Forced Labor Builds Largest U.S. Embassy

“My agent promised me a job in Dubai as a caterer,” said Mohammad Ashraful, 36. “But he seized my passport from a Dubai hotel and forced me to go to Iraq,” he told Reuters.

January 5, 2009 the U.S. opened its American Embassy in Iraq. Not only is this the largest U.S. Embassy; about 10 times larger than any other, this is also one of the most expensive embassys in U.S. history. The cost of the completed construction was a wee bit over $700 billion and it's estimated there will be a yearly cost of 1 to 2 million dollars to operate with 1,000 to 3,000 employees. One U.S. official said the cost of running the new complex is expected to be so exorbitant that the United States government will be forced to rent out part of the space. Times Online UK

A fortress-like compound, the Iraqi-U.S. Embassy is located in the "heart of the green zone" and is what some in the U.S. government refer to as the most noticeable, visual sign to "a new chapter in the US and Iraq relationship." One would think this is the story, but there is another one buried deep beneath the construction of the Embassy which involves the U.S., Kuwait and Bangladesh. It's a tale not known to many nor one that mass media is likely to cover in any depth. A dirty little smear on the newly built embass, and not the fact that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki did not attend the opening ceremony due to his travels to Iran This even though Ambassador Ryan Crocker said that since 2003 invasion, "perhaps no single week has been more important than this past week."

This little secret is about the sweat of Bangladesh (South Asia) and Filipino workers tricked into working on the embassy, a story that once again proves fact is stranger than fiction.

Of course everyone that has been following the construction of the embassy in Iraq already knows that the U.S. did in fact outsource the construction to a Kuwaiti company, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting. The private construction company in 2008 declined repeatedly to provide safety inspectors with reports on fire protection systems at the embassy and according to a past Guardian article, the Bush administration blocked inquiries into the construction of the world’s largest U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, citing that the embassy suffers from basic flaws in its water, kitchen and fire alarm systems. Yet there is still more to be learned about First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting and their ethics, such as forced labor and mistreatment of employees.

There have been rumors of forced labor in Iraq by the company for several years, but U.S. government officials in the past had discounted such allegations by workers from Nepal and the Philippines in the past, even as the company continued to rack up contracts now totaling several billion dollars from the Pentagon and U.S. State Department. Late in 2006 several U.S. citizens also said they boarded separate chartered jets in Kuwait loaded with work crews from the Philippines, India, Pakistan and Africa holding boarding passes to Dubai, but the planes then flew directly to Baghdad.

In 2007 a U.S. citizen told IPS that he was told by workers from Ghana on the embassy site that they thought they would have jobs in Dubai but were then taken to work in Iraq. First Kuwaiti's general manager, Wadih al Absi, flatly dismissed the accusations as unfounded and false. Since getting the U.S. Embassy in Iraq First Kuwaiti has won additional contracts worth roughly $200 million more for embassy projects in Africa, India and Indonesia, even while the company has been under some; if slack, investigation of forced labor.

Workers from Bangladesh and Filipino; who in some cases paid an agent to find them jobs, were told they were going to work on a project in Dubia. When the worker got to Dubia their passports were taken and since the Bangladesh closed its embassy in Iraq in 2003, the undocumented Bangladesh workers were left with little choice than to work and hope for a return home after the job was completed.
There's a well known story about a medic named Rory Mayberry, who was contracted by First Kuwaiti to work on the embassy project. His story broke in 2007 and was reported by NBC in summer of 2007. State Department Inspector General Howard J. Krongard, says he did a "limited investigation" after Mayberry's complaint and found no wrongdoing. But then added that the company had three months notice that he was coming. Had Krongard visited earlier and unannounced, he may have witnessed something very different then what his memorandum related. "Most of the allegations (from the U.S. citizens) were true before he arrived," claims Juvencio Lopez, who says he was a high-level project manager under the U.S. State Department over the course of two years.

Barbara Slavin of USA Today writes that the U.S. Senate wanted more Iraqis to be hired for the construction of the embassy, if First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting, could get them “properly screened.” There was bad blood between Iraqis and Kuwaitis even before Desert Storm.

Yet, Mayberry was not the first whistleblower. In 2005 Trina Flowers, an American actively working for those expatriates whose basic human rights are routinely violated by the Kuwaitis was arrested by the Kuwaiti authorities for threatening to expose First Kuwait and the PM of Kuwait. Flowers claimed that First Kuwaiti was violating the rights of foreign workers from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Indonesia, Philippines, China, Thailand, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and many other poor countries. (Flowers was hired by the University of Kuwait to teach English and when her contract was up she was hired by another technical institute.)

There are many cited accusations that First Kuwaiti is still continuing abusive ways toward foreign workers and one can't help but wonder if this is truly the way to start a fresh and new relationship between Iraq and the US. Can the US Embassy in Iraq be a place of healing when it's smeared with doubts and cheap, forced labor?

Even though Iraqi President Jala Talabani stated at the dedication ceremony, as reported by Fox News, “The building of this site would not be possible without the courageous decision by President Bush to liberate Iraq. This building is not only a compound for the embassy but a symbol of the deep friendship between the two peoples of Iraq and America.” The citizenry of Iraq may disagree and maybe they are right.

First Kuwaiti's KBR (Halliburton Subsidiary) subcontracts

First Kuwaiti's US Army contracts

First Kuwaiti's website

NBC's report

Nightly News report on the Embassy with Brian Williams

The Australian Report

Trina Flowers

Reuters



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