Afghan employment by foreign contractors - Dissertation Example

Afghanistan Running Head: Afghan employment by foreign contractors THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LOCAL EMPLOYEES AND FOREIGN CONTRACTORS IN AFGHANISTAN AND HOW IT IMPACTS THE RECONSTRUCTION PROCESS Afghanistan 2 Abstract Afghanistan is a land rich in natural resources but conflicts including invasions, civil war and terrorist activities placed it among the world’s poorest economies (World Bank,2005). Thus, there is a need for financial aid from such nations as USA, UK, Sweden, Japan, Germany and Ireland who in turn carry out the aid through private contractors (Sui,2008). However, the latter contract with subcontractors who hire skilled expatriates as there is a dearth of such in Afghanistan (International Org. of Migration,2004). The result is that labor laws of Afghanistan, directives from the Ministry of Labor and the constitution are not utilized to protect their interests (Aghajanian,2007). This results to bitter employer-employee relations between the Afghan workers and the private contractors which in turn hampers and deters its reconstruction process (Jones, 2004). Introduction Afghanistan is a landlocked Islamic country which has been at the crossroads of many cultures and civilizations. In ancient times, Afghanistan had been invaded and subdued by Persians, Greeks, Macedonians and Aryans (Scarborough, 1998). Especially during the 1st and 2nd centuries, Afghanistan became a central and strategic trading site of the famed Silk Road that linked Rome and China and which brought not only commodities such as silk, porcelain etc to Afghanistan but also arts, religions (Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity and Islam) and most especially, the ”equally important currency ideas” (Clammer, 2007,p.652). In more modern times, Afghanistan had been the bone of contention between Britain and Russia in what is called “The Great Game” (Garthoff 1997,p.977) and between Russia and the USA in what is called “The Cold War” (Walker 1995,p.356). Despite the land’s difficult terrain with its high mountains and plateaus, steep ridges, deep valleys and its remote position, Afghanistan is the ideal buffer zone and the arena for balance of power (Ewans, 2002). According to Grau (1998) Afghanistan 3 Afghanistan was, to the Russians, an outlet to the Indian Ocean and an extension of Russian expansionism for the British it was an important shield to protect India, Pakistan and other British territories from Russian hegemony. But the Russians prevailed in the struggle for control of Afghanistan when Britain granted independence to India and Pakistan, thus leaving a power vacuum. Thus, Russia installed in 1965 a pro-Soviet government under Noor Mohammed Taraki and finally invaded and occupied Afghanistan in December 1979 (Bahmanyar & Palmer, 2004). The latter signaled the entry of USA as it buttressed the Islamic rebel group Mujahideen in its jihad to expel the ‘godless Russians’ from its home country. After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, a religious extremist Taliban regime was implanted which nurtured terrorists like the Al-Qaeda group and Osama bin-Laden (Crocker et al, 2007). After the infamous World Trade Center and pentagon bombings in 2001, USA moved to invade and occupy Afghanistan, which retaliatory invasion was without parallel in Afghan history (Tarnas, 2006). The US and all other invading powers left their imprint on the culture, customs and way of life in Afghanistan (Emadi, 2005). The Modernization and Industrialization of Afghanistan To obviate the likelihood of the Taliban and other terrorist extremists from spewing their venom in Afghanistan and the whole world once more, the USA is determined to allot some 10 to 20 billion dollars for the reconstruction, modernization and industrialization of Afghanistan (Rashid, 2002) although these had started since the reigns of King Habibullah and Amanullah in the early 1900s. These kings and the other Afghan rulers patterned the modernization and industrialization after that of the great cities of their invaders (Leonard, 2006). Thus, there started the introduction of small-scale industries in Afghanistan, the founding of the state bank of Afghanistan in 1938 and the opening of foreign investments and foreign contractors into Afghanistan 4 Afghanistan (Black, et al, 1997). However, historian Durch (2006) reported that the pursued modernization was too slow and that the massive infrastructure projects undertaken by Prime Minister Muhammad Daud to make Afghanistan attractive to foreign contractors only managed to sink the country deep into debts and measures taken to attract funds from both the USA and Russia only “stoked an intense Cold War rivalry between the superpowers in Afghanistan” ( Durch, 