News Analysis

In Harm’s Way 
Macapagal-Arroyo Uses New Labor Conscription 
for U.S. Armed Occupation of Iraq

The government’s labor-export policy – a legacy of the Marcos dictatorship – is being retooled to support the United States’ war of aggression and colonial occupation of Iraq. The policy can now be called labor-conscription which seeks to recruit overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to render auxiliary services that the U.S. armed forces need as they wage their wars of aggression in all corners of the world today.

By Bobby Tuazon
Bulatlat

The government’s labor-export policy – a legacy of the Marcos dictatorship – is being retooled to support the United States’ war of aggression and colonial occupation of Iraq. The policy can now be called labor-conscription which aims to recruit overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to render auxiliary services that the U.S. armed forces need in their wars of aggression today. This labor-conscription policy fits into the Pentagon’s current efforts to privatize the war – or some of its components, anyway - such as security, information technology, maintenance, engineering and construction, bases building as well as medical, transport and other support services. 

Essentially, this is reminiscent of the long period of U.S. military bases in the Philippines – then the largest facilities maintained outside of the American mainland – when thousands of Filipino civilians were recruited to work inside the facilities as cooks, maintenance crews, librarians, recreation attendants or even as school teachers. Prostitution became an industry precisely because it became ancillary to the U.S. military presence. Was it not from these bases and adjoining joints where the HIV began? 

Labor conscription has been resorted to by the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo under its all-out support for George W. Bush’s “war on terror” that saw the bombing and occupation of Afghanistan in late 2001 and the invasion-cum-colonial occupation of Iraq last year. Macapagal-Arroyo’s support for the war was expressed not only in agreeing to use the Philippines as the campaign’s “second front” which included the entry into the country of thousands of U.S. troops and special forces in the guise of military training – but also in the deployment of a Philippine military contingent using the cover of a “humanitarian mission” and up to 100,000 OFWs for Iraq’s post-war “reconstruction.” 

The president’s pledge to conscript Filipino labor for the war-torn Middle East country was made in a deal that Macapagal-Arroyo cut with Bush during her state visit to Washington in May 2003. In their meeting, Bush rewarded the Philippine president for being a member of the “Coalition of the Willing” with a $4-bn economic aid package and another $100mn in military aid. But Bush also got a commitment from the Filipino leader to send a military contingent (500-person, as was first reported) and the recruitment of OFWs to perform civilian services that the U.S. occupation forces need as they conduct mopping-up operations, build military bases and undertake other operations. 

Cashing in 

In fact even before the invasion of Iraq began in March last year, the Philippine president had already planned to send OFWs to Iraq in order to cash in on post-war reconstruction projects that she had expected in return for her support. Then in April 2003 at the height of the invasion, Macapagal-Arroyo sent Roberto Romulo, a former foreign secretary and head of the newly-formed Philippine Public-Private Sector Partnership for the Reconstruction and Development of Iraq, to Washington to directly lobby with construction and engineering corporate executives to give the Philippines, as a member of the “Coalition of the Willing,” “preferential treatment” in the hiring of foreign workers in Iraq.  

Both the President, Romulo and other Cabinet officials believed that up to 100,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) would find jobs in the war-battered Middle East country. Their employment was expected to generate millions of dollars in remittances for the deficit-ridden government, among others. OFWs, now counting nearly 10 million distributed in several countries across the globe, contribute almost half of the country’s GDP. 

Macapagal-Arroyo’s move to recruit OFWs for the U.S. war efforts – and hence reconfigure the labor-export policy – was closely tied to the Bush administration’s current plans to privatize military or military-related services to enable regular forces to focus on combat duty. Although it has been implemented for years now, the new military policy has been bolstered by the presence of key Bush officials particularly Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld whose neoconservative agenda is to launch wars for the benefit of oil corporations, arms manufacturers, construction and engineering companies and other vested interests. 

Spoils of war 

Indeed, these corporations were the first to snatch the spoils of the war – from the stage of war preparations, to the launching of air strikes and ground operations to today’s mopping-up operations, security, base-building and other military-related activities. Last year, billions of dollars were cornered by companies with links to the Bush administration – including Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), for cleaning up Iraq’s oilfields; Bechtel, for military engineering and construction; Dyncorp, which bagged a police enforcement project; and Creative Services, for education propaganda. 

