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About The Slave Next Door
CHAPTER IX
THE FEDS
It is important to look at the federal government’s actions – both positive and negative
– in its relatively new war against human trafficking in America. Many federal officials have
taken on the task of rooting out and prosecuting traffickers, as well as coordinating with service
providers and victim advocates providing care for survivors. We’ll speak with representatives of
some of the federal agencies whose job description has been expanded to include modern day slavery,
and get a sense of how they feel the campaign is going. We’ll also examine some cases that seem
to stand in direct contradiction to the anti-trafficking position taken by the government –
cases in which administration politics and inaction have actually increased human trafficking on
American soil - both here and abroad. One of the worst of these cases involves tax-payer money
supporting slavery as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Bringing democracy to Iraq – on the backs of slaves
First Kuwaiti General Trade and Contracting Co., a billion-dollar construction company, was hired to
build the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad – after no American company would agree to the
government’s terms.i The project is worth $592 million to First Kuwaiti, and encompasses a
104-acre, 21-building complex, making it the largest U.S. embassy in the world. When completed, it
will be six times larger than the United Nations, and the same size as Vatican City.ii From the beginning First Kuwaiti had difficulty in fulfilling the
terms of its contract. Serious problems piled up: faulty wiring, fuel leaks, and poor construction.
Some of the problems were determined to be “life safety issues.” And while the day-to-day
fire fight was going on in Baghdad, a war of words was being waged between the State Department in
Washington, who defended their contractors, and those on the ground in Iraq, who were suffering from
substandard work, and delays.iii
Boondoggles, pork barrels, and shoddy work are scandalous, but it was another, uglier issue that
brought First Kuwaiti to the world’s attention. Some of their contract workers had been
trafficked to Iraq against their will, held by force, and paid little or nothing. First Kuwaiti
– and by association, the U.S. Department of State – were using slave labor to build the
embassy. Taxpayers were footing the bill. The idea of a U.S. subcontractor trafficking enslaved
workers into the country where we are waging a war to introduce freedom and democracy, is unthinkable.
And yet, in case after case, the construction company hired workers, normally through sub-contractors,
from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, Egypt, Turkey, and the Philippines under false
pretenses. Falsely promised work in Dubai, they were landed in a combat zone. Once in Iraq contractors
confiscated the workers’ passports, forced them to live in squalid conditions, and to work long
hours for little or no pay. And, says journalist David Phinney, “It was all happening smack in
the middle of the US-controlled Green Zone—right under the nose of the State
Department….” iv
The issue came to light after the murder of 12 Nepali workers who had been “recruited under
false pretenses from rural villages…before being trafficked illegally into Iraq.” En
route to a U.S. base in Iraq, all twelve were kidnapped and executed by insurgents. The subcontractor
had “sent them into the war zone, and along one of the most dangerous roads in the world, in
what basically amounted to taxi cabs.” Ali Kamel al-Nadi, the man who allegedly assembled the
unprotected caravan, commented when asked about the incident, “If they were my workers, maybe I
should be compensated for losing them.”v
Despite the fact that foreign workers had been complaining of abuses since early 2003, the problem was
first flagged in a news report in late 2005. The report provoked a flurry of base inspections by the
government. In April 2006, the Pentagon, without naming any of the subcontractors to Halliburton/KBR,
concluded that “doing business in this way” was common in Iraq and Afghanistan. The
confiscation of workers’ passports kept the laborers from leaving Iraq, the report stated, or
from seeking jobs with other contractors.vi No penalties were assigned to the
contractors. Nonetheless, the Pentagon ordered that all passports be returned, and that such practices
“cease and desist” immediately.vii
They didn’t. In July 2007, two American civilian contractors who had worked on the embassy
testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by California
congressman Henry A. Waxman. One of the two, native Floridian John Owens, had worked for 27 years
building U.S. embassies around the world, sometimes in areas troubled by violence and corruption. But
after working for seven months as a foreman in Iraq, he quit. “I’ve never seen a
project more fucked up. Every U.S. labor law was broken,”viii he said. Owens testified that the workers’ living and
working conditions were “deplorable,” and described how they were “verbally and
physically abused,” forced to live in cramped trailers, denied basic needs like shoes and
gloves, made to work 12-hour days, seven days a week, with time off only for prayer, and “had
their salaries docked for petty infractions.”ix
The second contractor to testify was Rory J. Mayberry. He told the committee that First Kuwaiti
managers had asked him to escort 51 Filipino workers onto a flight to Baghdad. The plane, Mayberry
recalled, was an unmarked 52-seater – “an antique piece of shit.”x Mayberry noted with surprise that “all of our tickets said we
were going to Dubai,” whereupon a First Kuwaiti manager told him not to let any of the laborers