2006,p.471). Afghanistan is a natural magnet for foreign investors because of its rich natural resources (Emadi, 2002). It possesses rich deposits of natural gas in the north near Shibarghan. It also has major deposits of oil, barite, chromite, gold, copper, iron, lapis lazuli, lead, coal as lignite, rubies, silver, talc and uranium. It also has high potential for hydroelectric and geothermal power (Banting,2003). President Daud thus, was determined to industrialize Afghanistan by setting first a Five-Year Plan and later a Seven-Year Economic and Social Development Plan to solve the country’s problems of poverty and underdevelopment (Reddy, 2002). The Need For Foreign Contractors President Daud’s efforts to modernize and industrialize Afghanistan hit a major snag because the reality dawned on him that “private industry was not big enough to undertake developments in power, gas supply and making of cements, chemicals, and other important capital-intensive industry” and that the problem zeroes down on “where to find competent operators and managers to run the plants” (Eur, 2003,p.81). Daud, wielding a policy of non-alignment then sought the assistance of USA and Russia (Eur, 2003). Prior to these moves, there were no paved roads in Afghanistan, only a few permanent bridges and practically no air transport but with American and Russian aid and technology, by the end of 1972, 2780 km of paved roads were set in place, 2 international and 29 local airports were built, several dams and Afghanistan 5 bridges constructed while several manufacturing plants producing cotton textiles, cement, shoes, soap and sugar were established (Eur,2003). Also erected were several coal plants and electricity generating plants that produced up to 442.6 m.kWh. Nearly 4000 schools were built while “more than 60 private enterprise industries were established, employing nearly 5,000 people”. More importantly, “natural gas production was started which reached 2,635 m.cu m annually” (Eur,2003,p.81). As early as 1936, the American Inland Exploration Company had already discovered and exploited oil in northern Afghanistan where oil reserves had been estimated to be at more than 242,000 tons (Banting, 2003). Sadly though, this momentum of activities was stymied because Daud was assassinated during a violent coup d’etat instigated by communist-leaning Noor Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin, who relied exclusively to Russia for the country’s economic development and thus alienating other countries such as USA and those in Europe and especially Islamic groups in Afghanistan especially the Mujahideen rebels who “denounced the government as atheistic and a puppet of the Soviet Union” (Hussain,2005,p.100). Most literature pointed to Afghanistan’s political instability as the major reason why Afghanistan remained as one of the world’s poorest nations despite its rich natural resources (International Monetary Fund, 2007). The Foreign Contractors in Afghanistan At the heart of Afghanistan’s woes is its low literacy rate. By 1987, literacy was at a very low 12% while 88 of Afghan adults had been found to have had no formal schooling (Hoffman,1991). Since time immemorial, Afghanistan has always been traditionally an agricultural society, agriculture supporting 80% of the population with the majority of the farmers finding the futility of an education (Hoffman, 1991). By 2008, the literacy rate was at snail-paced 28%, while agriculture continued to employ 80% of the 15 million Afghan labor Afghanistan 6 force (CIA,2008). President Daud moved heaven and earth to provide education and literacy to the populace but his efforts were abruptly stopped by his violent death (Hyman, 1984). The communist leaders after him cannot continue the educational momentum because he had their hands full suppressing rebellion from all sides (Eur,2003). The Soviet invasion further kept the Afghan adults busy resisting the invaders, pushing education to the backburner (Eur, 2003). Thus, in the building and rebuilding of the nation, Afghans cannot be relied on for this undertaking because Afghans lack many of the skills needed to build and rebuild (International Organization of Migration, 2004). That will require massive training and monitoring of native Afghans, which in turn require considerable amount of time and manpower that will cost large sums of money (International Organization of Migration, 2004). Therefore there is only one solution to the building and restoration of Afghanistan i.e. the hiring or contracting of reliable corporations or proficient experts whose nationality or allegiance is external to the Afghan environment in which they work. These professionals or corporations are called foreign contractors (Eur,2003). The hiring of foreign contractors had never been so prevalent as after the fall of the communist