Commander: Contractors violating U.S. trafficking laws

[Robbien]

WASHINGTON - The top U.S. commander in Iraq has ordered sweeping changes for privatized military support operations after confirming violations of human-trafficking laws and other abuses by contractors involving possibly thousands of foreign workers on American bases, according to records obtained by the Chicago Tribune.

Gen. George Casey ordered that contractors be required by May 1 to return passports that have been illegally confiscated from laborers on U.S. bases after determining that such practices violated U.S. laws against trafficking for forced or coerced labor. Human brokers and subcontractors from South Asia to the Middle East have worked together to import thousands of laborers into Iraq from impoverished countries.

Two memos obtained by the Tribune indicate that Casey's office concluded that the practice of confiscating passports from such workers was both widespread on American bases and in violation of the U.S. trafficking laws.

The memos, including an order dated April 4 and titled "Subject: Prevention of Trafficking in Persons in MNF-I," or Multinational Forces-Iraq, say the military also confirmed a host of other abuses during an inspection of contracting activities supporting the U.S. military in Iraq. They include deceptive hiring practices; excessive fees charged by overseas job brokers who lure workers into Iraq; substandard living conditions once laborers arrive; violations of Iraqi immigration laws; and a lack of mandatory "awareness training" on U.S. bases concerning human trafficking.

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/politics/14413048.htm

The article is very long but a worthwhile read. It details how this trafficking works and how both the military and contractors are trying to pass the buck.

[wakeme2008]

1. And I am sure there was sex trafficking too if Bush's favorite

contractors was involved.

[NYC]

3. The clue was that Bush mentioned sex trafficking

in one of his SOTU speeches. Do you remember?

[elehhhhna]

17. Yep. He must have been sending Dyncorp a message to fork over more $$$

[NYC]

2. Human trafficking.

Not new to mercenaries. Dyncorp was guilty of white slavery.

I'm going to read the article now. How much are we paying these people who are engaging in human trafficking? How many duffel bags filled with cash?

It's a pity we can't afford health care for Americans. Too expensive.

[Robbien]

5. The Philippines have been reporting this in their news

since the Green Zone was set up. Not only do they not get paid for their work in Iraq, they have to pay a fee to go to work as a slave in Iraq. But they are so poor and desperate they keep going there.

[NYC]

6. I remember reading about people signing up for jobs

in Kuwait, then finding out they were being sent to Iraq. They would not have signed up had they known. I can't remember which country.

[flyarm]

4. I AM FEELING SO SICK... makes one proud to be americans doesn't it?

ahhhh shit what has my country become??????????

i feel so sick.........and disgusted...

fly

[pokercat999]

29. Not to worry, the pendulum is near the top and will be

swinging far to the left in just a while. Keep your chin up.

[stillcool]

7. Wednesday December 10, 2003

The privatisation of war
· $30bn goes to private military
· Fears over 'hired guns' policy
· British firms get big slice of contracts
· Deals in Baghdad, Kabul and Balkans

Ian Traynor

The Guardian

While reliable figures are difficult to come by and governmental accounting and monitoring of the contracts are notoriously shoddy, the US army estimates that of the $87bn (£50.2bn) earmarked this year for the broader Iraqi campaign, including central Asia and Afghanistan, one third of that, nearly $30bn, will be spent on contracts to private companies.

When America launched its invasion in March, the battleships in the Gulf were manned by US navy personnel. But alongside them sat civilians from four companies operating some of the world's most sophisticated weapons systems.
When the unmanned Predator drones, the Global Hawks, and the B-2 stealth bombers went into action, their weapons systems, too, were operated and maintained by non-military personnel working for private companies.
The private sector is even more deeply involved in the war's aftermath. A US company has the lucrative contracts to train the new Iraqi army, another to recruit and train an Iraqi police force.

In Israel, a US company supplies the security for American diplomats, a very risky business. In Colombia, a US company flies the planes destroying the coca plantations and the helicopter gunships protecting them, in what some would characterise as a small undeclared war.
In Kabul, a US company provides the bodyguards to try to save President Hamid Karzai from assassination, raising questions over whether they are combatants in a deepening conflict with emboldened Taliban insurgents.

The Pentagon will "pursue additional opportunities to outsource and privatise", the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, pledged last year and military analysts expect him to try to cut a further 200,000 jobs in the armed forces.
It is this kind of "downsizing" that has fed the growth of the military private sector.

It also enables the Americans, in particular, to wage wars by proxy and without the kind of congressional and media oversight to which conventional deployments are subject.

Dyncorp, for example, a Pentagon favourite, has the contract worth tens of millions of dollars to train an Iraqi police force. It also won the contracts to train the Bosnian police and was implicated in a grim sex slavery scandal, with its employees accused of rape and the buying and selling of girls as young as 12. A number of employees were fired, but never prosecuted. The only court cases to result involved the two whistleblowers who exposed the episode and were sacked.
"Dyncorp should never have been awarded the Iraqi police contract," said Madeleine Rees, the chief UN human rights officer in Sarajevo.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1103566,00.html

[peacetalksforall]

8. Top US Commander. Casey. May 1. Where the friggin hell has he

been for the last couple of years? What crooks. What criminals. What creatures. There is no animal, insect, reptile, or refuse name that can used to insult these despicable creatures. They are not of this world. These are all the horrible creatures that anyone has ever put to paper, painting, imagination, or film. They are filth. Damnable filth.

