US soldier of Pakistan origin Killed in Iraq
Pakistan Times Foreign Desk Report

NEW YORK (US): The family members of a slain US soldier of Pakistani origin are being given a run around by the authorities as they want his body be sent to Karachi for burial, a media report said on Saturday.

Azhar Ali, 27, a specialist - a junior American military rank - was killed in Baghdad Wednesday, along with a fellow soldier of Myanmar origin, when a roadside bomb destroyed the vehicle in which they were patrolling the troubled highway that runs between the airport and the Green Zone, a fortified area of government buildings.

Both Specialist Ali and his colleague Wai Phyo Lwin, also 27-year-old and a specialist, are residents of New York’s borough of Queens.

Neither Specialist Ali nor Specialist Lwin was married, military officials said. They said a memorial service planned for Monday at a military base in Baghdad would include an Islamic cleric and a Buddhist priest.

Specialist Azhar Ali’s brothers in Flushing, Queens - his parents returned to Pakistan some years ago - reacted with disbelief to the knock at their door from military personnel whose mission was to tell them their brother was dead.

The brothers had spoken with him by cellphone only hours before he died.

His brother Mazhar, 23, said Specialist Ali had asked for video games. Mazhar Ali said he had planned to send him some new titles, along with contact lenses.

The Alis said their dealings with the military since learning of their brother’s death on Wednesday evening had been “problematic”, the reports said.

Another brother, Zulfiqar Ali, 33, said the family wanted Specialist Ali’s body sent to Pakistan for burial there.

They said although they gave the soldiers at the door their father’s telephone number in Karachi, he heard nothing official until yesterday.

Zulfiqar said there had been a series of phone calls between military officials and the family in Queens, who reiterated that Specialist Ali should be buried within 24 hours of his death under the Islamic code.

He said late Friday in Karachi, someone called and told his father to go to the United States Embassy to fill out papers.

But the caller also told him that the embassy was closing for the weekend and suggested that he go there on Monday.

A telephone call to the Army’s public affairs office was not returned Friday night.

The family said Specialist Azhar Ali, the second youngest of nine children, went to New York when he was 14. He graduated from John Bowne High School in Flushing and joined the military about six years ago.

After 9/11, they said, he patrolled Grand Central Terminal and was sent to Korea.

A cousin, Sunny Sharif, said Specialist Ali was a quiet, dedicated soldier. If a call came for an assignment, Sharif said: “He never said no. He pulled on his pants and he was out.”

Mazhar Ali said after leaving the military, his brother hoped to become a New York City police officer.●