Taliban regime in 2001 (Narayan & Petesch, 2009). The international community had pledged financial assistance to the country to the tune of $25 billion for post-conflict reconstruction, of which only 60% has yet been received (Narayan & Petesch, 2009). But because of this “limited human capital in Afghanistan”, this foreign aid has not been delivered directly to the participatory community programs (Narayan & Petesch, 2009). Instead, money had been spent on national projects run by foreign contractors (Narayan & Petesch, 2009). The USA, Sweden, UK and Ireland had been contracted to undertake the reconstruction of an Afghanistan, which is practically in shambles after the American shellacking of Taliban fighters Afghanistan 7 providing haven to terrorists led by Osama bin Laden (Sui, 2008). Literature abounds also with the hint that the international community distrusts the Afghans because the new interim government of 2001 failed to stymie illegal activities centered on poppy farming and the opium narcotics trade, which revenues in 2005 had reached an estimated $3 billion, an amount equivalent to 50 to 60% of the legal economy of Afghanistan (Great Britain,2006). In fact UNODC figures revealed that in 2005, 309,000 households were involved in opium cultivation (Great Britain, 2006). Because of such rationale and because of allegations that the Afghan government is corrupt and that Afghan human capital is “simply not available” the reconstruction process was left to the hands of foreign contractors (Great Britain, 2006,p.24). The USA which had pledged to contribute $10.8 billion to Afghanistan reconstruction aid but had only actually delivered only $5 billion as of 2008, is at the forefront of this reconstruction engagement (Jones,2007). Utilizing the same rationale hereinabove for channeling aid not to the Afghan people but through American private contractors, USA has been accused by American author Ann Jones in her book ‘Kabul In Winter’ (2007) as handing over much needed financial aid to the hands of for-profit private contractors who make hay enriching themselves and serve their own self-interests rather than the Afghan people. Jones pointed to the private contractor DynCorp which was granted the right with nary a bidding to train the Afghan police in 2006 for a cost of $1.6 billion (Jones, 2007). However, the inspectors general of the Pentagon and State Department discovered that only 30,000 Afghans were trained instead of the reported 70,000; that there was no in-field training for some 8 weeks resulting to incompetence and incapacity to do simple law enforcement work of the ‘trained’ Afghans; that half of the equipment assigned to the police including thousands of trucks could not be accounted for (Jones, 2007). Furthermore, the inspectors general disclosed that the ‘police Afghanistan 8 training’ had the effects of engendering more government corruption, revitalized the Talibans and constrained more Afghans to invigorate poppy production (Jones, 2007). Despite these findings, DynCorp was awarded another contract worth $317.4 million to continue training civilian police forces in Afghanistan (Jones, 2007). USA’s insistence on awarding contracts to American private contractors instead of forwarding such funds to the Afghan Ministry of Education continued with the granting of USAID to such contractors for literacy programs for Afghan adults (Jones, 2007). The outcome was adverse to the stated adjectives as Afghan teachers and education administrators bolted out from the Ministry to seek employment with those contractors, thus undermining public education and governance (Jones, 2007). Another American private contractor that according to Jones (2007) had made a mess out of their contract to build 100,000 schools for a contract price of $274,000 per school and the contract to rebuild the 389 mile long Kabul/Qandahar highway for the contract price of $1 million per mile was the Louis Berger Group (Jones, 2007). This entity built substandard schools which roofs had caved in during the Afghan winter. It also hired foreign labor for its highway construction dismaying local laborers, forcing many of them to resort to poppy farming (Jones, 2007). According to Jones (2007), the other foreign contractors which comprised 2/3 of contributors to Afghan reconstruction redeemed the American mess as they did a better job (Jones, 2007). According to Mertus (2008) one major source of complaints by Afghan people against private contractors is the abuse of human rights of these contractors and their foreign workers. At the core of the problem is the reliance on private civilian contractors for tasks apropos to the enlisted members of the armed forces (Mertus, 2008). USA had been repeatedly accused of contracting with individuals and private corporations with dubious records including