The Pentagon has a name for it and issues directives, but as David Phinney
reports, doesn't do anything about slave labor at the Baghdad Embassy.
Baghdad Express
by David Phinney, Special to CorpWatch
October 17th, 2006
John Owen 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 a press release, Phinney explains
The Kuwait contractor building the US embassy in Baghdad stands accused by workers of labor trafficking and smuggling low-paid South Asians into Iraq. Still, the US State Department casts a blind eye on the complaints as it rushes to complete its most ambitious embassy project ever.
"The possibility that a company under a US State Department contract is trafficking and smuggling workers into a war zone is an insult the values that most Americans support and die for. The fact that the accused contractor, First Kuwaiti Trading and Contracting, is building the $592-million US embassy – perhaps the most high-profile symbol of US presence in Iraq – is doubly astounding" says journalist David Phinney.
Based on interviews with sources that range from more than a half dozen former First Kuwaiti employees to numerous competing contractors, this latest CorpWatch investigation reveals complaints about the deceptive trafficking operation and the horrid working conditions faced by the people on-the-ground in Iraq.
ALLEGATIONS:
· Witnesses say First Kuwaiti has smuggled low-paid Asian workers on planes to Baghdad after taking away their passports and issuing airplane boarding passes for Dubai. Taking passports is a violation of US trafficking laws and contracting.
· First Kuwaiti has coerced low-paid workers to take jobs in Iraq against their wishes after recrutiers lured them to Kuwait for different jobs. (Interviews with Filipino workers who escaped Iraq available.)
· Although no journalist is allowed on embassy site, prostitutes are smuggled in by First Kuwaiti managers, according to former employees. Prostitutes are a "breech of security," says one former manager for the company.
· An American medic recommended that health clinics serving thousands of embassy construction workers be shut down for unsanitary conditions and then was fired. He also requested the investigation of two workers who may have died from mistreatment. Prescription pain killers were handed out like "candy" and workers were sent back to work on project, he says.
· There have been numerous beatings of workers by First Kuwaiti managers and labor strikes, say former employees. This reflects complaints of others who witnessed mistreatment on other projects.
BACKGROUND:
Contractor: First Kuwaiti Trading and Contracting, a Kuwait Firm sponsored by Mohammad I. H. Marafie of the powerful Marafie family and managed by Wahdid al Absi, a Christian Lebanese who may have growing political influence in Lebanon.
The company was a $35 million firm in early 2003 and now holds nearly $2 billion in contracts; largely US funded and related to Iraq.
Embassy Project: $592 million construction began in fall 2005. It will be equal in size to the Vatican and cover an area 2/3rds the size of the Washington Mall. It will be, by far, the largest US embassy in the world.
Contract Award: Awarded in summer 2005. The Announcement appeared on FedBizOps one day and then was removed at First Kuwaiti's request – for "security reasons." Sources say the contractor was not pre-approved and never built a US embassy before, especially one with so much classified work. It is also said to have entered the competition late. First Kuwaiti's bid was $60 million or more over the lowest US bidder, Framaco, which has won awards in the past for embassy construction. Numerous US contractors have been hired and then cancelled for classified work. Several are furious.
So, the classified work at the US Embassy/Monitoring Station is being done by slave labor whose only qualification seems to be the ability to keep secrets because they can't speak either English or Arabic. Since workers high on pain killers and other drugs are likely doing shoddy work, perhaps that will make it easier to leave this particular mess behind. One big thing we won't have to worry about repositioning somewhere else.
Maybe that was the point. Build a useless enclave--an instant tear-down. One more example of why the government shouldn't be in the redevelopment business.