A proposal prohibiting defense contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor was drafted by the Pentagon last summer, but five defense lobbying groups oppose key provisions and a final policy still appears to be months away.
by Cam Simpson, The Chicago Tribune
December 27th, 2005
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WASHINGTON -- Three years ago, President Bush declared that he had "zero tolerance" for trafficking in humans by the government's overseas contractors, and two years ago Congress mandated a similar policy.
But notwithstanding the president's statement and the congressional edict, the Defense Department has yet to adopt a policy to bar human trafficking.
A proposal prohibiting defense contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor was drafted by the Pentagon last summer, but five defense lobbying groups oppose key provisions and a final policy still appears to be months away, according to those involved and Defense Department records.
The lobbying groups opposing the plan say they're in favor of the idea in principle, but said they believe that implementing key portions of it overseas is unrealistic. They represent thousands of firms, including some of the industry's biggest names, such as DynCorp International and Halliburton subsidiary KBR, both of which have been linked to trafficking-related concerns.
Lining up on the opposite side of the defense industry are some human-trafficking experts who say significant aspects of the Pentagon's proposed policy might actually do more harm than good unless they're changed. These experts have told the Pentagon that the policy would merely formalize practices that have allowed contractors working overseas to escape punishment for involvement in trafficking, the records show.
The long-awaited debate inside the Pentagon on how to implement presidential and congressional directives on human trafficking is unfolding just as countertrafficking advocates in Congress are running into resistance. A bill reauthorizing the nation's efforts against trafficking for the next two years was overwhelmingly passed by the House this month, but only after a provision creating a trafficking watchdog at the Pentagon was stripped from the measure at the insistence of defense-friendly lawmakers, according to congressional records and officials. The Senate passed the bill last week.
Delay seen as weakness
The Pentagon's delay in tackling the issue, the perceived weakness of its proposed policy and the recent setbacks in Congress have some criticizing the Pentagon for not taking the issue seriously enough.
"Ultimately, what we really hope to see is resources and leadership on this issue from the Pentagon," said Sarah Mendelson, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a national security think tank in Washington. She also had called for creation of an internal Pentagon watchdog after investigating the military's links to sex trafficking in the Balkans.
Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.), author of the original legislation targeting human trafficking, said there seems to be an institutional lethargy on the issue at the Pentagon below the most senior levels. He said he was concerned that the Pentagon's overseas-contractor proposal might not be tough enough and that the delays in developing it could mean more people "were being exploited while they were sharpening their pencils."
But he pledged to maintain aggressive oversight of the plan.
`We're addressing the issue'
Glenn Flood, a Pentagon spokesman, said he did not know why it has taken so long to develop a proposal but said, "From our point of view, we're addressing the issue."
An official more directly involved with the effort to draft a formal policy barring contractors from involvement in trafficking said it might not be ready until April, at least in part because of concerns raised by the defense contractors.
Bush declared zero tolerance for involvement in human trafficking by federal employees and contractors in a National Security Presidential Directive he signed in December 2002 after media reports detailing the alleged involvement of DynCorp employees in buying women and girls as sex slaves in Bosnia during the U.S. military's deployment there in the late 1990s.
Ultimately, the company fired eight employees for their alleged involvement in sex trafficking and illegal arms deals.
In 2003, Smith followed Bush's decree with legislation ordering federal agencies to include anti-trafficking provisions in all contracts. The bill covered trafficking for forced prostitution and forced labor and applied to overseas contractors and their subcontractors.
But it wasn't until last summer that the Pentagon issued a proposed policy to enforce the 2003 law and Bush's December 2002 directive.
The proposal drew a strong response from five defense-contractor-lobbying groups within the umbrella Council of Defense and Space Industries Associations: the Contract Services Association, the Professional Services Council, the National Defense Industrial Association, the American Shipbuilding Association and the Electronic Industries Alliance.
The response's first target was a provision requiring contractors to police their overseas subcontractors for human trafficking.
In a two-part series published in October, the Tribune detailed how Middle Eastern firms working under American subcontracts in Iraq, and a chain of human brokers beneath them, engaged in the kind of abuses condemned elsewhere by the U.S. government as human trafficking. KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary, relies on more than 200 subcontractors to carry out a multibillion-dollar U.S. Army contract for privatization of military support operations in the war zone.
