Exploitation in Iraq: Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - UNPAID

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726

[Tinoire]

On edit. Changing the title. The story's title may be "for dollars a day" but this story cleary says these guys are still unpaid.
========================


We keep forgetting about these soldiers. And for sure they're not counted in any of the body counts since they don't exist.

How's this for exploitation?


Exploitation in Iraq: A Special Report
Third world warriors fight U.S. wars - for dollars a day

Honduran soldier was among thousands who stood guard over Baghdad embassy, but couldn't legally enter United States.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 12/02/2007 04:34:54 PM MST

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site297/2007/1202/20071202__ut_mercenaries_1202~2_Gallery.jpg

Mario Urquia is living in a friend's rundown home, which is which is being renovated, near downtown Ogden (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune )

Human rights, safety at issue in exporting securityWith U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, private security companies have swept in to fill the void. But abuses of third-world security workers abound. And in many cases, those helping to fight our wars can't even cross our borders.

For one year, Mario Urquia guarded the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, protecting American service members and diplomats in one of the most dangerous places in the world.
Now Urquia is living on the edge of homelessness in Ogden - illegal in the nation he once stood to protect.

While the circumstances that led to Urquia's illegal entry into the United States are unusual, the factors that resulted in his deployment to Iraq are not. He is just one of thousands of individuals from impoverished nations recruited to help fight a war for the richest country in the world.

Human rights advocates say it's exploitation. United Nations officials say it's a violation of international law.

But the U.S. government says that, at a time when its military is stretched so thin, third-world security contractors will be standing guard over U.S. facilities for a long time to come.

A special forces soldier in the Honduran Army with nearly 30 years experience, Urquia said he was contacted in the summer of 2005 by a senior officer, who asked him if he would go
to Iraq on behalf of the U.S. State Department. Honduras had stopped sending soldiers to Iraq two years earlier, but records show that Urquia's mission for a private security company was blessed by several of his commanders. He and others have claimed that Honduran and Chilean recruits were trained by men who identified themselves as U.S. Army Green Berets at two Honduran military bases, in violation of that nation's laws. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman said all training conducted by U.S. military personnel in Honduras has been "carried out with military counterparts. . . with close coordination and the approval of Honduran authorities."

Against salaries of $150,000 a year and more being paid to American contractors, the $15,600 annual salary promised to Urquia in his contract might seem strikingly inequitable. But in the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere the wage seemed a king's ransom. "In Honduras, when you have an opportunity like that, it is not something you refuse," Urquia said.

But for the lanky, stone-faced mechanic, army reservist and father of five children, there was something even more alluring than money. Urquia claims that officials from the company that hired him promised citizenship in the United States after finishing of his tour of duty in Iraq. It was one of many promises that would go unfulfilled.

Fighting our war

The Congressional Research Service has estimated there are 182,000 individuals working under U.S. contracts and subcontracts in Iraq. And a federal Government Accountability Office report last year estimated that more than 48,000 of those individuals are armed. That makes America's private-for-profit security force - U.S. leaders resist the term "mercenary" - the second largest armed group in the dwindling coalition that currently occupies Iraq, well ahead of U.S. ally Great Britain.

It's unclear how many armed contractors come from third-world countries, but federal reports indicate less than a fifth are Americans.

The rest are recruited from dozens of other nations, including many places like Honduras, that are not a part of the Bush Administration's so-called "coalition of the willing." And like Honduras, many of the nations from which private security contractors are drawn are steeped in abject poverty. In these places, critics say, billion-dollar American companies can find plenty of people willing to risk their lives for wages as low as $31 a day - and who don't have a voice when things go wrong.


(snip)

"We worked from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning," he said. "Then we would go to breakfast and afterwards, we would be picked up for training. We trained all day and slept for two or three hours before we went back to work. That was how it was."

Urquia said he was given a debit card to access an account where his pay would be deposited. But when he tried to use it to buy food and supplies in Baghdad's Green Zone, it didn't work. "We all complained, but they said: 'Don't worry, your money will be waiting for you when you return home,' " Urquia said. U.S. soldiers who knew of Urquia's situation would sometimes slip him some cash. Urquia said that money was all he and his soldiers had to spend while in Iraq.

About six months into the tour, one of Urquia's soldiers was wounded in a rocket propelled grenade attack. Urquia said initial care by U.S. military doctors was sufficient to save the soldier's life. But after the wounded soldier was evacuated back to Honduras, Urquia said, "he never got the help he needed. His brain was damaged but there was no compensation."

Urquia said it was obvious, at that point, that he and his men were being exploited. But still expecting that a large savings account was waiting for him on the other side of the deployment, he stuck to it. "What else could I do?" he asked.

