The largest and most secure US Embassy in the world rises in Baghdad
Dubious Construction Company--Many Irregularities
By Karin Leukefeld
EXTRA!! EXTRA!! SECURITY IS SNUGLY
http://www.markfiore.com/animation/snuggly.html
Only a few weeks after the triumph of the US-led forces in Iraq in 2003, Hani Kana*, the manager of a middle class hotel, Babil Palace* had to start looking for new guests. Until then he'd been housing UN personnel but none of them had returned after the war. Now he had a choice between foreign business people, private security forces or Iranian pilgrims. Since almost every hotel in the area in which private security forces and foreign businessmen were housed had experienced exploding bombs, Kana decided to focus on the pilgrim groups. Until, one day, a new enterprise showed up. The First Kuwaiti Merchants Bank and Contracting (FKTC) company was looking for lodgings for Asian guest workers. Business was good. The Asians stayed a few nights, were picked up with busses in the morning and brought back in the evening. Where they were employed was secret but the Iraqi hotel staff did find out from the men that they were working in the kitchens, cleaning or driving trucks on US military bases, where they eventually disappeared into containered accommodations.
New groups of men from India, Nepal and the Phillippines were brought into Iraq by FKTC. Job contractors had promised them jobs in the Gulf states, in exchange for payments that had put them into high debt. After the contracts were sealed, the men were flown to Kuwait where they waited in a transit camp for their employment. Then they discovered that their employment would not be in a Gulf state, but in Iraq. The men had no choice. Their passports were in the company safe. They had neither money nor a return ticket home.
In mid 2004, 12 Nepalese men were kidnapped in Iraq. The kidnappers demanded that FKTC stop working for the US military. The company did not respond; the men were killed. After that, most of the Asian guest workers had only one wish?to go home. But the company's managers played deaf. Either the men would complete their contract and work in Iraq, or they would be put out into the street. The US-american contra-occupation organization Corp Watch (www.corpwatch.org) published the efforts of a courageous diplomat in the Nepalese mission to Kuwait. FKTC CEO Wadi al-Absi, however, dismissed the complaint. His company's behavior towards the workers was appropriate and anyone who claimed otherwise would be reported (to the authorities).
Now FKTC had gotten a very special contract: the building of the new US embassy in Baghdad. The original contract, valued at $1.3 billion was cut in half by Congress and then let on a secret targeted basis. US companies with experience in Iraq tried to compete for the $592 million award. Their surprise was great when it was awarded to FKTC which had underbid all the US competitors. Meanwhile, about 900 workers live and work on the work site on the edge of the Tigris, encompassing (at 104 acres) almost the entire government center in Baghdad, better known as the Green Zone.
The US embassy caused a lot of speculation among Iraqis; now their suspicions have been confirmed. The largest and most secure US embassy in the world is being built in Baghdad to house more than 1000 staff. The palace-like complex includes 21 buildings whose construction is extraordinarily strong with some wall measuring 4.5 meters in thickness. In addition to living quarters (619 apartments) there will be a fitness center, shopping facilities, beauty shops and a swimming pool. The installation will be totally independent: water, waste-water and electricity are, like the telecommunications installations, distinct from the city's utility networks.
The company's owner, Al-Absi, is proud that these contracts in Iraq have transformed FKTC into a ?gobal company,? as he recently bragged to a group of journalists. 7000 men are currently working for FKTC in Iraq, the enterprise has gotten contracts for close to one billion US dollars since 2003. As a sub-contractor for Halliburton and KBR, FKTC is also responsible for the logistic needs of the occupation forces and is collecting 300 million US dollars for that task alone.
The awarding of contracts in Iraq is being investigated by the SIGIR. His most recent looked at 1200 contracts worth $88.1 million US dollars. 907 of those contracts were found to have irregularities, ranging from 160 disappeared vehicles to three deaths related to an inappropriately repaired elevator in the Hilla Hospital.
But there are no complaints to be heard about the embassy construction. To the contrary, the work is progressing according to plan, as Patrick Garvey, Senate staff for International Relations, recently found in an interim report to the Senate: ?There's hardly one big reconstruction project started since 2003 that's achieved this standard of success.? The embassy is scheduled to be completed in June of 2007.
*Names changed for security reasons.
This article was published in abbreviated form with the title ?'Green Zone' becomes a fortified Palace? in the daily "Neues Deutschland" on April 5, 2006.
Posted by Hannah at May 16, 2006 08:07 AM