Splashed on the front page of the Hindustan Times this morning:
Can this be true? It is certainly plausible that some Indian temporary workers ended up in Iraq; lots of Indians (especially Indian Muslims) get work visas for temporary employment in the Middle East, and the companies that arrange this employment are often pretty unscrupulous, resulting in what’s basically indentured servitude and severe abuses for some Indian employees.
But can the US military have been involved in these sorts of abuses? It’s appalling to think so, and ghod knows this sort of press is the last thing we need right now, inflaming anti-American resentment even in India, which by Asian standards is pretty pro-US.
On the one hand, the Hindustan Times is a fairly reputable English-language paper, and tends to be pro-American if anything, so I wouldn’t write this off as reflexive US-bashing. On the other hand, this story seems to come essentially from the testimony of four guys in Kerala, and while I don’t know why they’d be making it up, I suppose they could have done so. Does anybody have any information from any other source about Indian civilians working in US military camps in Iraq and the conditions of their work there? What do we know about the civilians doing scut work for coalition forces, who they are, why they’re there, how they’re treated?
Please, somebody debunk this so I can write a letter to the Hindustan Times letting them know that their informants have been pulling their legs. Or else confirm it so we can raise a stink about these practices. Torturing Iraqi POWs was bad enough, without mistreating and essentially enslaving civilians who are just trying to earn a buck as imported kitchen help.
It’s not true. McClenan told me nothing of the sort would ever happen because Bush keeps a careful eye on everything that goes on under his his authority. In fact, these duties are so pressing that he has no time for extensive vacations or knocking dirt clods off his golf cleats. So it can’t be true. I swear it.
Your link is to something that you apparently wrote on another message board, about something entirely unconnected with this thread, and which doesn’t mention the Hindustan Times. That’s meaningful in what way?
I just aimed to point out that this paper had “broken stories” before. But that’s a mistaken notion. Nonetheless, Hindustan Times is one of the few Indian papers of any repute.
It’s credible that US military camps would use foreign workers imported from Kuwait. It’s sort of possible, but less likely that some of those workers would be provided by agencies who acquired them in the manner described and that the workers wouldn’t want to be there. If nothing else, you’d think that workers would be vetted for security purposes.
But the description of their treatment sounds a lot like propaganda, and not particularly sophisticated propaganda. “Tortured for days”? “Beaten with rifle butts”? (Since when do soldiers on kitchen duty keep rifles around for purposes of beating lackeys?) “Used as shields by officers”? That last one rings especially false, as most attacks on US camps have been of the “fire a mortar from a distance and get out of Dodge” variety.
The hair raising tale of their escape also seems incredible – they were terrified of the constant mortar attacks on the camp, so they decided to escape * through Fallujah? . In * March?.
A bit too many things don’t add up here. It’s just too good a story. The US army is not only composed of slavedrivers, but brutal and cowardly slavedrivers who violate Muslim religious beliefs. And workers who previously didn’t even know they were in Iraq managed to navigate their way to the one city that would be sympathetic to their flight from the evil American overlords.
I obviously have no firsthand knowledge, but the story sounds fishy, or at least exaggerated for the benefits of the folks at home.
It seems to me that not only is this grossly immoral, but its also mind-bogglingly stupid. What possible purpose could there be in doing this? Why were they illegally importing workers and abusing them when there was probably perfectly adequate cheap labour all around them? Did they really expect to keep this under wraps? The sheer implausibility of it makes me think its a hoax.
I wouldn’t be surprised if all that has been said about the Indians being treated as slaves is true. We have already seen the horrendous and descipable treatment of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of the Americans. For them anyone that is brown, or less than white, would be considered an Iraqi or a Middle Eastern at the least. The level of awareness in terms of general knowledge about the world and its affairs that an average American has is also extremely low. There was survey conducted sometime back amongst the American people where they were asked to locate Iraq on a world map. If I remember correctly, a large percentage (about as much as a third of those surveyed) didn’t know where Iraq was on the map of the world). We have also seen the pictures of the humiliating treatment they have meted out to their Iraqi prisoners. They took pictures of it, which lends credence to the fact that those who indulged in those nefarious activities were perhaps not even aware that they were illegitimate. By and large the US is a media controlled population. They believe what they are told by their leaders and by their media. With people having such levels of ignorance, it is not at all surprising that the personnel that were actually in charge of taking service from the Indians presumed them to be middle eastern in descent and took out the reactions of their media fed egos on the Indians.
Well, we seem to have two opposing viewpoints on the likelihood of this story:
Both perspectives have a point, IMHO, but so far it’s just speculation on both sides. Still hoping one of these investigations will turn up some facts, one way or the other.
In the meantime, does anybody have any facts to share on the general issues of US military employment of local civilians in Iraq? How are kitchen help, cleaners, etc., hired, supervised, paid and disciplined? Are practices different for the armed forces themselves and for private military subcontractors? Any vets of the first Gulf War out there who can provide some info on how US military camp scut work was managed? (I always thought US servicepeople did all their own scut work, but that impression is probably the residue of Dad’s WWII anecdotes about peeling potatoes on kitchen patrol, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m three or four wars out of date.)
I can’t really say about Iraq, I haven’t been there in years. I do know that Indians are generally treated badly next door in Saudi. If anyone is interested I have about a million anecdotes of poor treatment in this country.