U.S. stalls on human trafficking
Pentagon has yet to ban contractors from using forced
labor
By Cam Simpson
Washington Bureau
December 27, 2005
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.