A U.S. FORTRESS RISES IN BAGHDAD: ASIAN WORKERS TRAFFICKED TO BUILD WORLD’S LARGEST EMBASSY
David Phinney, phinneydavid@yahoo.com.

The People’s Voice, TN
CorpWatch
09/18/07

John Owens didn’t realize how different his job would be from his
last 27 years in construction until he signed on with First Kuwaiti
Trading & Contracting in November 2005. Working as general foreman,
he would be overseeing an army of workers building the largest, most
expensive and heavily fortified US embassy in the world. Scheduled
to open in 2007, the sprawling complex near the Tigris River will
equal Vatican City in size.

Then seven months into the job, he quit.

Not one of the five different US embassy sites he had worked on around
the world compared to the mess he describes. Armenia, Bulgaria, Angola,
Cameroon and Cambodia all had their share of dictators, violence
and economic disruption, but the companies building the embassies
were always fair and professional, he says. The Kuwait-based company
building the $592-million Baghdad project is the exception. Brutal
and inhumane, he says "I’ve never seen a project more fucked up. Every
US labor law was broken."

In the resignation letter last June, Owens told First Kuwaiti and US
State Department officials that his managers beat their construction
workers, demonstrated little regard for worker safety, and routinely
breached security.

Pentagon Finds Worker Abuse and Trafficking in Iraq, but Penalizes
No One

On April 4, 2006, the Pentagon issued a new contracting directive
following a secret investigation that officially confirms what
many South Asian laborers have been complaining about ever since
the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Some contractors, many working as
subcontractors to Halliburton /KBR in Iraq, were found to be using
deceptive, bait-and-switch hiring practices and charging recruiting
fees that indebted low-paid migrant workers for many months or
even years to their employers. Contractors were also accused of
providing substandard, crowded sleeping quarters, serving poor food,
and circumventing Iraqi immigration procedures.

While the Pentagon declines to specifically name those contractors
found to be doing business in this way, it also acknowledged in an
April 19 memorandum that it was a widespread practice among contractors
in Iraq and Afghanistan to take away workers passports.

Holding onto employee passports — a direct violation of US labor
trafficking laws — helped stop workers from leaving war-torn Iraq
or taking better jobs with other contractors.

Contractors engaging in the practice, states the memo, must immediately
"cease and deist."

"All passports will be returned to employees by 1 May 06. This
requirement will be flowed down to each of your subcontractors
performing work in this theater."

The Pentagon has yet to announce of any penalty for those found to
be in violation of US labor trafficking laws or contract requirements.

And it was all happening smack in the middle of the US-controlled
Green Zone — right under the nose of the State Department that had
quietly awarded the controversial embassy contract in July 2005.

He also complained of poor sanitation, squalid living conditions and
medical malpractice in the labor camps where several thousand low-paid
migrant workers lived.

Those workers, recruited on the global labor market from the
Philippines, India, Pakistan and other poor south Asian countries,
earned as little as $10 to $30 a day.

As with many US-funded contractors, First Kuwaiti prefers importing
labor because it views Iraqi workers as a security headache not worth
the trouble.

No Questions Asked

By March 2006, First Kuwaiti’s operation began looking even sketchier
to Owens as he boarded a nondescript white jet on his way back
to Baghdad following some R&R in Kuwait city. He remembers being
surrounded by about 50 First Kuwaiti laborers freshly hired from the
Philippines and India. Everyone was holding boarding passes to Dubai –
not to Baghdad.

"I thought there was some sort of mix up and I was getting on the
wrong plane," says the 48-year-old Floridian who once worked as a
fisherman with his father before moving into the construction business.

He buttonholed a First Kuwaiti manager standing near by and asked what
was going on. The manager waved his hand, looked around the terminal
and whispered to keep quiet.

"’If anyone hears we are going to Baghdad, they won’t let us on the
plane,’" Owens recalls the manager saying.

The secrecy struck Owens as a little odd, but he grabbed his luggage
and moved on. Everyone filed out to the private jet and flew directly
to Baghdad. "I figured that they had visas for Kuwait and not Iraq,"
Owens offers.

The deception had the appearance of smuggling workers into Iraq,
but Owens didn’t know at the time that the Philippines, India, and
other countries had banned or restricted their citizens from working
in Iraq because of safety concerns and fading support for the war.

After 2004, many passports were stamped "Not valid for Iraq."

