In October the Chicago Tribune published a series of articles that described fraudulent and coercive practices routinely being used to obtain menial labor for the US led war effort in Iraq.
According to the series, US military contractor Kellogg, Brown, and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, has tapped into a “pipeline” of cheap labor that has existed for decades in the Middle East. Practices the US State Department regularly condemns in the annual Human Rights Report and the Trafficking in Persons Report, are now routinely being used to obtain workers for the war effort in Iraq.
Along with fraud and coercion, the author, Cam Simpson, and his colleague, embedded journalist Aamer Madhani, found on US bases in Iraq widespread de facto debt bondage coupled with the routine confiscation of foreign workers’ travel documents.
I maintain a website on topics related to human trafficking. I conducted an audio interview with Cam two weeks ago to discuss his findings. I have posted this interview on the tradio21 web site. [ 15MB mp3 format ]
I found Cam to be very articulate. I believe he has a compelling story to tell that will hopefully get more attention.
To date there has been no response from any US government agency on the matters described in the Chicago Tribune series.
More details on the story below the fold.
In August of 2004, 12 Nepalese men were abducted and killed in Iraq by the terrorist group the Army of Ansar al-Sunna. The men were on their way to begin work on a US military base in Iraq for subcontractors of Kellogg, Brown, and Root.
Chicago Tribune’s Washington based correspondent Cam Simpson became intrigued with the story of these twelve men and wanted to learn how they came to be executed on the doorstep of the American military in Iraq.
Cam Simpson along with photographer Jose More retraced the steps of the men up to their execution in August of 2004. What they found was a story of 35,000 – 48,000 menial laborers, mostly impoverished men from South and South East Asia.
The two part Chicago Tribune series centered around a Nepalese man, Bishnu Hari Thapa, who was promised a job at a five star hotel in Jordan. To get the job he was required to pay a series of job brokers a significant sum of money.
Upon arrival to Jordan, he learned there was no job in Jordan, nor had there ever been one. His final job broker in the chain had always planned on sending Bishnu Hari, and the other eleven men, to Iraq to work for contractors who were hired by Kellogg, Brown, and Root. Finding himself deeply indebted, Bishnu Hari had little alternative but to continue on to Iraq.
Along with this two part series, is an article entitled U.S. Cash Fuels Human Trade, written by Cam Simpson and Aamer Madhani, a Chicago Tribune journalist embedded at Camp Liberty in Iraq.
The article claims that
The article goes on to detail the confiscation of foreign workers’ travel documents.
Veerus, an Indian laborer who spoke on agreement that his last name not be used, said workers insisted they could care for their passports. But Veerus said PPI responded with an ultimatum: They would not be paid until PPI had their passports. Other workers at the camp suspected the firm kept the documents for another reason.”
Confiscation of travel documents is a common pratice of traffickers and a crime under US law when used to “further” human trafficking activity.
In the interview posted on tradio21, Cam describes an incident in which the Nepalese foreign minister was sent to Kuwait to rescue four dozen Nepalese workers from being sent into Iraq. These men were given an ultimatum either go to Iraq or be put out into the streets of Kuwait with no food, water, money, and no way home.
Another audio interview with Cam can be heard on NPR’s Fresh Air.
-A version of this was posted earlier in the week on European Tribune
excellent post. I missed this story in the Trib and yet it is such an important one.
Thanks Spiderleaf.
Found an article this morning on alertnet Using Asia’s Poor to Build U.S. Bases in Iraq, by David Phinney. This article makes allegations similar to Cam Simpson’s article in the Chicago Tribune.
He arrived in Kuwait in December 2003, only to discover that First Kuwaiti had bought his contract. The company, which now holds U.S.-funded contracts valued in the neighborhood of $1 billion, threatened that unless he and dozens of other Filipino workers went to Iraq, the Kuwaiti police would arrested them, he says. “We had no choice but to go along with them. After all, we were in their country.”
Once in Iraq, Autencio found that there were no air conditioners to install or maintain, so he spent 11 hours a day “moving boulders” to fortify the camps, first at Camp Anaconda and then at Tikrit.
Food was inadequate and workers were not getting paid, he says. “We ate when the Americans had leftovers from their meals. If not, we didn’t eat at all.”
Working and living conditions were so bad, that in February 2004 Autencio escaped with dozens of others. A U.S. soldier born in the Philippines helped them leave the camp, and sympathetic truck drivers working for KBR offered them rides through the country. By the time the Filipinos reached the Kuwaiti border, Autencio said the number of fleeing workers was so great that the border police let them pass through without proper papers.
If you get some time, I’d love to hear what you think of the audio interview on the tradio21 site.
