BOISE (AP) - In the past year, more than 9,000 of the 56,000 refugees who came to the U.S. came from Iraq. Iraqis now represent one of the largest groups of refugees in Idaho.

In the past five years, 912 Iraqi refugees have arrived in the state - 93 in the last year. Thousands more Iraqi men and women who worked for the U.S. military are in the country on special immigrant visas.

According to the Idaho Office for Refugees, the number of refugees from the Near East/South Asia (Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan) will continue to grow as post-war resettlement efforts continue.

Like any population, immigrants are mobile, moving for job opportunities or to be closer to family members in other cities. Officials don't know how many Iraqis have stayed in Idaho over the years, said Kara Fink, communications specialist with the IOR.

But many have stayed. Two men who told their stories to the Idaho Statesman share a concern for the chaos and uncertainty in their home country after the departure of U.S. troops.

Before the war began, Hayder Alrubaye, 27, was in school in Baghdad. He was studying English and planning to become a basketball coach.

A little more than a year after arriving in the U.S., the Baghdad native is living in a Boise apartment. He translates for local refugee resettlement agencies. He also works nights, from 10 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., at a food processing plant.

He'll start at Boise State University this semester. He wants to study criminal justice. He's still figuring out how he's going to juggle school, work and helping his family.

During the war, Alrubaye worked as a translator in Iraq for the U.S. military. He, his sister and nephew came to Idaho as refugees.

In 2005, assassins killed Alrubaye's mother because of her position as a head mistress at a school and because she was a member of one branch of Islam, Shia, in an area where the Sunni branch was the majority.

Alrubaye said his mother's death was just one example of the unrest in his home country. Life remains impossible there, he said, with broken infrastructure, frequent power outages and the constant threat of violence.

Iraqi immigrant Michael Paul doesn't call the war in Iraq a war.

"For me, it is the revolution of American love in Iraq," he said.

Paul, 41, who took a westernized name upon his baptism at an American base in Iraq, worked as an interpreter for the U.S. Army and Navy for more than two years. He arrived in the U.S. nine months ago on a special immigrant visa.

He lives in Post Falls. He opened a barbershop, calling on training he got at the French embassy in Baghdad when he was a teenager.

"I also gave haircuts on the base. It was a natural thing to open a shop here. God had prepared me 25 years ago," he said.

Lately he has become an uncle-like figure for homesick Arabic-speaking students studying at local universities. He counsels them as he cuts their hair.

Paul is unlike many of his fellow immigrants. For him, work with the U.S. military had as much to do with spirituality as with politics.

"My goal was serving the American military in Iraq because I believe it was a kind of ministry," Paul said.

He converted from Islam to Christianity in 1993. He practiced his new religion quietly for a decade, waiting for the day he could practice in the open. His first goal after walking onto a U.S. base in 2003 was to meet the American chaplain and get baptized.

He wanted to come to the U.S. to study with biblical scholars. And he could not stay in Iraq; his religion and his work put him in double jeopardy.

He was kidnapped three times while working for the Americans. He describes his kidnappers as "masked militia men" whom he heard say, "We caught that traitor. He has no loyalty to his country." American soldiers rescued him after each kidnapping.

"I received a lot from Americans in Iraq. I want to give back in the way God allows me," Paul said.

That included attending the funeral of Coeur d'Alene Army Spc. Nicholas Newby, killed in Baghdad by an improvised explosive device in July.

Some of Paul's friends warned him away from the funeral, worried about how he'd be received. He went anyway. When the pastor asked if anyone wanted to speak, Paul stood. Everyone in the church turned to look at him.

"I told them that I was working for Americans, and that I knew what Americans did to sacrifice. I'm here, and he gave me his life," said Paul.