And what do they do. Stand straight in front of a microphone making jokes that the press corp laughs at conference after conference. The WH deserves that Clark woman.

[Tight_rope]

18. Yeah...it's a fucking shame they never take action until it hits the big

news networks. Fucking scumbags.:puke: :puke: :puke:

[patrice]

9. We shouldn't be surprised about what comes from making money

off of war.

The God-almighty dollar is what much of Bush's support is really based on, not what is right.

[leftchick]

10. this is terrible!

it makes me sick what the US has done....

<snip>

"Pipeline to Peril," which was based on reporting in the United States, Jordan, Iraq, Nepal and Saudi Arabia, described how some subcontractors and a chain of human brokers allegedly engaged in the same kinds of abuses routinely condemned by the State Department as human trafficking.

The newspaper retraced the journey of 12 men recruited in 2004 from rural villages in the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal and documented a trail of deceit, fraud and negligence stretching into Jordan and Iraq. Most of the men had contracts filed with their government falsely promising them positions at a five-star hotel in Amman, yet all 12 were sent into Iraq in August 2004. They were ultimately kidnapped from an unprotected caravan traveling along what was then one of the most dangerous roadways in the world: the Amman-to-Baghdad highway.

All 12 men were subsequently executed by militants in likely the single worst massacre of foreign workers in Iraq since the American-led invasion more than three years ago.

Those workers and others suffered from a chain of exploitation that began in their home countries, where families often assumed huge debts to pay fees demanded by brokers, to Iraq. Even after discovering they'd been deceived, workers felt compelled to head into the war zone, or remain in danger for much longer than they desired, just to pay those debts.

[salin]

11. They are just *now* realizing this is a problem?

There been stories in the press about this for several years. Not hiring locals (even though there was high unemployment) - bringing in people from very impoverished areas (such as Bangledesh) - and then working those folks at slave labor wages, in slave labor conditions. They are just NOW taking action?

Profit motivated private contractors are not about serving the goals of the US (and its taxpayers footing the bills) - it is about greed. This is ugly on so many levels - and it is unbelievable to me that there has been no awareness of the prevalence of this practice until recently.

[Theduckno2]

12. U.S. media just doesn't report the good things happening in Iraq.

:sarcasm:

It is disgusting to think that Operation Iraqi Freedom has brought indentured servitude to Iraq.

What really bothers me though is, given the polarization and unrest of Iraqi society, it would be even harder to reliably fill these positions with Iraqis, lest insurgents gain access to sensitive areas.

I guess "nation building" is just not George Bush's thing. Is there anything he is good at? Hmmmmmmmm.

Oh yeah, tax breaks for the wealthy! :grr:

[DoYouEverWonder]

13. Why are they bringing in foreign workers in the first place?

With millions of Iraqis without jobs or income, why aren't these jobs going to the Iraqi people? It sure would help cut down on the insurgency if people had something else to do, like rebuild their own country.

[Melsky]

14. I was thinking this too

I think maybe a lot of Iraqis won't work for them at any price because they know they will be killed and/or have their families killed.

[DoYouEverWonder]

15. A lot of Iraqi would work on construction projects

because they don't have much for options other then to enlist in the military or police which is much more dangerous.

[Rose Siding]

16. Oh, how timely and efficient, General!

Challenging Halliburton and Army assurances, former KBR supervisors say they frequently witnessed subcontractors failing to meet required conditions , while some TCNs share horror stories with claims that they were falsely recruited, believing they were signing up for work in Kuwait and then having their contract changed to Iraq.

“I had no idea that I would end up in Iraq” says Ramil Autencio, who signed with MGM Worldwide Manpower and General Services in the Philippines. The 37-year-old air conditioning maintenance worker thought he would be working at Crown Plaza Hotel in Kuwait for $450 a month.

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.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12675

These cases were covered pretty well. The other ones I remember were from India. Real horror stories.

[maddezmom]

19. kick

[Judi Lynn]

20. Military confirms contracting abuses

Military confirms contracting abuses

BAGHDAD, April 24 (UPI) -- Gen. George Casey, the top military commander in Iraq, has ordered the end of human trafficking by private military contractors, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The Tribune did a series several months ago detailing abuses that included hiring workers in countries like Nepal under false pretenses, telling them they would be working in Jordan. Workers were also allegedly charged fees and told that if they left their jobs once they had arrived in Iraq they would have to repay their plane fare. In some cases, passports were allegedly taken away.

The newspaper said the worst abuses involved gang leaders separated from the top military contractors by several layers of sub-contractors.

A memo titled "Subject: Prevention of Trafficking in Persons in MNF-I" and dated April 4 said that the military had confirmed violations of U.S. and Iraqi laws.
(snip/...)

http://www.washtimes.com/upi/20060424-110023-9789r.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You may recall _{George W. Bush} has pointed out countries he claims engage in human trafficking repeatedly.

