2005-06-07
Dahr Jamail
Desperate for Work, Blind to Dangers
AMMAN, Jun 7 (IPS) - Ahlam Najam just needed a job. At 25, she had auniversity degree in education but could not find work as teacher.
When Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), subsidiary of the U.S. firmHalliburton offered her a job as a security guard at a U.S. base inIraq, she took it.
On May 18 last year she was shot twice in the head as she waited for ataxi to take her to work. Her injuries left her blind, and she lost hersense of smell.
”Many people were working with the Americans, so I felt it would beokay,” Najam, now at a Saudi-funded organisation in Amman that assistsblind Arab women told IPS.
”My two bosses at KBR, Mr. Jeff and Mr. Mark used to be very good andgentle with me,” she said. ”They told me it wasn't dangerous to work forthem.”
Najam worked for KBR three months before she was shot. She was taken tohospital in Hilla, about 100 km south of Baghdad, and kept there severaldays. But her good bosses never contacted her, she says.
She was later moved to a hospital in Baghdad. Here she was told therehad been a call from ”Mr Jeff” (she was never given the last names ofher bosses). She was too much in pain to be able to take the call. Heremployers never called again. Attempts to find their last names, emailaddresses or phone numbers have been fruitless.
”I sent two emails to the KBR public relations person last June. Butthey never replied. I don't know what to do now, I can't go back to Iraqbecause it is too dangerous.”
Najam feels hurt in many ways. ”I was very good with them. Always ontime, never left early, and they were happy with me. But when I neededthem most, they were not there.”
KBR has an email address where questions about employees in Iraq aresaid to be answered within 12 hours. Emails to that address were notreturned.
Ahlam Najam went to work as a security guard in a country whereunemployment is more than 50 percent and prices are rising. Like Najam,many have no choice but to work in situations of grave danger. And thesecurity situation is getting no better.
Car bombings and other attacks have killed at least 80 U.S. soldiers andmore than 800 Iraqis in the last month alone.
It does not help that U.S. President George W. Bush sees it differently.”I am pleased that in less than a year's time there's a democraticallyelected government in Iraq, there are thousands of Iraq soldiers trainedand better equipped to fight for their own country (and) that ourstrategy is very clear,” Bush told reporters in Washington.
In the last two weeks at least 35 U.S. soldiers have been killed inIraq, with 1,670 killed since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Vice-President Dick Cheney, who used to head Halliburton which has beenawarded massive contracts in Iraq, has also offered an upbeatassessment. He said during an interview on CNN that insurgency in Iraqwas in its ”last throes”.
But after a meeting with U.S. military commanders in Iraq, SenatorJoseph Biden from Delaware said, ”The idea that the insurgents are onthe run and we are about to turn the corner, I did not hear that fromanybody.”
