Human Trafficking Around the World (21 page)

In addition to continuing reports of the internal trafficking of Iraqi women, girls, and boys for the purposes of forced prostitution, there have been reports that some Iraqi boys are trafficked internally for organ trafficking. In such instances, Baghdad hospitals did not question the organ donation because the father of the donor-child was often present (U.S. Department of State, 2010).

IRAQ AS A DESTINATION

Men and women from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Uganda face forced labor in the areas of domestic work, construction, and security in Iraq. They often experience the withholding of their passports and official documents, employer refusal to honor employment contracts, and threats of deportation. Some persons from these nations willingly accept jobs in Jordan or Kuwait but are instead forced or tricked into involuntary servitude in Iraq. Others knowingly migrate to Iraq but are subjected to forced labor upon arrival (Simpson, 2006; U.S. Department of State, 2010). One case of forced labor involved 14 women from Uganda promised jobs on U.S. military bases in Iraq. Instead, they were forced to work for private Iraqi families and received lower wages than promised. Some of the women were also locked in rooms, had their passports withheld, and were physically and/or sexually abused by either the employer or the recruitment agent. Forced labor has also been a significant problem on U.S. military bases in Iraq. Thousands of foreign laborers have been trafficked into Iraq via human brokers and subcontractors, had their passports confiscated, and been forced or coerced to work in menial positions on U.S. bases (Simpson, 2006; U.S. Department of State, 2010).

One of the largest U.S. contractors in post-invasion Iraq was Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), which at the time was a Halliburton subsidiary.
¹
The company stated that roughly 35,000 of 48,000 people hired under a 2005 privatization contract were imported from nations other than Iraq and the United States (Simpson, 2006; KBR, n.d.). In 2004, thirteen men, ages 18 to 27, were recruited by KBR subcontractor Daoud & Partners in Nepal to work in a five-star hotel in Amman, Jordan. Instead, they had their passports seized when they arrived in Jordan and were informed that they would be working in a military facility in Iraq. While in transit they were stopped, kidnapped, and later militant insurgents executed 12 of the men. The one survivor was forced to work in a warehouse in Iraq for 15 months, supervised by KBR, before KBR and Daoud & Partners allowed him to return home to Nepal (Simpson, 2006; Hedgpeth, 2008; Handley & McOwen, 2009). In August 2006, the law firm Cohen Milstein Hausfeld & Toll, PLLC filed suit against Daoud & Partners. In April 2008 the presiding judge in the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Administrative Law ruled that the men’s families were entitled to death benefits and ordered Daoud & Partners to pay $1 million to the families of 11 of the victims (Switzky, 2008). In April 2009 the same firm filed suit against KBR and Daoud & Partners, claiming that KBR and its Jordanian subcontractor had trafficked Nepali workers. In response to a series of attempts by KBR and Daoud & Partners to get out of the suit, courts denied KBR’s motion to dismiss and the subsequent appeal, and jurisdiction was upheld over Daoud & Partners. A trial date has been set for April 29, 2013 (Ramchandra Adhikari et al. v. Daoud & Partners et al., 2009; Business Wire, 2012).

Mike Thibault, co-chair of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, states that subcontractors continue to use human trafficking to fill open job positions in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Once in Iraq, the workers have their passports taken away and are placed in debt bondage. “We’re talking about individuals that were hired from foreign countries in order to come into Iraq but were told they were going to be working in places like Dubai and Kuwait. And when they showed up, they were flown into Iraq,” Thibault told Federal News Radio (Kubota, 2010). In February 2010 the U.S. State Department alerted the U.S. army of a potential case of human trafficking in Iraq. The case allegedly involved subcontractor supervisors working for the Army and Air Force Exchange Service who had recruited women in their nations of origin and promised the women jobs as beauticians in Dubai. Instead, the women were “forced to surrender their passports, transported against their will to Iraq, and told they could only leave by paying a termination fee of $1,100.” An Army Criminal Investigation Command spokesman said the allegations were investigated and not substantiated (Schwellenbach & Leonnig, 2010).