The British newspaper Guardian has reported that private corporations – U.S. as well British – are now the second biggest contributor to the war in Iraq, after the Pentagon. In the field there are now 10,000 “private military contractors” presumed to be working as undercover agents and informers, security trainers and the like. So firmly embedded is the private corporation in combat, occupation and peacekeeping duties are, the Guardian noted, that the U.S. can probably wage a war without the use of a regular force anymore. 

Lucrative 

And privatizing the war is lucrative: Of the $87bn earmarked for the Iraqi campaign in 2004, $30bn will be spent on contracts to private companies. A U.S. company has bagged a contract to train the new Iraqi army, another to recruit and train an Iraqi police force. 

While U.S. and, to some extent, British companies have cornered the juicier contracts, others such as subsidiaries of the major contractors are involved in labor subcontracting. Contrary to the expectations of Romulo, no Filipino company has been awarded by the USAID with a specific project but some 4,000 OFWs were conscripted anyway to perform auxiliary services without which the typical U.S. soldier cannot eat a hearty meal, have his wounds treated or his desert underwear washed. They are considered the backbone of the U.S. military’s support staff in Iraq. 

Of the 4,000 OFWs in Iraq, 80 percent are employed by Prime Projects International (PPI), a Dubai-based subcontractor of Halliburton’s KBR Engineering & Construction. 

Halliburton, which claims to be the world’s “largest diversified energy services, engineering and construction company” with operations in more than 100 countries and 2002 sales of $12.4 billion, has Cheney as a former CEO. In March last year, KBR was awarded without bidding a $7-billion project to clean Iraq’s oilfields. KBR also has other projects in Afghanistan, including a $100 million contract to a build a new U.S. embassy in Kabul and another $216 million to build military bases. 

In April this year alone, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) confirmed that 2,500 OFWs – enticed by a higher pay ($800 a month as against the standard $500 in the Persian Gulf) abandoned their overseas jobs to work at U.S. military bases in Iraq. At the time this was reported, the OFWs were working as warehousemen, plumbers, electricians, cooks, hairdressers, engineers, nurses and doctors in seven U.S. bases and camps in Baghdad, Mosul, Basra, Balad, Taji, Nasiriyah and Umn Qasr. Some of these bases are Camp Anaconda (considered the biggest in the Middle East) located in Balad, north of Baghdad; Camp Victory in the capital city itself; and Camp Toji, located between the two cities.  

No days off 

Reports have reached the Philippines that many of the OFWs working inside the camps work overtime without pay and with no days off. These places of work have been considered high-risk areas. Too late it was only last week that Macapagal-Arroyo’s envoy to Iraq, former Armed Forces chief Roy Cimatu, declared many of these areas off-limits to Filipino contract workers. 

By being service workers in the U.S. bases or involved in purely military-related projects, the OFWs are in constant danger: From the point of view of the Iraqi urban guerrillas, they are legitimate targets. There have been reports of OFWs caught in mortar attacks, roadside bombings and other Iraqi resistance operations. Last April and May, three OFWs were killed and seven others injured. Before Angelo de la Cruz was held hostage by the Khaled bin Al-Waleed Corps (Iraqi Islamic Army), a Filipino truck driver had been abducted along with eight other foreigners along the highway. He was later released. 

At greater risk, however, are Filipino truck drivers who ply routes from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to Iraq. These OFWs deliver supplies in vans and other trucks to U.S. military camps in Iraq and are escorted by Iraqi police. This makes the Filipino drivers targets of Iraqi resistance attacks. 

Rodrigo Reyes was with a convoy of vans owned by KBR that was ambushed by rebels while on its way back to Kuwait. Reyes was killed. Angelo de la Cruz was driving an oil tanker from his Saudi Arabia-based company to deliver oil to U.S. military camps in Falluja – recent scene of incessant battles – when abducted by the Iraqi Islamic Army. 

Many OFWs have since gone back to the Philippines or to their former employers following the killing of three of their compatriots and the wounding of seven others. 

Last week, Islamic clerics in Iraq declared a jihad or holy war against the U.S.-led occupation forces. Attacks on U.S. troops, bombings and the abduction of foreign nationals have escalated by the day – the whole of Iraq is seeing a battlefield unseen in many years. Yet there are still thousands of OFWs in Iraq, thousands more will be recruited and no moratorium has been declared on OFW recruitment. To stop labor conscription will be a big offense against the Bush administration given the latter’s anger at Macapagal-Arroyo’s recent decision under pressure at home to pull out the Philippine military contingent soon. Bulatlat

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