I missed these stories before too, although I seem to remember hearing something similar about people who were arrested in New Orleans post-Katrina being forced to “work off” their “crimes”.
Scary stuff.
Why does this not surprise me? Oh yeah. Halliburton.
Seems they pulled the same stuff in New Orleans too with undocumented workers form Mexico.
It’s even more fun. Trying to nail down the actual contract terms, ran across this:
Now why USAID needs that clause in a construction contract is beyond me. Sheesh.
That would be popular with the public.
.
A soldier’s life is worth how many dollars?
By James Glanz The New York Times
NEW YORK Nov. 18, 2005 — A North Carolina man who has been charged with accepting kickbacks and bribes was hired as a controller and financial officer for the American occupation authority in Iraq despite having served prison time for felony fraud in the 1990s.
The job gave the man, Robert Stein, control over $82 million in cash earmarked for Iraqi rebuilding projects.
Along with a web of other conspirators who have not yet been identified, Stein and his wife received “bribes, kickbacks and gratuities amounting to at least $200,000 per month” to steer lucrative construction contracts to companies run by another American, Philip Bloom, an affidavit outlining the criminal complaint says.
The affidavit, filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, said Stein, 50, was charged with wire fraud, conspiracy, interstate transportation of stolen property and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
But the list of charges does little justice to the astonishing brazenness of the accusations described in the complaint, including a wire transfer of a $140,000 bribe, arranged by Bloom, to buy real estate for Stein in North Carolina. The affidavit also says that $65,762.63 was spent to buy cars for Stein and his wife (he bought a Chevrolet; she a Toyota), $44,471 for home improvements and $48,073 for jewelry out of $258,000 sent directly to the Bragg Mutual Federal Credit Union into accounts controlled by the Steins.
Dale Stoffel, 43, of Monongahela, was shot to death Dec. 8, 2004 in a roadside ambush while returning to Baghdad after discussing the corruption claims with coalition military officials at a northern Iraqi military base. Stoffel’s business associate, Joseph Wemple, 49, of Orlando, Fla., also was killed.
The killings came after Stoffel alerted senior U.S. officials in Washington that Iraqi Defense Ministry officials were part of a kickback scheme involving a multimillion-dollar contract awarded to his company, Wye Oak Technology, to refurbish old Iraqi military equipment, the Los Angeles Times reported.
ARLINGTON, Va. Nov. 18 — The Army and Marines are recalling 18,425 Outer Tactical Vests that “do not meet contract specifications,” the Marines announced Thursday.
“The limited recall only affects the OTV and not the Small Arms Protective Inserts (SAPI),” the statement said. “The OTV is the carrier for the SAPI plates, and no vests are currently being worn without the SAPI plates.”
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼▼▼ READ MY DIARY
Surprise, surprise.
Please go here…Debt Bondage!!!??? (Our Beautiful Minds, Pt. II)…to read it.
AG
P. S. Aden…
Please please PLEASE do not take offense at this diary. It’s not about you.
It’s about US.
Arthur,
No offense taken. Great to see such a long response.
I am off to get some coffee and try and put together a coherent response.
At first, seeing “Aden please don’t take offense” I thought to myself “oh, oh.” But after reading your diary, I was very glad to see such a long response to my post, even if it was used in a way that at first seems contrary to my original intent.
Arthur, if you haven’t done so already, would you be willing to listen to the audio interview I have posted on the tradio21 web site?
I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the matters you’ve discussed in your diary, after you’ve listen to the interview with Cam. I am making an assumption that you might not have listened yet to the interview, because there have been very few referrals from BT to the tradio21 site.
As I said, I find Cam to be very articulate and I believe he tells a very compelling story.
I have read your diary several times over. You have brought up some interesting points -I have not responded to all of them, but here is what I have come up with.
For me, I see a difference between the young Nepalese man described in Cam’s story and a recent graduate from an American college with $40,000 in student loans, possibly a $1,400/ month 30 yr. mortgage, a $250/ month car lease payment, plus living expenses and credit card debt.
As it plays out in the world we live in today, I find my concern and efforts drawn to a group of people that I consider to be in more vulnerable circumstances than the group you have chosen to include in your description of debt bondage, fraud, and coercion.
I think you have taken my post to imply that because I am focusing my efforts and attention on these acts of exploitative practices by subcontractors of KBR in Iraq, I am ignoring, or denying, the existence of a manipulative consumer based society that creates a type of self-perpetuating behavior.
I am sitting here in my local, independently owned, coffee shop on a beautiful chilly Chicago Saturday, watching a stream of cars painfully slowly inch by; giant SUVs, mini vans, old clunkers, trucks, vans, and a few medium & small size cars, almost all with at least 80% of their usable space empty. The occasional lone bike carefully tries to weave its way through this line.
