some of what Sami Rasouli had to say.

SAMI RASOULI: I was in a visit after about 27 years back to Iraq last November of 2003. I had, when I got there, a mixed feeling of very excited to see my family. I had four sisters with about 30-35 nieces and nephews and a really big, big klan of al-Shamiri which has, consists about three million people that cross the Arab peninsula and migrated a long time ago through the Arab world. But in Najaf and Karbala, I have the most closest relatives who I visited with during my visit. While I was happy meeting them and exchanging the experiences, how they lived, how I lived in the west, I was really destroyed by seeing the amount of the destruction and devastated country after the war and also the effects of the sanctions the last 12 years.

AMY GOODMAN: What was the effect when you returned to Najaf, where you grew up?

SAMI RASOULI: First I arrived to Karbala, then next day I continued to Najaf. The effect unfortunately was negative values that people were forced to adopt because of the need, the hunger, the unemployment, kids, age I mean seven to twelve not at a school, outside on the street trying to find anything, jobs, to help their families. The negative effect of their values was a kidnapping, was something we never and the Iraqis never witnessed and had before they kidnapped for ransom and that’s because of the need. Killing and robbing Iraqis, as well, visitors to just acquire their belongings, valuable merchandise or cars and cash. That wasn’t something we know about or just we read about and we know it’s something it’s not in Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: Sami Rasouli, an Iraqi American who has lived for more than 15 years with his family in Minneapolis, deciding to return home to Iraq to Najaf. He leaves the United States today. We did a half-hour interview and you can go to our web site and hear Sami’s story especially what it meant to meet U.S. soldiers when he returned home for a visit to Iraq. But I just wanted to end with, well, his conclusion as we talked after the half hour when I asked Sami, well, what will he do in Iraq when he returns?

SAMI RASOULI: I would do anything. Anything. Probably I’ll start cleaning the streets where my sister lives, and get those kids, who like to listen to their uncle, to come and help me. And probably we do a lots of things and get the people influenced by rebuilding their country again.

AMY GOODMAN: Sami Rasouli. You can hear the whole interview on our web site at democracynow.org. He leaves for his home, Iraq, today.