Slave Labor at US Embassy in Baghdad?
by David Phinney
October 26, 2006

Several months before a U.S. construction foreman named John Owen quit
in disgust over what he said was blatant abuse of foreign laborers
hired to build the sprawling new U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Rory Mayberry
witnessed similar events when he flew to Kuwait from his home in Myrtle
Creek, Ore.

The gravelly-voiced, easygoing U.S. Army veteran had previously worked
in Iraq for Halliburton and the private security company Danubia.
Missing the action and the big paychecks U.S. contractors draw there,
Mayberry snagged a $10,000-month job with MSDS consulting company.

MSDS is a two-person, minority-owned consulting company that assists
U.S. State Department managers in Washington with procurement
programming. Never before had the firm offered medical services or
worked in Iraq, but First Kuwaiti – Owen's employer – hired MSDS on the
recommendation of Jim Golden, the State Department contract official
overseeing the embassy project. Within days, an agreement worth
hundreds of thousands of dollars for medical care was signed.

The 45-year-old Mayberry, a former emergency medical technician in the
U.S. Army who worked as a funeral director in Oregon, responded to a
help-wanted ad placed by MSDS. The plan was that he would work as a
medic attending to the construction crews on the work site in Baghdad.

Like Owen, Mayberry immediately sensed things weren't right when he
boarded a First Kuwaiti flight on March 15 to Baghdad.

At the airport in Kuwait City, Mayberry said, he saw a person behind a
counter hand First Kuwaiti managers a passenger manifest, an envelope
of money, and a stack of boarding passes to Dubai. The managers then
handed out the boarding passes to Mayberry and 50 or so new First
Kuwaiti laborers, mostly Filipinos.

"Everyone was told to tell customs and security that they were flying
to Dubai," Mayberry said in an interview. Once the group passed the
guards, they went upstairs and waited by the McDonald's for First
Kuwaiti staff to unlock a door – Gate 26 – that led to an unmarked,
aging white 52-seat jet.

"All the workers had their passports taken away by First Kuwaiti,"
Mayberry claimed, and while he knew the plane was bound for Baghdad,
he's not so sure the others were aware of their destination. The Asian
laborers began asking questions about why they were flying north and
the jet wasn't flying east over the ocean, he said. "I think they
thought they were going to work in Dubai."

One former First Kuwaiti supervisor acknowledged that the company holds
passports of many workers in Iraq – a violation of U.S. contracting.

"All of the passports are kept in the offices," said one company
insider who requested anonymity for fear of financial and personal
retribution. As for distributing Dubai boarding passes for Baghdad
flights, "It's because of the travel bans," he explained. Mayberry
believes that migrant workers from the Philippines, India, and Nepal
are especially vulnerable to employers like First Kuwaiti because their
countries have little or no diplomatic presence in Iraq.

"If you don't have your passport or an embassy to go to, what you do to
get out of a bad situation?" he asked. "How can they go to the U.S.
State Department for help if First Kuwaiti is building their embassy?"

Owen had already been working at the embassy site since late November
when Mayberry arrived. The two never crossed paths, but both share
similar complaints about management of the project and brutal treatment
of the laborers that, at times, numbered as many as 2,500. Most are
from the Philippines, India, and Pakistan. Others are from Egypt and
Turkey.

The number of workers with injuries and ailments stunned Mayberry. He
went to work immediately after and stayed busy around the clock for
days.

Four days later, First Kuwaiti pulled him off the job after he
requested an investigation of two patients who had died before he
arrived from what he suspected was medical malpractice. Mayberry also
recommended that the health clinics be shut down because of unsanitary
conditions and mismanagement.

"There hadn't been any follow-up on medical care. People were walking
around intoxicated on pain relievers with unwrapped wounds, and there
were a lot of infections," he recalled. "The idea that there was any
hygiene seemed ridiculous. I'm not sure they were even bathing."

In reports made available to the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Army,
and First Kuwaiti, Mayberry listed dozens of concerns about the
clinics, which he found lacking in hot water, disinfectant,
hand-washing stations, properly supplied ambulances, and communication
equipment. Mayberry also complained that workers' medical records were
in total disarray or nonexistent, the beds were dirty, and the support
staff hired by First Kuwaiti was poorly trained.

The handling of prescription drugs especially bothered him. Many of the
drugs that originated from Iraq and Kuwait were unsecured,
disorganized, and unintelligibly labeled, he said in one memo. He found
that the medical staff frequently misdiagnosed patients. Prescription
pain killers were being handed out "like a candy store … and then
people were sent back to work."

Mayberry warned that the practice could cause addiction and safety
hazards. "Some were on the construction site climbing scaffolding 30
feet off the ground. 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.'"

The sloppy handling of drugs may have led to the two deaths, Mayberry
speculates. One worker, age 25, died in his room. The second, in his
mid-30s, died at the clinic because of heart failure. Both deaths may
be "medical homicide," Mayberry says, because the patients may have
been negligently prescribed improper drug treatment.

If the State Department investigated, Mayberry knows nothing of the
outcome. Two State Department officials with project oversight
responsibilities did not return phone calls or e-mails inquiring about
Mayberry's allegations. The reports may have been ignored, not because
of his complaints, but because Mayberry is a terrible speller, a
problem compounded by an Arabic translation program loaded on his
computer, he says.

Owen's account of his seven months on the job paints a similar picture
to Mayberry's. Health and safety measures were essentially nonexistent,
he says. Not once did he witness a safety meeting. Once an Egyptian
worker fell, broke his back, and was sent home. No one ever heard from
him again. "The accident might not have happened if there was a safety
program and he had known how to use a safety harness," Owen said.

State Department officials supervising the project are aware of many
such events, but apparently did nothing, he said. Once when 17 workers
climbed the wall of the construction site to escape, a State Department
official helped round them up and put them in "virtual lockdown," Owen
said.

Just before he resigned, hundreds of Pakistani workers went on strike
in June and beat up a Lebanese manager whom they accused of harassing
them. Owen estimates that 375 laborers were then sent home.

Recent First Kuwaiti employees agree that the accounts of Owen and
Mayberry are accurate. One longtime supervisor claimed that 50 to 60
percent of the laborers regularly protest that First Kuwaiti "treats
them like animals," and routinely reduces their promised pay with
confusing and unexplained deductions.

Another former First Kuwaiti manager, who declined to be named because
of possible adverse consequences, said that Owen's and Mayberry's
complaints only begin "to scratch the surface."

But scratching the surface is the only view yet available of what may
be the most lasting monument to the U.S. invasion and occupation of
Iraq. As of now, only a handful of authorized State Department managers
and contractors, along with First Kuwaiti workers and contractors, are
officially allowed inside the project's walls. No journalist has ever
been allowed access to the sprawling 104-acre site with towering
construction cranes raising their necks along the skyline.

(Inter Press Service)