I write my response to you, believing that I am watching the results of a complex powerful “system” that has embedded itself within the psyche of our culture. I believe this “system” has been built and reinforced through a long history of use of the US political system. Part of this “system” threw up a multitude of advertisements days after Sept. 11th making patriotism and the buying of a car one in the same.
I have written two pieces on my concern of the manipulation of US human trafficking policy to placate the obsessive consumption of oil and oil based products, here & here . The third is still in the works.
As I state in some of these posts, I feel there is a human cost related to the consumer cultures of the wealthy nations. I am a participant in the economy of wealthy nations. I consume. I try to do so with caution and consciousness of these hidden costs. I know I don’t always succeed in that effort because these “human costs” are very well hidden. I am a believer in a globalized economy, but I have deep disagreements with the current method of implementation -another audio interview, should you be interested.
When discussing the new bankruptcy laws that are now in effect in the US, I often find myself stating that a “new class” of people will find them self in a “type” of debt bondage. However, I would not write about these people in the same way I write about human trafficking subjects on the tradio21 site.
For me, there is a dramatic difference between the compulsions and desires of the middle and upper classes and the conditions of the many people in this world who live on less than $2.00 a day.
I have much more to say on this, and in rereading it see the need for refinement, but it has already become quite a lengthy response and I must get onto other projects of the day.
Thanks again for taking the time to put together an entire diary/ response to my post. I look forward to continued dialogue on these matters.
to listen to that interview.
A few short comments will have to do.
You say:
“For me, I see a difference between the young Nepalese man described in Cam’s story and a recent graduate from an American college with $40,000 in student loans, possibly a $1,400/ month 30 yr. mortgage, a $250/ month car lease payment, plus living expenses and credit card debt.”
Of course there is a difference.
But it is only one of degree.
As above, so below.
My point is not that we should ignore the injustices that are being committed in our names. My point is that to the people who commit those injustices, the “difference” between that unfortunate Nepalese man, a welfare mother, a working class, middle class or upper middle class American or just about any OTHER denizen of the planet Earth who is not of the ruling classes is damned near nothing. They see themselves as higher beings, and will quite happily eat ANY lower animal regardless of its place in the pecking order of financial evolution.
Compared to them a scuffling Nepalese and a $150,000/year middle executive are almost on the same plane of existence. The lower classes are there to be USED. ALKL the lower classes, including the overseer class. When you have an annual income in the multi-millions and assets/allies that reside in the BILLION dollar area, the difference between a barely survivable income and $150,000/year is negligible.
Barely worthy of notice.
Ypou say:
“I think you have taken my post to imply that because I am focusing my efforts and attention on these acts of exploitative practices by subcontractors of KBR in Iraq, I am ignoring, or denying, the existence of a manipulative consumer based society that creates a type of self-perpetuating behavior.”
Not at all.
Like I said, I just dove off of that particular board to go further.
If we are to stop these practices, we must stop THE WHOLE MACHINE. We too often focus in on one or another of the literally billions of enslaved, and the fact is, unless we reform the whole system not only can we not do much to help individuals or groups of individuals, but if we do not keep a clear eye on the entire mechanism that does the enslaving…that indeed enslaves almost ALL of us…then all we are doing is pulling out leaves of weeds without getting to their roots.
Listen… slaves cannot free slaves. ESPECIALLY if they do not even clearly realize the depths of their own slavery.
And that is my point.
The only political point that I have been trying to make in my short career on these blogs.
We are an enslaved people.
House niggers to the stars.
We have been fed a bill of media goods…an ongoing mythic control system…about how “free” we are.
AND EVEN THE OPPOSITION TO THE SYSTEM THAT FEEDS US THIS IDEA BUYS INTO IT!!!
You cannot help that Nepalese if you are only one rung of a million rung ladder above him.
And if you do not see and constantly recognize that scale, then…
“GOTCHA!!!” go the hustlers.
Gotcha.
You say:
“I am sitting here in my local, independently owned, coffee shop on a beautiful chilly Chicago Saturday… “
It is NOT “independently owned” if any money whatsoever is being paid out in loans. In exorbitant rent. In fixes to mob-run unions. Protection money. And if you know anything about the restaurant business in a major city…and I do, it’s in the family…then you know that the chances of that being “independently owned” are slim and none. IT is in the system just the same way as are the rest of us.
And the “system” has gone rotten.
All I mean to do here is to emphasize the necessity for complete and continuous understanding of whjat is up.
No faulting anyone…just a reminder.
We are all in the same boat, and as the prophet Micheal Ray Richardson (Yup…that’s the way he spelled it. You could look it up.) once said in another context…
“The ship be sinkin’.”
Later…gotta run.
AG