commission Afghanistan 9 of abuses of human rights (Mertus, 2008). These in turn subcontract with entities with horrendous records (Mertus, 2008). Mertus (2008) claimed that these subcontractors, which outsource their labor needs from such countries as India, Nepal, Pakistan and Philippines had been accused of abuse of human rights of their workers by putting them in sub-standard working human conditions and paying them unfair wages. Private contractors like Halliburton, Bechtel, Custer Battles and DynCorp have been following this trend and it gives them undue advantage because it allows them to cut costs and allows them to create untraceable trails of contracts that cloud their liabilities (Mertus,2008). This aberration is also exemplified by the foreign contractor Blackwater USA, who had been found to have killed innocent civilians in unprovoked attacks and by the First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting which essentially functioned as kidnappers of low-paid foreign employees brought in to build the US embassy (Tyner, 2006). The USAID though, had taken the cudgels of the private contractors reasoning that so much had been done using this set-up (USAID Afghanistan, 2003). USAID asserts that through funding from the US government, UNICEF and Japan and through efforts of private contractors such as the Afghanistan Reconstruction Company and Turkish contractors and other private contractors, much had been accomplished (USAID Afghanistan, 2003). USAID asserts that “around the country, construction of schools, clinics, government buildings, wells, canals, drain and roads is changing the face of the country” (USAID Afghanistan, 2003). The MRRD says that under one program alone, 1.5 million people have benefited from 204 water and sanitation projects in 2003 costing $11 billion (USAID Afghanistan, 2003). The Relationship Between Local Employees and Foreign Contractors in Afghanistan and How It Impacts The Reconstruction Process Afghanistan 10 Laws on labor and employment have been set in place to protect the rights of Afghan employees (Albrecht, 2006). The new Afghan Constitution which was signed on 16 January 2004 also included provisions for the protection of the Afghan labor force (Albrecht, 2006). We must also consider that the Afghan government established in 1978 the Central Council of Afghanistan Trade Unions to develop and empower the trade union movement (Taylor & Francis Group, 2004). Yet, all these are made powerless to protect the rights of Afghan employees working under foreign contractors (International Organization of Migration, 2004). The first problem according to the International Organization of Migration (2004) is that 80% of Afghan labor force is devoted to agriculture and only 20% is available for industry and the services. And most of this 20% are hardly skilled for the purposes of the foreign contractors’ businesses (International Organization of Migration, 2004). Thus, the latter hire skilled Indian, Pakistani, Filipino or Vietnamese workers contracted through sub-contractors. Any Afghan worker hired by these sub-contractors are treated equally as the expatriate workers and this means that they are not under the ambit of current labor laws or the constitution of Afghanistan and certainly outside the aegis of the trade unions of Afghanistan (International Organization of Migration, 2004). The Afghan government does not have the power to compel these sub-contractors to hire Afghan labor force because funding for these reconstruction undertaking is absolutely derived from financial aid from donor countries (International Organization of Migration, 2004). Beside, there is a dearth of supply of skilled Afghan labor as a result of the instability due to the Russian invasion, the subsequent civil war and the Taliban regime and the resulting disruption of education (International Organization of Migration, 2004). Worsening the situation is that “Afghanistan does not have a formal agreement with USA” and other countries undertaking Afghan reconstruction all of which act through private contractors, concerning “legal Afghanistan 11 accountability of contractors and issues about jurisdiction remain hazy” (Wall Street Journal, 2009). This means that private contractors cannot be constrained to follow the labor laws of Afghanistan (Wall Street Journal, 2009). According to Aghajanian (2007) it is true that there is a new constitution, that there is a Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs mandated to monitor government and private sector employment and a trade union movement but under a strongly perceived corrupt government, These institutions are weakened and unable to function efficiently. Thus, there is severe unemployment estimated at 40 to 50% which makes a hired Afghan amenable to any labor Condition. In Afghanistan, “no