Nor did Owens know that both the US State Department and the Pentagon
were quietly investigating contractors such as First Kuwaiti for
labor trafficking and worker abuse. In fact, the international news
media had accused First Kuwaiti repeatedly of coercing workers to
take jobs in battle-torn Iraq once they had been lured with safer
offers to Kuwait. The company has billed several billion dollars on US
contracts since the war began in March 2003 and now has an estimated
7,500 laborers in the theater of war.

Despite numerous emails and phone calls about such allegations,
neither First Kuwaiti general manager Wadih Al Absi nor his lawyer
Angela Styles, the former top White House contract policy advisor,
have responded. After a year of requests, State Department officials
involved with the project also have ignored or rejected opportunities
for comment.

Your Passports Please

That same March Owens returned to work in Baghdad, Rory Mayberry
would witness similar events after he flew to Kuwait from his home
in Myrtle Creek, Oregon.

The gravely voiced, easy-going Army veteran had previously worked in
Iraq for Halliburton and the private security company, Danubia. Missing
the action and the big paychecks US contractors draw Iraq, he snagged
a $10,000 a month job with MSDS consulting Company.

MSDS is a two-person minority-owned consulting company that
assists US State Department managers in Washington with procurement
programming. Never before had the firm offered medical services or
worked in Iraq, but First Kuwaiti hired MSDS on the recommendation
of Jim Golden, the State Department contract official overseeing the
embassy project.

Within days, an agreement worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for
medical care was signed.

The 45-year-old Mayberry, a former emergency medical technician in
the Army who worked as a funeral director in Oregon, responded to a
help wanted ad placed by MSDS. The plan was that he would work as a
medic attending to the construction crews on the work site in Baghdad.

Mayberry sensed things weren’t right when he boarded a First Kuwaiti
flight on March 15 to Baghdad – a different flight from Owens.

At the airport in Kuwait City, Mayberry said, he saw a person behind a
counter hand First Kuwaiti managers a passenger manifest, an envelope
of money and a stack of boarding passes to Dubai. The managers then
handed out the boarding passes to Mayberry and 50 or so new First
Kuwaiti laborers, mostly Filipinos.

"Everyone was told to tell customs and security that they were flying
to Dubai," Mayberry explains. Once the group passed the guards, they
went upstairs and waited by the McDonald’s for First Kuwaiti staff to
unlock a door — Gate 26 — that led to an unmarked, white 52-seat
jet. It was "an antique piece of shit" Mayberry offers in a casual,
blunt manner.

"All the workers had their passports taken away by First Kuwaiti,"
Mayberry claims, and while he knew the plane was bound for Baghdad,
he’s not so sure the others were aware of their destination. The Asian
laborers began asking questions about why they were flying north and
the jet wasn’t flying east over the ocean, he says. "I think they
thought they were going to work in Dubai."

One former First Kuwaiti supervisor acknowledges that the company holds
passports of many workers in Iraq – a violation of US contracting.

"All of the passports are kept in the offices," said one company
insider who requested anonymity in fear of financial and personal
retribution. As for distributing Dubai boarding passes for Baghdad
flights, "It’s because of the travel bans," he explained.

Mayberry believes that migrant workers from the Philippines, India
and Nepal are especially vulnerable to employers like First Kuwaiti
because their countries have little or no diplomatic presence in Iraq.

"If you don’t have your passport or an embassy to go to, what you do
to get out of a bad situation?" he asks. "How can they go to the US
State Department for help if First Kuwaiti is building their embassy?"

Deadly ‘Candy Store’ Medicine

Owens had already been working at the embassy site since late
November when Mayberry arrived. The two never crossed paths, but
both share similar complaints about management of the project and
brutal treatment of the laborers that, at times, numbered as many
as 2,500. Most are from the Philippines, India, and Pakistan. Others
are from Egypt and Turkey.

The number of workers with injuries and ailments stunned Mayberry. He
went to work immediately after and stayed busy around the clock
for days.

Four days later, First Kuwaiti pulled him off the job after he
requested an investigation of two patients who had died before he
arrived from what he suspected was medical malpractice. Mayberry also
recommended that the health clinics be shut down because of unsanitary
conditions and mismanagement.

"There hadn’t been any follow up on medical care.

People were walking around intoxicated on pain relievers with unwrapped
wounds and there were a lot of infections," he recalls. "The idea
that there was any hygiene seemed ridiculous. I’m not sure they were
even bathing."

