The old colonialism of reconstruction

I know I'm a naive American. But the Iraq reconstruction provides all manner of eye-opening observations on how raw economics and power really work. Private contractors handle everything in Iraq from smorgasbord super cafeterias to security for diplomats and USAID workers in Baghdad.

As of 2008, at least 190,000 private personnel were working on US-funded projects in Iraq, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in a CSM article on private contractors in Iraq. That means that for each uniformed member of the US military, there was also a contract employee – a ratio of 1 to 1. The CBO estimates the total cost of these contractors from 2003 through 2008 to be $100 billion. That's about 20 percent of all US funding for operations in Iraq, with private security like Blackwater accounting for about $12 billion.

On the ground, one hears a lot of rumors about shady practices. The big U.S. companies with $100 million contracts who then subcontract sometimes three or four times down the food chain to get third-country nationals to work here for third-world pay. As Naomi Klein has reported in her book The Shock Doctrine, big contractors engage in elaborate subcontracting schemes, often delivering inferior product. Some call it war profiteering, some call it simply capitalism. Then there's the smaller foreign contractors who aren't bound by any pretenses of worker rights to begin with.

The ones who do the worse jobs in a war torn country have the fewest choices in their home countries. The standard reply is- obviously. But maybe not, maybe a menial job in Iraq, is one that many vie for in other countries. This is the global economy after all.

But whereas the average U.S. consumer is only distantly implicated in buying a pair of Nikes sewn together in some Chinese sweatshop, here you see direct examples of economic injustice, and they're usually cooking your food and doing your laundry.

Sure undocumented workers get the same below minimum wages Stateside, but these workers are usually shielded by at least some pretense of laws, an active media and nonprofit groups advocating for their rights.

Iraq, where the attention is on the next suicide bomb and how much oil is flowing, is truly barren of this kind of first-world advocacy. The day laborers who empty the trash all day can be seen lined up outside the military bases' Western Unions in the evening to send money back to their families in the Philippines or Uganda.

But since the beginning of reconstruction very few Iraqis have been employed in the basic jobs of rebuilding. Only recently has employing tens of thousands of Iraqis in the Sons of Iraq program and to guard the Northern pipelines seemed to have turned the corner on insurgent violence.

If they pay hundreds of State Department folks and consultants exorbinant amounts to come over here to sit in an air-conditioned office, imagine the legions of Indians they get to clean the bathrooms and scrub cooking pots, the Ugandans to guard the entrances to dining halls, the Peruvians to stand in the sweltering heat checking cars, the Turkish to drive tankers and tractor trailers in mile-long convoys with no armor on them.

At Joint Base Balad, the largest U.S. military base in Iraq, there was an aborted strike by Indian cooks who were promised a certain amount a month either by KBR or a KBR subcontractor. The cooks were actually being paid half what they were promised. They threatened to strike one night. Word went around, but in the end apparently only three sat down on the job. I wonder why? Was it because they would be fired immediately with no way to get home?

There's the argument that these workers are receiving the same opportunity as any American contractor over here, based on the wages they can bring back to their impoverished economy. I'm sure it's true in some sense. But the privileged realize how much less the menial workers lives are valued than ours. They experience the danger, we reap the benefits of trucked in food and the protection of armored transportation.

The injustices can even be worse at private compounds. In my current compound in Baghdad where the private security is run by a South African company, an Angolan guard was apparently killed by electrocution when he reached up for the metal bar of a work out machine that had somehow become electrified. (Not that uncommon in Iraq where pirated electricity and a lack of electrical regulations abound.) But there has been no official announcement by the company, or release of any information regarding the fatality. Not even the man's name.

Would that happen to a U.S. soldier? More than a dozen U.S. soldiers have in fact been killed by accidental electrocution, mostly from improper grounding of electrical systems here in Iraq. But those deaths didn't end in silence or a cover up. Serious questions were brought to bear on the contractor, KBR, and Congressional inquiries initiated. What can the family of this dead Angolan guard hope for? Will there be a pension?