Reports suggest that at least one-third of the approximately 200,000 contracted employees in Iraq and Afghanistan work for subcontractors. One concern is the immunity that was granted to contractors under CPA Order No. 17. Under the order, contractors and subcontractors were not subject to Iraqi laws or regulations in matters relating to the terms and conditions of their contracts, including licensing and registering employees, businesses, and corporations. Contractors were defined as “non-Iraqi legal entities or individuals not normally resident in Iraq, including their non-Iraqi employees and subcontractors not normally resident in Iraq, supplying goods or services in Iraq under a contract” (CPA, 2004). A broad array of contracts was covered under Order 17. It included contract or grant agreements with the CPA or any successor agreement. The order also protected contract or grant agreements with a sending state to supply goods or services in Iraq, where that supply was to or on behalf of the MNF–I; for humanitarian aid, reconstruction or development projects approved and organized by the CPA or a sending state; for the construction, reconstruction, or operation of diplomatic and consular missions; or until July 1, 2004, to or on behalf of foreign liaison missions. Also included were contracts for security services provided by private security companies to foreign liaison missions and their personnel, diplomatic and consular missions and their personnel, and the MNF–I and its personnel, international consultants, or contractors (CPA, 2004).

In terms of forced labor and debt bondage, of particular interest is the immunity granted to contractors and subcontractors in Iraq for the purposes of construction, reconstruction, or development projects. Today the U.S. government claims to have no direct oversight over contractors because it has no direct contractual relationship with them. Prime contractors are legally responsible for managing subcontractors, but their supervision has often been ineffective and inadequate. “Subcontracting is a normal business practice,” said Christopher Shays, co-chair of the Federal Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. “But what makes sense for an office-renovation project in Maryland can create some unique risks when the contractor is hiring subcontractors in a combat zone half a world away” (Commission on Wartime Contracting, 2010).

TRAFFICKING ABROAD

Iraqi women and girls as young as 11 years old are trafficked for sexual exploitation to Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria, Turkey, and the UAE. Iraqi citizens are also trafficked to Europe; in fact they account for 1 percent of the identified trafficking victims in the Netherlands. Iraqi females are often lured by traffickers with false promises of work or are convinced by family members to prostitute as a means of economic opportunity, to pay off debts, or to resolve disputes between families. Traffickers use temporary marriages
(muta’a)
to transport women and girls within Iraq as well as to neighboring nations, particularly Syria, for sexual exploitation (U.S. Department of State, 2010).

Ousting the Iraqi government and all previous existing systems of security resulted in border vulnerabilities and security weaknesses in the cities of Iraq. This situation has made women particularly vulnerable to a variety of crimes such as kidnapping, sexual assault, and human trafficking. One trafficking ring sold 128 Iraqi women to Saudi Arabia in 2008 and 2009. The ring was made up of Iraqi police officers, members of the Governorate’s Council (a political party), and security officials. Shyaa Hmoud Salman, an Iraqi police officer involved in the ring, testified that they set up a branch of an NGO and offered legitimate employment as a lure:

I was only one of many other men who were summoned to the city of Mosul by the Saudi-Arabian Abou Mansour on March 18, 2007. The agreement was that he [would] pay us $3,000 for every young woman brought from Diyala. After a few days, we went to the city of Diyala where we started a branch of the Arab Humane Organization NGO after we paid its owner an amount of money. We announced that we [would] pay a $200 salary to young women, which we did with a big number until we gained their trust. With many we tried seduction and alluring. The first group we sent were 20 women. (OWFI, 2010)

Salman went on to state that Mansour raised the inducement price to $5,000 per woman:

We told the women that they [would] be working in Saudi Arabia, and we convinced them to get rid of a life of poverty and stress under their strict families’ control. We were able to convince and send a total of 128 [women] from Diyala City to Saudi Arabia, through the city of Mosul. We had learned beforehand that they [would] be sold to tourist houses where they [would] be sexual servants and [would] prostitute for a living, but [would] not be allowed to say anything to anyone. (OWFI, 2010)