minimum wage has been set, existing labor laws are little observed, and unions have not played a role in protecting workers’ rights” (Aghajanian, 2007,p.209). Aghajanian (2007) further added that the perpetual conflicts battering the Afghan country have immersed the country in dire poverty and thus Afghanistan is desperate for foreign investments. This desperation has compelled the government to allow 100% foreign ownership of Afghan enterprises, to offer substantial tax benefits, to allow unlimited transfer of assets out of the country (Aghajanian, 2007). It has in 2003 established the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency to encourage more foreign investments, give them all the succor and the protection, in the process relegating the importance of labor rights and working conditions of the Afghan labor force (Aghajanian, 2007). Moreover, the government has practically waived legal accountability for violations against workers’ rights of these foreign contractors and “there is no legal system for adjudication of commercial disputes” (Aghajanian, 2007,p.210). It is thus expected, that Afghan workers are totally helpless to all capriciousness perpetrated by the foreign contractors (Aghajanian, 2007). As a result of this one-sidedness, the relationship between the foreign Afghanistan 12 contractors and the local Afghan employees is at most civil, at worse hostile and at worst violent (Aghajanian, 2007). There is always diffidence, mistrust and covert or overt rancor on the part of the Afghan employees and apathy, indifference and cautiousness on the part of the foreign contractors (Aghajanian, 2007). Most of the Afghan workers contracted to work under private contractors work under the US Department of Defense (Congressional Research Service, 2009). Statistics culled by the Congressional Research Service (2009) show that Afghan employees as uniformed personnel and as employees in various service positions constitute 75% of the DOD’s workforce of 104,000. Also, as of September 2009, there are 78,500 of such employees in Afghanistan. It has also been determined that abuses and crimes against these people have been committed against them by the private contractors assigned to manage them and the dire effect is that “it may have undermined counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan” and in the long run gives a hard blow to the reconstruction process (Congressional Research Service, 2009,pp.13). The author Rostami-Povey (2007) claimed that the relationship between Afghan employees and their private contractors has also worsened because it has generated so much resentment on the part of the Afghan workers and such resentment has caused low morale and low productivity and in effect slows down the reconstruction process. According to her, the wide disparity in the economic status and lifestyles between the Afghan workers and their own private contractors is at the heart of this resentment (Rostami-Povey, 2007). A case in point is while “families in Bamiyan live in caves in absolute poverty:, the private contractors wallow in luxury in 5-star hotels with their Apple iPods, the latest mobile phones, and giant flat-screen televisions” (Rostami-Povey, 2007). Also, “to the resentment of the local population, these organizations, foreign contractors and a few rich Afghans, buy diesel generators for electricity while the Afghanistan 13 majority, even in Kabul, has no electricity or clean water” (Rostami-Povey, 2007). And also “in different parts of the country, foreign contractors are building massive walls around large areas, which their own Afghan workers are not allowed to enter” (Rostami-Povey,2007). And many workers are convinced that there really is “no reconstruction: there is just a terrible rush to make quick money by foreign contractors” (Rostami-Povey, 2007, pp.42,46,48,67). All this resentment, mistrust and hostility sometimes boil to violence resulting to deaths of foreign contractors with the result that these contractors often are in fear of their lives and this may entail hindering efficiency in their work and in the long run impacts the reconstruction process (US Department of Labor, 2009). In fact, as of December 31, 2009, the US Department of Labor reported that 298 contractors met death in Afghanistan (US Dept. of Labor, 2009). Many of them in consequence of the war but there are also cases that deaths ensued because of employee-private contractor relations (France24 International News, 2009). As Michael Thibault expressed it, “most contractors often do valuable work at personal risk. It takes only one foreign national contractor employee smuggling explosives into a dining facility, headquarters, hospital or barracks to create a mass casualty disaster” (France24 International News, 2009). Conclusion Foreign contractors have worked