know they were going to Iraq. John Owens recalled the same experience when he saw the workers’
boarding passes: “I thought there was some sort of mix up and I was getting on the wrong
plane.”xi In Mayberry’s words, the workers were “kidnapped by
First Kuwaiti to work on the U.S. Embassy.” After their passports were taken in Baghdad, they
were “smuggled into the Green Zone.”xii
Mayberry, an emergency medical technician, was horrified at the number of injuries and ailments among
the 2,500 or so foreign laborers. Infected, unattended, sores and unbandaged wounds were common. There
was a lack of disinfectant, hot water, any form of hygiene. Prescription pain killers, he testified,
“were being handed out like a candy store…and then people were sent back to work... 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.’” After he
requested an investigation into the deaths of two laborers as a result of what he believes could have
been “medical homicide,” Mayberry was fired.xiii
Owens confirmed the inhumane treatment. He testified that health and safety measures were
non-existent, and that serious injuries took place as a result. When he advised workers to seek
medical help for their injuries and illnesses, he was accused by the firm’s managers of
“spoiling the workers and allowing them to simply skip work.” At one point, 17 laborers
tried to escape by climbing over the wall; they were recaptured - with the help of a State Department
official - and put in “virtual lockdown.”xiv
First Kuwaiti responded in writing that the charges were “ludicrous.”xv State Department Inspector General Howard J. Krongard disputed the
charges in a follow-up hearing, stating that his “limited review” and two visits to
Baghdad had failed to verify the claims: “Nothing came to our attention that caused us to
believe that trafficking-in-persons violations” – or any other serious abuses –
“occurred at the construction workers’ camp at the new embassy compound.”xvi In a written submission the anti-slavery organization Free the
Slaves pointed to serious flaws in Krongard’s report. They noted that the State
Department’s own Trafficking in Persons Report for 2007 revealed “a structure conducive to
trafficking in persons” throughout much of the Middle East. This includes sponsorship laws that
give employers control over workers’ ability to leave the work site, their job or the country.
The TIP report observed “employers commonly do not provide workers with documents legitimizing
their employment in the country … and refuse to sign exit permits allowing victims to leave the
country, effectively holding the worker hostage.” Most damning, the Free the Slaves submission
showed that while Krongard had gone to investigate a charge of human trafficking, he failed “to
recognize the significance of, and appropriately characterize as warning signs: … the
contractor’s practice of holding employee passports; terms of employment that raise concerns
about exploitation, including the amount of payment relative to national standards, payment by the
month rather than the day or hour, and a 14 day workweek, with no days off; the requirement to
prepay recruitment, travel or other fees before obtaining control of earnings; and the fact that
most workers interviewed either originated in countries whose laws prohibit work in Iraq, because of
the strong possibility of abuse, and/or whose countries are identified by State’s TIP report as
having a significant number of victims of severe trafficking to the Middle East.”xvii
For his part, Chairman Waxman was also dissatisfied with Krongard’s methodology or conclusions.
The inspector general, said Waxman, “had followed highly irregular procedures in exonerating the
prime contractor, First Kuwaiti Trading Company, of charges of labor trafficking.”xviii On September 18, 2007, Waxman began an inquiry into accusations
that Krongard had repeatedly hindered fraud and abuse investigations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The
allegations were supported by information from several of Krongard’s current and former
employees, some of whom sought whistleblower status to protect them from punishment for malfeasance.
Congressman Waxman stated to Krongard, “One consistent element in these allegations is that you
believe your foremost mission is to support the Bush administration, especially with respect to Iraq
and Afghanistan, rather than act as an independent and objective check on waste, fraud and abuse on
behalf of U.S. taxpayers.”xix
i “Blame Somebody Else,” Expose: America’s
Investigative Reports. Sept. 21, 2007.
ii “A U.S. Fortress rises in Baghdad: Asian Workers Trafficked to
Build World’s Largest Embassy,” CorpWatch, Oct. 17, 2006, p. 1.
iii “Construction woes Add to Fears in Iraq,” Washington
Post, July 5, 2007.
iv “A U.S. Fortress Rises in Baghdad….,” p. 1.
v “Dodging on Human Trafficking?” The Swamp, Chicago
Tribune, June 22, 2006. p. 2.
vi KBR (formerly known as Kellogg Brown and Root), the largest
contractor in Iraq, is a subsidiary of Halliburton, the Texas-based firm which Vice-President Dick
Cheney formerly helmed. KBR has a multi-billion dollar deal with the U.S. military to provide a wide
range of support services for the soldiers, including meals, housing, and laundry.
vii Ibid, p. 2.
viii Ibid.
ix “Foreign Workers Abused at Embassy, Panel Told,”
Washington Post, July 27.2007, p. 1-2.
x “A U.S. Fortress Rises in Baghdad…,” p. 2.
xi “A U.S. Fortress Rises in Baghdad…,” p. 2.
xii “Foreign Workers Abused at Embassy, Panel Told, p. 2.
xiii Ibid, p. 4.
xiv Ibid, p. 5.
xv “Foreign Workers Abused at Embassy, Panel Told,” p.
2.
xvi Ibid., p. 3.
xvii Copies of the submission are available at:
info@freetheslaves.net.
xviii “Blame Somebody Else,” p. 2-3.
xix “State Dept. Official Accused of Blocking Inquiry,”
New York Times, Sept. 18, 2007, p. 1.
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