Case of 12 Nepali men
The Tribune retraced the journey of 12 Nepali men recruited from poor villages in one of the most remote and impoverished corners of the world and documented a trail of deceit, fraud and negligence stretching into Iraq. The men were kidnapped from an unprotected caravan and executed en route to jobs at an American military base in 2004.
At the time, Halliburton said it was not responsible for the recruitment or hiring practices of its subcontractors, and the U.S. Army, which oversees the privatization contract, said questions about alleged misconduct "by subcontractor firms should be addressed to those firms, as these are not Army issues."
Once implemented, the new policy could dramatically change responsibilities for KBR and the Army.
Alan Chvotkin, senior vice president and counsel for the Professional Services Council who drafted the contractors' eight-page critique of the Pentagon proposal, said it was not realistic to expect foreign companies operating overseas to accept or act on U.S. foreign policy objectives.
"This is a clash between mission execution [of the contract] and policy execution," Chvotkin said. "So we're looking for a little flexibility."
He said that rather than a "requirement that says you have to flow this through to everybody," the group wants the policy to simply require firms to notify the Pentagon when their subcontractors refuse to accept contract clauses barring support for human trafficking.
Still, Chvotkin said, "We don't want to do anything that conveys the idea that we are sanctioning or tolerating trafficking."
In a joint memo of their own, Mendelson and another Washington-based expert, Martina Vandenberg, a lawyer who investigated sex trafficking for Human Rights Watch, told the Pentagon its draft policy "institutionalizes ineffective procedures currently used by the Department of Defense contractor community in handling allegations of human trafficking."
Without tough provisions requiring referrals to prosecutors, they said, contractors could still get their employees on planes back to the U.S. before investigations commenced, as they allege happened in several documented cases in the Balkans. They said some local contract managers even had "special arrangements" with police in the Balkans that allowed them to quickly get employees returned to the U.S. if they were found to be engaged in illegal activities.
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Why the hell stop with only destroying the Constitution?
Let's take down that irritating Emancipation Proclamation as well.
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It seems that we, the U.S. of A, have unleashed our sociopaths and our psychotics on the world. Of course, it's not the first time, but this time seems pretty brazen, bizarre and creepy to me.
Of course, what can one expect when the administration is full of the same types.?
Every rotten thing that the United States government has done, in the world and at home, seems magnified times 50 in this administration.
Perhaps, it is, as friend from Kiwiland said a while back; "the Bush administration's role in history is to make clear what has been foggy in the minds of many, for so long; to expose the many criminal acts of the U.S. government dating to WWII, and there have been some doozies
Of course, our government has been up to no good, over and over again, since they committed genocide on the Native American population of North America.
Yes, our government and our people have done good in the world, but the government is never altruistic in its actions. The people often are.
Who was it who said," the wonderful thing about Americans is that you have to lie to them (if you are up to some questionable activity or the other). The bad thing is that lying to them is so easy."
In the last years I have learned many unpleasant things, not the least of which is that we, the people, have not had a Democracy for a very long time. George Bush's 2000 selection by the Supreme Court, made that ugly fact quite obvious to many, many shocked people. But, unfortunately, not enough to do any good. Not enough to bring thousands into the streets, enough to shut down major cities and be heard. (We take too much for granted. That is a very dangerous thing to do.)
That would be unseemly. It would look bad. What would the rest of the world think if we behaved in such a manner. The passing of power must go smoothly no matter what, because otherwise
we might lose our image as the world's preeminent Democracy. (Gag).
Now, that stolen election seems like it was a lifetime ago.
Can we say, "never again?
Take the Pledge:
"Never again will we allow another illegitimate administration to conduct our business in this nation."
Can we say it and mean it?
In the meantime, we have a huge mess to clean up after the house-cleaning in the capital, which could take forever at the rate we are going.
It cannot be cleaned up by our government, alone, either, as Bush has sullied it's reputation for generations to come. No one, in the world community, trusts our government, including me and everyone I know.
The revelations that have been coming out about our troops and Americans working for the U.N. as Peacekeepers, dealing with human trafficking, and not as law enforcement, but rather, as part of the problem, makes me sick!
Now we have the same revelations about Pentagon contractors using forced labor? This is outrageous, given the amount of money we have spent in Iraq, which should have gone to Iraqi firms and individuals, who need jobs and want to earn their keep.
God help us all, the people running this nation are ..well...evil.
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