Labor Trafficking Under US Funded Iraq Contracts

CNN: Probe into Iraq Trafficking Claims – May 5, 2004

The New York Times: Indian Contract Workers in Iraq Complain of
Exploitation – May 7, 2004

The Washington Post: Underclass of Workers Created in Iraq – July
1, 2004

In reports made available to the US State Department, the US Army
and First Kuwaiti, Mayberry listed dozens of concerns about the
clinics, which he found lacking in hot water, disinfectant, hand
washing stations, properly supplied ambulances, and communication
equipment. Mayberry also complained that workers’ medical records
were in total disarray or nonexistent, the beds were dirty, and the
support staff hired by First Kuwaiti was poorly trained.

The handling of prescription drugs especially bothered him. Many
of the drugs that originated from Iraq and Kuwait were unsecured,
disorganized and unintelligibly labeled, he said in one memo. He
found that the medical staff frequently misdiagnosed patients.

Prescription pain killers were being handed out "like a candy store
… and then people were sent back to work."

Mayberry warned that the practice could cause addiction and safety
hazards. "Some were on the construction site climbing scaffolding
30 feet off the ground. I told First Kuwaiti that you don’t give
painkillers to people who are running machinery and working on heavy
construction and they said ‘that’s how we do it.’"

The sloppy handling of drugs may have led to the two deaths, Mayberry
speculates. One worker, age 25, died in his room. The second, in his
mid-30s, died at the clinic because of heart failure. Both deaths may
be "medical homicide," Mayberry says — because the patients may have
been negligently prescribed improper drug treatment.

If the State Department investigated, Mayberry knows nothing of
the outcome. Two State Department officials with project oversight
responsibilities did not return phone calls or emails inquiring
about Mayberry’s allegations. The reports may have been ignored, not
because of his complaints, but because Mayberry is a terrible speller,
a problem compounded by an Arabic translation program loaded on his
computer, he says.

Accidents Happen

Owens’ account of his seven months on the job paints a similar
picture to Mayberry’s. Health and safety measures were essentially
non-existent, he says. Not once did he witness a safety meeting. Once
an Egyptian worker fell and broke his back and was sent home. No
one ever heard from him again. "The accident might not have happened
if there was a safety program and he had known how to use a safety
harness."

Owens also says that managers regularly beat workers and that laborers
were issued only one work uniform, making it difficult to go to the
laundry. "You could never have it washed. Clothing got really bad –
full of sweat and dirt."

And while he often smuggled water to the work crews, medical care was
a different issue. When he urged laborers to get medical treatment
for rashes and sores, First Kuwaiti managers accused him of spoiling
the laborers and allowing them simply to avoid work, he says.

State Department officials supervising the project are aware of
many such events, but apparently do nothing, he said. Once when
17 workers climbed the wall of the construction site to escape,
a State Department official helped round them up and put them in
"virtual lockdown," Owens said.

Just before he resigned, hundreds of Pakistani workers went on strike
in June and beat up a Lebanese manager who they accused of harassing
them. Owens estimates that 375 were then sent home.

‘Treated Like Animals’

Recent First Kuwaiti employees agree that the accounts shared by Owens
and Mayberry are accurate. One longtime supervisor claims that 50
to 60 percent of the laborers regularly complain that First Kuwaiti
"treats them like animals," and routinely reduces their promised pay
with confusing and unexplained deductions.

Another former First Kuwaiti manager, who declines to be named because
of possible adverse consequences, says that Owens’ and Mayberry’s
complaints only begin "to scratch the surface."

But scratching the surface is the only view yet available of what may
be the most lasting monument to the US liberation and occupation of
Iraq. As of now only a handful of authorized State Department managers
and contractors, along with First Kuwaiti workers and contractors,
are officially allowed inside the project’s walls. No journalist has
ever been allowed access to the sprawling 104-acre site with towering
construction cranes raising their necks along the skyline.

Even this tight security is a charade, says on former high-level First
Kuwaiti manager. First Kuwaiti managers living at the construction
site regularly smuggle prostitutes in from the streets of Baghdad
outside the Green Zone, he says.

Prostitutes, he explains are viewed as possible spies.

"They are a big security risk."

But the exposure that the US occupation forces and First Kuwaiti may
fear most could begin with the contractor itself and the conditions
workers are forced to endure at this most obvious symbol of the
American democracy project in Iraq.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress