[ Defense contractors hire thousands of foreigners. Many are
trapped by employment practices banned by the U.S. government.]
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ABUSES OF MIGRANT WORKERS ON US BASES IN PERSIAN GULF  
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Katie McQue
October 27, 2022
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
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_ Defense contractors hire thousands of foreigners. Many are trapped
by employment practices banned by the U.S. government. _

, Rocco Fazzari / ICIJ

 

Foreign workers for defense contractors on at least four U.S. military
bases in the Persian Gulf are trapped in their jobs by abusive
employment practices that they say prevent them from returning home or
even looking for better work in the region, more than 30 current and
former workers said in interviews.

Many of the thousands of migrants employed on Persian Gulf bases have
had their passports confiscated, been saddled with onerous debts after
paying illegal recruitment fees or been denied “release papers”
required under local laws, according to the interviews as well as
court records and government documents showing that such abuses, which
appear to violate U.S. regulations, have been repeatedly flagged in
recent years.

The companies that provide food, repair vehicles and supply other
services to the U.S. military routinely turn down requests from
civilian employees for release papers they need to leave their jobs,
more than a dozen workers told the the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists and The Washington Post
[[link removed]].
Under the strict labor laws of most countries in the region, employees
who leave jobs without permission have been jailed for
“absconding.” In some of these countries, notably Kuwait and the
United Arab Emirates, defense contractors hold onto their workers’
passports, often restricting their freedom of movement, workers said.

Employment agencies in the workers’ home countries, meantime,
frequently charge steep fees to place them in jobs overseas. The fees
can run into the thousands of dollars and are often financed with
high-interest loans, requiring migrants who are paid as little as $1
an hour to work for several years before they’ve paid off their
debts, according to 19 current or former workers for nine contractors
and subcontractors in the Persian Gulf.

“Life is not easy,” said a young Bangladeshi food services worker
named Mohammed, who works on a base in Kuwait. “My family has
problems, and it’s just me working, and I have parents, two
brothers, and one of my sisters to take care of.” Mohammed, whose
last name is not being published to prevent retaliation by his
employer, said he was forced to pay a $6,000 recruitment fee to get a
job at the U.S. Army’s Camp Arifjan and had to work two-and-a-half
years to pay off the loan his father had taken out to cover the fee.

These practices are widespread among private employers in the Middle
East, where the legal status of migrant laborers is routinely tied to
that of their employer. But the abuses described by the workers would
appear to violate U.S. regulations against human trafficking by
government contractors and subcontractors. These federal acquisition
regulations ban the kind of recruitment fees detailed by workers at
U.S. military bases, seek to bar involuntary servitude, which includes
confiscation of passports, and requires contractors to police their
subcontractors.

“The Department of Defense promotes the U.S. government’s zero
tolerance policy on trafficking in persons,” said Cmdr. Nicole
Schwegman, a Defense Department spokesperson, after being presented
with the workers’ accounts. “The Department continues to work
diligently on combating human trafficking because these activities
violate human rights and harm our national security mission.”

The workers interviewed for this story are among the armies of men and
women from Asia and Africa who do the manual and semiskilled labor
that keeps U.S. military bases abroad running day after day. The U.S.
military operates from more than a dozen bases and other installations
in the Persian Gulf and neighboring Iraq and has used these locations
to wage wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, combat al-Qaeda and the Islamic
State, and oppose Iranian activities in the region.

The military has grown deeply dependent on defense contractors and
their legions of migrant hires. These workers travel to the Persian
Gulf seeking employment opportunities vital for supporting relatives
back home, though the pay is often relatively low and the hours long.

Most of those interviewed — like the thousands of other civilian
workers on military bases — are employed by regional subcontractors,
which in turn mainly work for major American defense companies. These
include Vectrus and Amentum, which grew out of the major government
contractor AECOM two years ago and acquired defense firms DynCorp and
PAE.

In the past five years, the Pentagon has responded to 176 reported
instances of labor trafficking on military bases in the Persian Gulf
and beyond, in most cases by requiring better monitoring of employment
practices, according to State Department reports reviewed by NBC News
[[link removed]].

This story was produced as part of the Trafficking Inc. investigation
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from ICIJ
[[link removed]],
The Post [[link removed]], NBC
[[link removed]], WGBH Boston
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Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism [[link removed]],
the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
[[link removed]] and the Investigative Reporting
Program
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at the University of California, Berkeley.

Release papers and passports

A bus arrives at 4:30 a.m. at a labor camp south of Kuwait City to
collect dozens of fatigued workers for their shifts at the U.S.
Army’s Camp Arifjan. On only several hours of sleep, they’re
transported to the base about 45 minutes away, then queue up with
hundreds of others for security checks.

The workers, mainly from South Asia, are employed as mechanics and
laborers by Kuwait Resources House (KRH), a large subcontractor for
major defense firms at several American military bases in the Persian
Gulf, including U.S.-headquartered Vectrus and Amentum. Current and
former KRH workers on bases in Kuwait and Qatar interviewed for this
story reported earning between $1.52 and $3.70 an hour, according to
calculations by ICIJ and The Post based on their monthly wages and
hours worked.

Ten current and former workers said many KRH employees cannot seek
better-paying jobs, or in some cases, even go home, because the
company blocks them from leaving.

“It’s not a good life. There’s not much freedom,” said a
38-year-old mechanic from India, who spoke on the condition that only
his nickname, Aryan, be published for fear of retribution. He has
worked for the company for six years and is ready to move on. “I am
not getting a release. I want to leave,” he said, adding, “There
are better companies here I want to work for.”

U.S. President George W. Bush addressing military personnel at U.S.
Camp Arifjan in Kuwait in 2008. The base has played a pivotal role in
military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the region.
Image: MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

The mechanic said he and his colleagues have tried to alert managers
at Vectrus, the defense firm he’s employed by KRH to work for, but
they told him “they can’t interfere in my company.”

Asked by email to comment on specific allegations, including that it
denied workers’ freedom of movement, KRH responded, “We would like
to assure you that all the allegations you stated in your email are
incorrect.” The company did not offer further specifics.

“Since day 1 of our operations, we have been the leader in honoring
and abiding by Human Rights in every bit of our business practice.
Since our core business is ‘Life Support and HR Solutions,’
Combating Trafficking in Persons has been an essential part of our
practice,” the company said. KRH, which reports employing 10,000
workers across the region, added, “Over the years, we have
accumulated a reputation that shines with pride on the level of
ethical business practice we adopt, as we lead by example to the
entire sector in the [Middle East] region.”

Mike Smith, a spokesman for Vectrus, said, “At Vectrus, we value all
people and treat them with dignity and respect. We follow all United
States labor laws, the laws in the countries were we operate, and
demand our subcontractors do the same.”

In interviews, six current and former employees at five defense
contractors in the region said their employers often take possession
of workers’ passports.

_THE KAFALA SYSTEM IS ABUSIVE PRECISELY BECAUSE IT GRANTS SUCH
DISPROPORTIONATE POWER TO EMPLOYERS OVER MIGRANT WORKERS. — Michael
Page, Human Rights Watch_

By confiscating workers’ identity documents, contractors wield more
control over their employees and guarantee their obedience, said Sam
McCahon, a former federal prosecutor who spent nine years in the
Middle East as a military contract law specialist and U.S. Army
procurement fraud attorney. “If you have my passport, I can’t go
work for a competitor or anyone else. I have to stay with you,” said
McCahon.

Even if they could hold onto their passports, several employees said
they remain stuck because of a requirement, under the so-called kafala
system, that workers obtain release papers from their employer before
moving to another job.

“The kafala system is abusive precisely because it grants such
disproportionate power to employers over migrant workers,” said
Michael Page, deputy director in the Middle East and North Africa
division at Human Rights Watch. “When employers are allowed to
confiscate a worker’s passport or deny a migrant worker the ability
to change jobs, this undermines not only the worker’s power to
decide where to work but even the ability to leave abusive situations.
At its worst, this reality can even lead to situations of forced
labor.”

Two years ago, Qatar introduced reforms stipulating that workers
should keep their passports in their own possession and abolishing the
use of release papers. But contract workers in Qatar said they are
still required to get permission from their current employer before
they can move to a new job.

“They always say we will provide your release papers soon, but they
never do,” said Sree Kumar from India, who worked for four years for
KRH at the huge Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. “One of my friends got a
chance for a job with another company, but our company didn’t
provide a release letter, and he lost it.”

Dilip Gurung, a 32-year-old warehouse specialist from Nepal, said he
had to fight to get permission from KRH, a subcontractor for Amentum
in Qatar, before he traveled home in 2019 for emergency surgery to
remove a benign tumor from his head.

His requests for permission were repeatedly rebuffed over several
days, during which he was forced to work despite excruciating pain, he
said. When he was finally allowed to travel, he had to take unpaid
leave, he added.

“We have our passport all the time, as that is Amentum’s
guideline,” said Gurung. “But having our passports on hand
doesn’t mean we are free to leave.”

Exorbitant recruitment fees

Gurung’s difficulties began even before he set foot in Qatar. After
applying for a job with KRH in 2016, he was ushered by an employment
broker into a small office at a recruitment agency in the outskirts of
the Nepali capital, Kathmandu, and instructed to hand over 150,000
Nepali rupees, or about $1,400 in cash, he recounted. To get the
contract, Gurung was required to pay a recruitment fee equal to five
months of his salary as a teacher in Nepal.

“If you don’t pay, they will not send you overseas,” Gurung
recalled. “Although I knew it wasn’t legal, I had no choice.”

He said the recruiter pressured him to declare on video that he’d
only paid a small amount in administrative fees, which are legally
permissible in Nepal but capped at 10,000 Nepali rupees, or about $93
at that time. Only then was he given a job with KRH.

[Photo of Dilip Gurung sitting in a forest near his home in Nepal]

Dilip Gurung, a 32-year-old warehouse specialist from Nepal, worked
for KRH, a subcontractor for Amentum in Qatar. Image: Sagar Chhetri /
The Washington Post

Charging recruitment fees of hundreds, even thousands, of dollars is
commonplace, workers said. In interviews, 19 current or former workers
at U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf reported paying fees ranging from
$250 to $6,000. Often, the workers are compelled to sell personal
assets, such as their vehicles, and take out high-interest loans to
cover the fees. Gurung said he took out a loan with an annual interest
rate of 36%.

KRH said allegations that its workers paid recruitment fees were
incorrect.

Mohammed, the Bangladeshi food services worker, was 18 years old when
a recruiter required him to pay $6,000 for a job at Camp Arifjan in
Kuwait. He said he and his close co-workers for a Saudi Arabia-based
contractor, Tamimi Global, all had to pay recruiting fees and Tamimi
managers “told us not to tell people that we paid.”

To cover the cost, his father, a retired farmer, took out a loan for
$4,000 and cashed in his remaining retirement savings, Mohammed
recalled. But his family believed it would all be worth it. He said
the recruiter promised that Tamimi would pay about $1,300 a month.

Instead, when he arrived in Kuwait in 2017, he was told his starting
salary would be $260 a month, he recounted, forcing him to work 2½
years to pay back the loan.

Misfer al-Malki, manager of Tamimi’s human resources and
administration department, said the company seeks to comply fully with
U.S. laws and regulations and has a compliance level that “meets and
exceeds” its contract requirements.

“Tamimi has recruitment procedures and does not take money from
staff. We do not deny that there are inappropriate recruitment
procedures in the region and that is why we have to be vigilant, but
we do everything we can to avoid our staff being caught by them,” he
said.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office has concluded that
recruitment fees can put workers into “debt bondage,” forced to
spend most of their wages paying off the loans and unable to quit
potentially exploitative jobs. GAO considers this a feature of labor
trafficking.

“We have very clear regulations now saying that you cannot charge
recruitment fees,” said Latesha Love, director of international
affairs and trade at the GAO. “Holding passports and things of that
nature are not something that can be done on contracts with our
federal dollars.”

The GAO most recently investigated working conditions at overseas
military bases last year. The agency, which is an investigative arm of
Congress, called on the Defense Department to address weaknesses in
its oversight of contractors and its reporting of internal
investigations into human trafficking conducted between 2015 and 2020.

_I THINK IT’S A MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING. THE AMERICAN MANAGERS KNOW
ABOUT THE FEE, AND THEY SAY NOTHING. THEY AVOID TALKING ABOUT IT. —
Al Udeid worker Sree Kumar, from India_

According to nine workers, American contractors on the military bases
are aware that their employees have been forced to pay recruitment
fees but have not tried to stop the practice.

“One day, we shared with our project manager that we had paid this
fee, but he said [the company is] helpless,” said Kumar, the former
KRH worker at Al Udeid Air Base. “I think it’s a mutual
understanding. The American managers know about the fee, and they say
nothing. They avoid talking about it.”

McCahon, the former military procurement fraud lawyer, said that
charging low-paid migrant workers recruitment fees for jobs on U.S.
overseas military bases is an “institutionalized” business
practice.

“If that person is indebted to get the job, they’re more
malleable, which means essentially, you can do anything you want to
them. You can cheat them, abuse them, anything,” said McCahon. The
U.S. Constitution, he noted, “prohibits indentured servitude. Yet,
we’re not only tolerating it. The U.S. taxpayer actually pays the
trafficker.”

U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster aircrafts at al-Udeid Air Base in
Qatar. Image: OLIVIER DOULIERY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Previous public warnings

Federal acquisition regulations require contractors to adopt measures
aimed at preventing recruitment agents and subcontractors from
engaging in human trafficking and terminate relationships with
business partners in breach of anti-trafficking laws.

Love, the GAO official, said Pentagon contracting officials are
supposed to be looking for signs of abuses, such as recruitment fees
and the confiscation of identity documents. In practice, however,
there is little enforcement of the regulations, she said.

“Often, federal agencies have very little visibility into what’s
happening at the subcontractor level because the subcontractors
don’t report directly back to the U.S. government,” Love said.

Schwegman, the Defense Department spokesperson, said the Pentagon had
taken steps in recent years to address labor trafficking, for instance
by adding training for procurement personnel and highlighting for
military agencies and commands their role in reporting employment
abuses. She said these measures came on top of steps, taken in 2013 in
response to reported abuses, designed to publicize workers’ rights
and enhance oversight.

There has been no lack of public warnings about possible employment
abuses by military contractors and their subcontractors.

In 2017, for instance, U.S. military investigators examined
allegations that Tamimi, which was hired to feed military personnel in
Kuwait, had violated anti-human trafficking rules in its pay and
employment practices, and proposed barring the company from receiving
future contracts.

While Tamimi rejected the allegations, it signed a compliance
agreement with the U.S. Army agreeing, in part, to improve its
training programs and hire an independent compliance monitor.

And in March, a U.S. District Court judge in Maryland ruled that 29
Kuwaiti translators could go forward with a lawsuit claiming that two
military contractors currently owned by Amentum were responsible for
an array of abusive practices — including confiscating the
linguists’ passports and aiding in a “Kuwait government manhunt”
that put them at risk of arrest if they tried to quit their jobs and
leave the country.

Amentum did not respond to multiple requests for comment. In court
filings in the translators’ lawsuit, the Amentum units deny
wrongdoing.

Some of the oldest concerns go back to the years following the
American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, when the U.S. military
dramatically escalated its presence in the region. In 2006, for
example, authorities in India barred Kuwait & Gulf Link Holding Co.
— a Kuwait-registered logistics and transportation firm operating on
bases in the Persian Gulf — from hiring Indian employees. Indian
authorities claimed KGL had lured workers to work in war-torn Iraq by
falsely promising they were going to get jobs in Kuwait, according to
a U.S. Senate document.

KGL did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Today, KGL’s workers are again sharing complaints about the company,
which continues to receive large U.S. military contracts. In
interviews, three current and former KGL workers said the employment
firms that placed them with KGL forced them to pay illegal recruitment
fees. Two of them said that KGL also has prevented some low-paid
laborers from leaving their jobs.

“People have been stuck there for years because they can’t get
their release papers. The company doesn’t want to pay new laborers
more money,” said Anil Lama, a former I.T. worker for KGL at an
American military installation in Kuwait.

A 32-year-old Indian man, who said he has worked for KGL as a driver
for five years after paying a $1,250 recruitment fee, explained he was
afraid to ask the company for his release papers because such requests
by his co-workers had already been denied.

“Some of my colleagues have completed eight years of work. Even
then, release papers are not given,” he said. “There are many
problems.”

_Katie McQue is a freelance journalist for ICIJ and The Washington
Post._

_Contributors: Agustin Armendariz (ICIJ), Emilia Díaz Struck (ICIJ),
Yousef H. Alshammari (Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism),
Andy Lehren (NBC News), Molly Boigon (NBC News), __Laura Strickler
(NBC News), Anna Schecter (NBC News), and Courtney Kube (NBC News)._

* workers rights
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* US military
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