Baghdad Embassy Investigated for Labor Trafficking and Abuse

By David Phinney, IraqSlogger. Posted June 1, 2007.

Editor's note: Rumors of labor trafficking and abuse have plagued the building contractor now completing the $592 million Baghdad embassy building project, but a State Department inspector general investigation reported finding nothing untoward. Now David Phinney reveals previously unreported instances of appalling living conditions, abuse and coerced labor, making clear that the allegations against the contractor managing the embassy project remain unresolved.

In the months following September 2005, complaints began coming in to the U.S. State Department that all was not well with its most ambitious project ever: a sprawling new embassy project on the banks of the ancient Tigris River. The largest, most heavily fortified embassy in the world with over 20 buildings, it spans 104 acres-- comparable in size to the Vatican.

Soon after the State Department awarded a $592 million building contract to First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting in July 2005, thousands of low-paid migrant workers recruited from South Asia, the Philippines and other nations poured into Baghdad, beginning work to build the gargantuan complex within two years time. But sources involved in the embassy project tell Slogger that during First Kuwaiti’s rush to the finish the project by this summer on schedule, American managers and specialists involved with the project began protesting about the living and working conditions of lower-paid workers sequestered and largely unseen behind security walls bordering the embassy project inside the U.S.-controlled Green Zone.

Interactive renderings of the U.S. Embassy by architect Berger Devine Yaeger

The Americans protested that construction crews lived in crowded quarters, ate substandard food and had little medical care. When drinking water was scarce in the blistering heat, coolers were filled on the banks of the Tigris, a river rife with waterborne disease, sewage and sometimes floating bodies, they said. Others questioned why First Kuwaiti held the passports of workers. Was it to keep them from escaping? Some laborers had turned up “missing” with little investigation. Another American said laborers told him they were been misled in their job location. When recruited, they were unaware they were heading for war-torn Iraq.

After hearing similar allegations during much of 2006, Howard J. Krongard, the State Department’s inspector general, flew to Baghdad for what he describes as a “brief” review on Sept. 15. He now reports that the complaints had no substance.

“Nothing came to our attention,” he wrote in a nine-page memorandum posted recently on the State Department's website. More importantly, after interviewing an unstated number of workers from the Philippines, India, Nepal and Pakistan, Krongard said no evidence was found of labor smuggling, trafficking or other abuses. Krongard makes no mention of an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Justice Department of First Kuwaiti and others for such alleged practices and other matters.

One former labor foreman at the embassy site who recently read Krongard’s review called it “bull shit.” Another former First Kuwaiti employee viewed it as “a whitewash.”

Meanwhile, Justice Department trial attorneys Andrew Kline and Michael J. Frank with the civil rights division have been contacting former First Kuwaiti employees and others for interviews and documents, but declined to comment on the investigation other than to say they are looking into allegations of labor trafficking.

Ticketed to Dubai, diverted to Iraq

Dozens of migrant workers from Nepal and the Philippines have previously accused First Kuwaiti of pressuring them to work in Iraq under U.S. military contracts against their wishes. Late last year several Americans also claimed they boarded separate chartered jets in Kuwait loaded with work crews holding boarding passes to Dubai, but the planes then flew directly to Baghdad. Just this week, another American reported to Slogger that he was told by workers from Ghana on the embassy site that they were led to believe they would have jobs in Dubai but were then taken to work in Iraq.

First Kuwaiti general manager Wadih al Absi flatly dismisses the accusations as unfounded and false.

“I am telling you that First Kuwaiti has never violated any visa violations or forced people to work,” he said during a telephone interview last January. “In the coming months, you will see that First Kuwaiti is the best company working in the Middle East.”

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David Phinney is a journalist and broadcaster based in Washington, D.C., whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times and on ABC and PBS. He can be contacted at: phinneydavid@yahoo.com.

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