Blood, Sweat & Tears: Asia’s Poor Build U.S. Bases in Iraq

Called “third country nationals” (TCN) in contractor’s parlance, these laborers hail largely from impoverished Asian countries such as the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Pakistan, as well as from Turkey and countries in the Middle East. Once in Iraq, TCNs earn monthly salaries between $200 to $1,000 as truck drivers, construction workers, carpenters, warehousemen, laundry workers, cooks, accountants, beauticians, and similar blue-collar jobs.

Jing Soliman left his family in the Philippines for what sounded like a sure thing--a job as a warehouse worker at Camp Anaconda in Iraq. His new employer, Prime Projects International (PPI) of Dubai, is a major, but low-profile, subcontractor to Halliburton's multi-billion-dollar deal with the Pentagon to provide support services to U.S. forces.

But Soliman wouldn’t be making anything near the salaries-- starting $80,000 a year and often topping $100,000-- that Halliburton's engineering and construction unit, Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) pays to the truck drivers, construction workers, office workers, and other laborers it recruits from the United States. Instead, the 35-year-old father of two anticipated $615 a month – including overtime. For a 40-hour work week, that would be just over $3 an hour. But for the 12-hour day, seven-day week that Soliman says was standard for him and many contractor employees in Iraq, he actually earned $1.56 an hour.

Tens of thousands of such TNC laborers have helped set new records for the largest civilian workforce ever hired in support of a U.S. war. They are employed through complex layers of companies working in Iraq. At the top of the pyramid-shaped system is the U.S. government which assigned over $24 billion in contracts over the last two years. Just below that layer are the prime contractors like Halliburton and Bechtel. Below them are dozens of smaller subcontracting companies-- largely based in the Middle East --including PPI, First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting and Alargan Trading of Kuwait, Gulf Catering, Saudi Trading & Construction Company of Saudi Arabia. Such companies, which recruit and employ the bulk of the foreign workers in Iraq, have experienced explosive growth since the invasion of Iraq by providing labor and services to the more high-profile prime contractors.

This layered system not only cuts costs for the prime contractors, but also creates an untraceable trail of contracts that clouds the liability of companies and hinders comprehensive oversight by U.S. contract auditors. In April, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of the U.S. Congress concluded that it is impossible to accurately estimate the total number of U.S. or foreign nationals working in Iraq.

While the exact number of TCNs working in Iraq is uncertain, a rough estimate can be gleaned from Halliburton’s own numbers, which indicate that TCNs make up 35,000 of KBR’s 48,000 workers in Iraq employed under sweeping contract for military support. Known as the Logistics Civilian Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), this contract – by far the largest in Iraq -- is now approaching the $15 billion mark. Citing security concerns, however, the Houston-headquartered company and several other major contractors declined to release detailed figures on the workforce that is estimated to be 100,000 or more.

Originally posted by The Middle Kingdom
"hey! I have an idea says Mr Capitalist lets import slaves to do the work for us and act as human shields for our dreams of exploiting the world yippieeeee!"

Originally posted by deltaboy
dont forget to include the coporations of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait who are doing the same thing as well. so dont expect the American corporations are not the only ones that dont provide the care for the laborers.

Originally posted by Aelita
Has anybody been wondering why SE Asians are being hired instead of Iraqis? The unemployment rate in Iraq if pretty high, there is shortage of everything, doesn't it look like a logical thing to do -- to give them a priority in getting jobs to rebuild their own country? Among other things, at least they know the local language. I just don't get it.

Originally posted by deltaboy


lets just say that people fear of infiltration....theres somthing to think of. and u have to spend alot of time to make sure the Iraqi person is not an insurgent. hiring people outside of Iraq is far more safer in the employers view.

Originally posted by WestPoint23
So, it’s their choice if they want the work or not, and they get paid for their work, yup sound like slavery alright.

Now, if you guys have a problem with this then you should protest the biggest abuser of cheap labor, that right Middle Kingdom, your beloved China.

Originally posted by Souljah

Western Corporate Model has created a New Slavery that is going on in Asia especially. That's why Nike and Adidas have Factories in Tailand. Thats why probably all the Big Corporations have their stuff made in Asia, where the Work Labor is Cheap and they don't Complain and they make better Profits. That's all there is: PROFIT in their Minds. And they won't stop at Anything to increase it. If that means hiring a few Third World People and then Abuse them (as usual) - well thats just What they will do.

Who is going to STOP them anyway?

Originally posted by WestPoint23
So, it’s their choice if they want the work or not, and they get paid for their work, yup sound like slavery alright.

Now, if you guys have a problem with this then you should protest the biggest abuser of cheap labor, that right Middle Kingdom, your beloved China.

Originally posted by Souljah
Western Corporate Model has created a New Slavery that is going on in Asia especially. That's why Nike and Adidas have Factories in Tailand. Thats why probably all the Big Corporations have their stuff made in Asia, where the Work Labor is Cheap and they don't Complain and they make better Profits. That's all there is: PROFIT in their Minds. And they won't stop at Anything to increase it. If that means hiring a few Third World People and then Abuse them (as usual) - well thats just What they will do.

Who is going to STOP them anyway?

The Soviet system of forced labor camps was first established in 1919 under the Cheka, but it was not until the early 1930s that the camp population reached significant numbers. By 1934 the Gulag, or Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps, then under the Cheka's successor organization the NKVD, had several million inmates. Prisoners included murderers, thieves, and other common criminals--along with political and religious dissenters. The Gulag, whose camps were located mainly in remote regions of Siberia and the Far North, made significant contributions to the Soviet economy in the period of Joseph Stalin. Gulag prisoners constructed the White Sea-Baltic Canal, the Moscow-Volga Canal, the Baikal-Amur main railroad line, numerous hydroelectric stations, and strategic roads and industrial enterprises in remote regions. GULAG manpower was also used for much of the country's lumbering and for the mining of coal, copper, and gold.
www.loc.gov...

Originally posted by jsobecky
Certainly not the corrupt governments of Asia, eh, Souljah? Even though it is their citizenry and their responsibility to do so.