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America's big builders invaded Iraq three years ago, hard on the heels of U.S. troops and tanks. Now the reconstruction billions are drying up so they're pulling out, leaving both completed and unfinished projects in the hands of an Iraqi government unprepared to manage either.

Tens of thousands of contractors, hired in unprecedented numbers to avoid the use of more US troops in a variety of tasks, toil quietly in vital and dangerous missions. They are a hidden story of this war, uncounted in the military death toll, unremembered with medals of valor, unwelcome at veterans hospitals, and unassisted in their often difficult re entries home.

The war in Iraq has killed at least 647 civilian contractors to date, according to official figures that provide a stark reminder of the huge role of civilians in supporting the U.S. military.

The war in Iraq has been a windfall for Kellogg Brown & Root Inc., the company that has a multibillion-dollar contract to provide support services for U.S. troops. Its profits have come thanks to the hard work of people like Dharmapalan Ajayakumar, who until last month served as a kitchen helper at a military base.

May 7, 2004
FOREIGN LABOR
Indian Contract Workers in Iraq Complain of Exploitation
By DAVID ROHDE


ELICHAKKALA, India, May 5 - Last summer an agent for an Indian recruitment company offered what seemed like the chance of a lifetime to Abdul Aziz Hamid and his younger brother Shahjahan.

The United States is investigating reports Indian nationals were victims of human trafficking to Iraq and mistreated while working there as contractors in U.S. military camps, the State Department has said.

Workers accuse the Kuwait contractor building the US embassy in Baghdad of smuggling low-paid South Asians into Iraq and labor trafficking. Still, the US State Department casts a blind eye on the complaints as it rushes to complete its most ambitious project ever.

What remains under-reported and under-appreciated is the fact that this war has afforded a vast collection of corporations to reap the benefits of lucrative government contracts. A number of such companies are involved in supervising, maintaining, and providing support for the numerous prisons in Iraq in the areas of interrogation, interpretation, and translation.

European firms such as AugustaWestland and Eurocopter are supplying components for Chinese combat helicopters via networks of global subsidiaries and re-exporters despite the EU's 17-year old China arms embargo, NGOs have warned.

The Army Corps of Engineers improperly created fake entries in government ledgers to maintain control over hundreds of millions of dollars in spending for the reconstruction of Iraq, according to a federal audit released Friday.

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! speaks with Afghan-American journalist Fariba Nawa, author of a new report from Corpwatch, "Afghanistan Inc."

Watch or listen to the interview.

In a sweeping new assessment of reconstruction failures in Iraq, a federal inspector told Congress on Thursday that 13 of 14 major projects built by the American contractor Parsons that were examined by his agency were substandard, with construction deficiencies and other serious problems.

A public relations company that participated in a controversial U.S. military program that paid Iraqi newspapers for stories favorable to coalition forces has been awarded another multimillion-dollar media contract with American forces in Iraq.

Boeing Co. has been chosen to build a "virtual fence" using sensors and cameras along the U.S. border with Mexico and Canada to help control illegal immigration in a contract projected to be worth up to $2 billion.