On edit:

BE SURE YOU READ PIRATE SMILE'S POST #2. He has located a far more complete account from the Chicago Tribune:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-060423pipeline-story,1,4248561.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

[Pirate Smile]

21. FYI - This is a UPI article up on the Wash Times site.

"A memo titled "Subject: Prevention of Trafficking in Persons in MNF-I" and dated April 4 said that the military had confirmed violations of U.S. and Iraqi laws.

The memo also says that contracts must include "language that prohibits contractors and subcontractors at all tiers from utilizing unlicensed recruiting firms, or firms that charge illegal recruiting fees." '


No mention of the names of the military contractors doing this - hmmmm, I wonder who it is?


Well, lookie here - KBR of Halliburton:

"Although other firms also have contracts supporting the military in Iraq, the U.S. has outsourced vital support operations to Halliburton subsidiary KBR at an unprecedented scale, at a cost to the U.S. of more than $12 billion as of late last year.

KBR, in turn, has outsourced much of that work to more than 200 subcontractors, many of them based in Middle Eastern nations condemned by the U.S. for failing to stem human trafficking into their own borders or for perpetrating other human rights abuses against foreign workers.

KBR's subcontractors employ an army of workers to dish out food, wash clothes, clean latrines and carry out virtually every other menial task. About 35,000 of the 48,000 people working under the privatization contract last year were "Third Country Nationals," who are non-Americans imported from outside Iraq, KBR has said.

"Pipeline to Peril," which was based on reporting in the U.S., Jordan, Iraq, Nepal and Saudi Arabia, described how some subcontractors and a chain of human brokers allegedly engaged in the same kinds of abuses routinely condemned by the State Department as human trafficking."

This is from the Chicago Tribune article.

[Whoa_Nelly]

25. Thanks Pirate Smile & Judi Lynn

Have sent this article on to others :hi:

Just when you think it can't be any worse in Iraq. and then ""BOOM!!!""" Bush's corporate greedy motherfucking no excuse for a war has not only Iraqis, Americans, and the "coalition of the willing" suffering, many people from other nations have been ALLOWED to be abused.

...and only NOW they are setting up rules? And they think by kinda stepping up to the plate will stop the chaotic twister of the downward spiral the PNAC is using to OWN globalization like the world has never known?

I swear..I don't believe this is the worst yet to come from the truly evil PNAC created BushCo Dynasty. :mad: :scared:

It's so out of control, we only gather a smattering of what's really going on.

[Pirate Smile]

22. Chi Tribune has a more detailed article up if you want to put it in your

OP and link to it. This seems big to me.

Iraq war contractors ordered to end abuses
Tribune series detailed undocumented pipeline of foreign workers into Iraq, and abuses perpetrated along the way.

By Cam Simpson
Tribune Washington bureau
Published April 23, 2006


WASHINGTON -- The top U.S. commander in Iraq has ordered sweeping changes for privatized military support operations after confirming violations of human-trafficking laws and other abuses by contractors involving possibly thousands of foreign workers on American bases, according to records obtained by the Tribune.

Gen. George Casey ordered that contractors be required by May 1 to return passports that have been illegally confiscated from laborers on U.S. bases after determining that such practices violated U.S. laws against trafficking for forced or coerced labor. Human brokers and subcontractors from South Asia to the Middle East have worked together to import thousands of laborers into Iraq from impoverished countries.

Two memos obtained by the Tribune indicate that Casey's office concluded that the practice of confiscating passports from such workers was both widespread on American bases and in violation of the U.S. trafficking laws.

The memos, including an order dated April 4 and titled "Subject: Prevention of Trafficking in Persons in MNF-I," or Multinational Forces-Iraq, say the military also confirmed a host of other abuses during an inspection of contracting activities supporting the U.S. military in Iraq. They include deceptive hiring practices; excessive fees charged by overseas job brokers who lure workers into Iraq; substandard living conditions once laborers arrive; violations of Iraqi immigration laws; and a lack of mandatory "awareness training" on U.S. bases concerning human trafficking.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-060423pipeline-story,1,4248561.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

OMG this is sick. Just when you think it can't get worse.....

[Judi Lynn]

24. I added a note to the o.p. This is astounding, Pirate Smile.

Still reading the article, had to stop to thank you for providing this information. What ARE the chances we will be hearing all about this on cable news? Sheesh!

It's tremendous seeing something like this from the Chicago Tribune. Thanks.

[Ecumenist]

23. And I'm am an African American Female from California

Some things are known facts, fellas...

[Judi Lynn]

26. After reading Pirate Smile's link in Post #2, you will want to see a link

to a two part project: "Pipeline to Peril:"



Unlike some, Indra Tamang of Nepal went to work in Iraq of his own accord. He said subcontractors confiscated his and his compatriots' passports and refused to return them when the workers got scared and wanted to leave. (Tribune photo by Jose More)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-nepal-specialpackage,0,7162366.special

[genieroze]

27. It almost sounds like the underhanded way they recruit in the military.

[Heidi]

28. Kick. (nt)