There are reports that Iraqi children are also trafficked internally and abroad. Some are trafficked for adoption and others for sexual abuse. Officials and aid agencies point to corruption, inadequate law enforcement, and porous borders as contributing factors. The child traffickers use threats, force, coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or vulnerability, or give payment or benefits to a person in control of the victim. One police officer told
The Guardian
that at least 15 Iraqi children were sold each month for these purposes. Officials believe that the 12 or more criminal gangs that operate in Iraq offer $312 to $6,239 per child (Sarhan, 2009). Trafficking syndicates use intermediaries who pretend to work for NGOs to negotiate with the families. The syndicate prepares the change of names, furnishes new birth certificates, and adds the child to the passport of the intermediary who will take the child outside the country. “Before we try to negotiate with any family, we study their living conditions, their debts, the goods they own, and when we feel that the relatives are suffering with unemployment and cannot feed their children, we make our approach that in most of the time is welcomed as we are seen as aid workers,” an anonymous source involved in human trafficking told
The Guardian
(Sarhan, 2009). The source stated that the readiness of underpaid government employees to help with the falsification of documents makes child trafficking from Iraq cheaper and easier than elsewhere. Colonel Firaz Abdallah, part of the investigation department of the Iraqi police, says corruption in many departments of the government makes it difficult for traffickers to be caught and children to be retrieved:

When those children come to the airport or the border, everything looks correct and it is hard for us to keep them inside the country without significant evidence that the child is being trafficked. A couple of weeks ago we caught a couple with a six-month-old baby leaving by car from the Iraqi border to Jordan. One of our police officers found the age difference between the couple strange and asked our office to check. After arresting them we found out that the girl was sold by her parents and was going to be taken to Amman, then after that, to Ireland where a family had already paid for the baby. (Sarhan, 2009)

One mother cited life in a displacement camp, unemployment, and lack of support to explain why she sold two of her children. “I did anything possible to keep them with me, but I lost my husband while I was pregnant with my fifth child and life became too hard. I love all my children. I know that the families who adopted them will give a good life, food, and education that I would never give” (Sarhan, 2009). Aid agencies warn parents that these children are often sexually exploited. “We tried to approach many of these families to alert them about what can happen with their kids but we have been threatened and two aid workers were killed after they tried to prevent a child negotiation,” said Ahmed Sami, an aid worker. The source involved in human trafficking stated that traffickers prefer babies, but occasionally families request children between the ages of one and four. It is unknown what happens to the children who are trafficked. The source was told by a colleague that one of the babies sold in 2008 was used for organ transplants (Sarhan, 2009).

WHAT HAPPENS TO VICTIMS AFTER TRAFFICKING

Just after the U.S. invasion, an armed gang took a young woman from an orphanage. The 18-year-old was sent to several brothels before being brought back to Baghdad, drugged with pills, dressed in a suicide belt, and sent to bomb a cleric’s office. Instead, the teen went to the police and was subsequently sentenced to seven years in prison. The prison director says the sentence was imposed to protect her from the gang (Bennett, 2006).

In addition to facing a harsh cultural stigma, it is not uncommon for victims to be punished for crimes associated with their trafficking experience. Coercion is not recognized in Iraqi courts as a legal defense for engaging in unlawful acts. Child victims forced to act on behalf of insurgent groups face prosecution for terrorism offenses. The same is the case for sex-trafficking victims who are prosecuted for prostitution and can spend several months in detention awaiting trial (U.S. Department of State, 2010). One such case involved two sisters, ages 14 and 15, who escaped their traffickers in Dubai (UAE) and reported them to police. After being returned to Iraq, they were imprisoned for carrying false passports. Their traffickers were rumored to be back on the streets after paying their way out of prison. “I don’t know what to do if the prison administration decides to release me,” said Asmah, age 14. “We have no one to protect us” (Bennett, 2006). Prostitution is illegal in Iraq, and those arrested face detainment for three to four months. Almost half the women in the central women’s prison Kadhimiya (Baghdad) have been convicted of prostitution. Others face death. Between 2006 and 2008 there were mass killings of women in the cities of Basra and Umara. Some of the women were accused of prostitution while others were convicted of being unveiled and wearing makeup (OWFI, 2010).