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In two weeks seven Fijian men serving as security guards in Iraq have died, leaving behind grieving wives and children with no fathers. But these are the risks they are willing to take, especially when you get to earn between $3000 to $6000 a month.
For most people, the gruesome killings of four private security contractors were the first they had ever heard of Blackwater USA, a small, North Carolina-based private security company. Since the Falluja incident, and also because of it, Blackwater has emerged as one of the most successful and profitable security contractors operating in Iraq.
CorpWatch is set to release our new report on Afghanistan reconstruction next Tuesday. Advance copies are available now upon request.
This weekend marks the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan. Fariba Nawa, an Afghan-American who returned to her native country to examine the progress of reconstruction, uncovers some examples of where the money has (and hasn't) gone, how the system of international aid works (and doesn't), and what it is really like in the villages and cities where outsiders are rebuilding the war-torn countryside.
Click here to download the complete report.
An HTML text version of the report is also available.
Listen, watch or read an interview with Fariba Nawa on Democracy Now! about reconstruction, security, and life in Afghanistan five years after the invasion.
The project's demise would seriously damage the American-led effort to restore Iraq's oil system and enable the country to pay for its own reconstruction.
Military investigators will not file charges after completing a investigation into an incident in Iraq last May in which a group of Marines alleged they had been fired on by U.S. security contractors.
It has been long in coming. The Pentagon is now demanding that contractors fight labor trafficking and lousy working conditions in Iraq endured by tens of thousands of low-paid south Asians working under US-funded contracts in Iraq.
Gen. George Casey ordered that contractors be required by May 1 to return passports that have been illegally confiscated from laborers on U.S. bases after determining that such practices violated U.S. laws against trafficking for forced or coerced labor
An American businessman who is at the heart of one of the biggest corruption cases to emerge from the reconstruction of Iraq has pleaded guilty to conspiracy, bribery and money-laundering charges, according to documents unsealed yesterday in federal court in Washington.
Lawyer uses Civil War-era law to go after frims for corruption, but Bush administration won't help.
With millions of dollars in Iraqi reconstruction contracts to be had, Philip H. Bloom offered up money, cars, premium airline seats, jewelry, alcohol, even sexual favors from women at his villa in Baghdad.
Contractor pleads guilty to conspiracy, bribery and money laundering in connection with a bid-rigging of Iraq reconstruction contracts.
Iraq's Halfayah oil field was the glittering prize sought in one of the dodgiest deals linked to the wheat board, write .
Despite emerging evidence of AWB's kickbacks, the Howard Government continued giving the wheat trader its unconditional support.