More than a year after he returned, Urquia claims he still hasn't been paid. "Not a single penny," he said.

(snip)

The extent of the privatization is clear to anyone who has visited U.S. military bases in Iraq, where mess halls in Mosul are staffed by Pakistani cooks, laundry services in Najaf are run by Filipino cleaners and a barber shop in Fallujah is manned by Turkish haircutters.

The contracts didn't stop at service jobs. By early 2004, the ubiquitous white sports utility vehicles used by security contractors like Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis were a common sight on the streets of Baghdad, and private guards were taking posts outside buildings throughout the Green Zone.

Perhaps most telling, Coalition Provisional Authority director Paul Bremer's own security detail was made up not of U.S. troops but beefy, sunglass-wearing private guards. Bremer later signed an order giving such individuals - and the companies for which they work - immunity from prosecution in Iraq, a rule which was later incorporated into Iraqi law and which critics say has led to egregious injustices and human rights abuses.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Post editorial board in October that she believes private security contractors are vital to the nation's war in Iraq, where U.S. troops are stretched thin.


(snip)

Urquia returned from Iraq to a media and political firestorm. Government investigators were looking into the business dealings of Your Solutions, focusing on how the company had been able to secure training space on Honduran army bases. The United Nations had initiated an inquiry into the human rights implications of the case. Several military officers were implicated, but denied they had anything to do with the scandal.

Urquia felt he knew better. Angry at the officers for disavowing the mission and bitter with Your Solutions for allegedly swindling him and his soldiers, Urquia shared his contract, military orders and photos of him and his fellow soldiers in Iraq with the Honduran news media.

In a country largely opposed to the U.S.-led occupation, some called him a champion for justice - "El Héroe de Hoy" read the caption over Urquia's photograph in the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo. But the officers he exposed apparently felt differently. Soon, Urquia said, he was receiving death threats.

"They would call me and say, 'Get ready to die,'" Urquia said. "I know they were serious."

Fearing for the safety of himself and his family, Urquia went to Honduras' National Commission for Human Rights. An officer for the commission confirmed that Urquia had opened a case at her office, which had initiated an investigation. But before the case could be completed, the official said, Urquia disappeared.

Urquia said he was coming out of the Human Rights office when several rifle-carrying men emerged from a white vehicle with tinted windows.

"I ran back into the building," he said. "A man gave me a ride in a car out the back. That's when I knew I had to leave Honduras."

At least 16 others have filed complaints against Your Solutions with Honduran authorities. Urquia's case is one of two that Honduran human rights officials have had to table for lack of a present complainant. Former soldier Daniel Alvarado, who served with Urquia in Iraq, also fled the country after reporting threats to his life. Alvarado is thought to be hiding out in Costa Rica, but a relative contacted by The Tribune said no one has heard from him in more than two months.

(snip)

"What we're seeing here is the exploitation of poor labor," said Chatterjee, the author of Iraq, Inc.: A Profitable Occupation. "These companies are simply taking advantage of the market we all live in. This is the way globalization works. You tap into the global poor. The rule is that the lowest wage rules."

(snip)

Arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border last spring, Urquia presented the visa, which was valid through September, expecting to be granted quick passage into Texas.

But the world had changed since Urquia last visited the United States. Perhaps wary of the Middle Eastern stamps in Urquia's passport, the immigration officer took out a permanent black marker and voided the visa. Urquia said the officer gave no explanation.

"I said, 'How can you do this? Let me tell you, I went to Iraq for your country,' " Urquia recalled. "And he told me to shut up.'"

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials have not responded to requests to identify what the markings on Urquia's visa mean. Undeterred, Urquia paid a man to help him cross the Rio Grande near the Mexican border town of Reynosa. He moved from there to Houston, then to Colorado Springs and finally to Utah, where he found work at a salvage yard in Lehi. His hopes to raise enough money to bring his family north and hire an attorney to handle his claim for political asylum were dashed, however, when he broke his elbow while pulling an engine from a car. "Since I couldn't fix cars anymore, they fired me," Urquia said.

Urquia now is living in a run-down home which is being renovated by a friend near downtown Ogden. Once the home is completed and rented out - sometime next month, he figures - Urquia fears he'll be on the streets. Without any source of income, he said, he is growing desperate. He fears for the safety of his wife and children in Honduras. His wife and youngest daughter are both sick.

"But if I return," he said, "they will kill me."

(snip)

Two million Iraqis have fled the country - including thousands who acted as interpreters, informants contractors or security workers for U.S. troops.
So far fewer than 3,000 have been admitted into the United States.


http://origin.sltrib.com/news/ci_7614726