for the building of the economy of Afghanistan. Russian foreign contractors have also reconstructed Afghanistan building roads, dams and other infrastructures but more foreign contractors by the thousands came to Afghanistan by 2001 after the fall of the Taliban regime as the international community led by USA, UK, Sweden and Ireland pooled their resources to bring back and reconstruct Afghanistan from the ashes, so to speak (Sui, 2008). But these nations sent private contractors whose main aim was profit and who Afghanistan 14 assigned subcontractors to man the ‘business’ undertaking (Mertus, 2008). The subcontractors themselves chose to select expatriate workers to man the enterprises, shutting out the local Afghans. Afghan workers who managed to get recruited found out that labor laws of Afghanistan, directives from the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and even the constitution are not utilized to protect their interests and resulting to violations of their labor rights (International Organization of Migration, 2004). Afghan workers have no recourse but bear grudges, resentment, hostility against their employees while their employer private contractor takes an apathetic, indifferent and even a cautious stand against them. All these result to low productivity, low efficiency which affects greatly the reconstruction process. (Congressional Research Service, 2009). REFERENCES Aghajanian, A. (2007). Afghanistan: Past and present. Indo-European Publishing. Albrecht, H.J. (2006). Conflicts and conflict resolution in Middle Eastern societies. Duncker & Humblot. Bahmanyar, M., & Palmer, I. (2004). Afghanistan cave complexes. Osprey Publishing. Banting, E. (2003). Afghanistan: The land. Crabtree Publishing Company. Black, C.E., & Dupree, L.,& Endicott-West, E.,& Naby, E. (1997). The modernization of Inner Asia. M.E. Sharpe. Central Intelligence Agency (2008). CIA world factbook. Skyhorse Publishing Inc. Clammer, P. (2007). Afghanistan. Lonely Planet. Congressional Research Service (2009). Department of Defense Contractors In Iran and Afghanistan. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R40764.pdf Crocker, C.A., Hampson, F.O. & Aall, P.R. (2007). Leashing the dogs of war. US Institute of Peace Press. Durch, W.J. (2006). Twenty first century peace operations. US Institute of Peace Process. Emadi, H. (2002). Repression, resistance and women in Afghanistan. Greenwood Publishing Group. Emadi, H. (2005). Culture and customs of Afghanistan. Greenwood Publishing Group. Eur. (2002). Far East and Australasia 2003. Routledge. Ewans, M. (2002). Afghanistan: a new history. Routledge. France24 International News (2009). Government has no precise number of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. 3 November 2009. Garthoff, R. (1994). Détente and confrontation. Brockings Institution Press. Grau, L.W. (1998). The bear went over the mountain: Soviet combat tactics in Afghanistan. Routledge. Great Britain (2006). Reconstructing Afghanistan. The Stationery Office. Hoffman, M.S. (1991). The world almanac and book of facts. Pharos Books. Hyman, A. (1984). Afghanistan under Soviet domination, 1964-83. MacMillan. International Monetary Fund (2007). Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Int’l. Monetary Fund. International Organization For Migration (2004). Trafficking in persons. International Organization For Migration. Jones, A. (2007). Kabul in winter: Life without peace in Afghanistan. Picador. Leonard, T. (2006). Encyclopedia of the developing world, vol. 1. Taylor and Francis. Mertus, J. (2008). Bait and switch: Human rights and U.S. foreign policy. Routledge. Narayan, D & Petesch, P. (2009). Moving out of poverty, vol. 4. World Bank Publications. Rashid, A. (2002). American engagement in Afghanistan. http://www.mediamonitors.net/arashid3.html Reddy, L.R. (2002). Inside Afghanistan: end of the Taliban era?. APH Publishing. Rostami-Povey, E. (2007). Afghan women: identity and invasion. Zed Books. Scarborough, J. (1998). The origins of cultural differences and their impact on management. Greenwood Publishing Group. Sui, D.Z. (2008). Geospatial technologies and homeland security. Springer. Tarnas, R. (2006). Cosmos and psyche. Viking. Taylor & Francis Group (2004). Europa world year. Taylor & Francis. USAID Afghanistan. (2003). Rebuilding Afghanistan: Reconstruction accelerates. http://www.usaid.gov/locations/asia/countries/afghanistan/afghanistanreborn.html US Department of Labor (2009). Defense base act case summary by nation. http://www.dol.gov/owcp/dlhwc/dballnation.htm Walker, M. (1995). The Cold War; a history. H. Holt. Wall Street Journal/World. (May 20,2009). Two Blackwater Affiliated Contractors Flee Afghanistan World Bank (2005). Afghanistan: State building, sustaining growth and reducing poverty. World Bank Publications. Read More