Firms tap Latin Americans for Iraq

[struggle4progress]

A history of recent wars makes the region attractive to private companies recruiting for security forces.

By Danna Harman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

<snip> El Salvador, the only Latin American country to maintain troops in the US-led coalition in Iraq, has 338 soldiers on the ground. But there are about twice as many more Salvadorans there working for private contracting companies, doing everything from the dishes and the driving to guarding oil installations, embassies, and senior personnel.

Private security firms contracted with the Pentagon and the State Department are dipping into experienced pools of trained fighters throughout Central and South America for their new recruits. With better pay than what they can earn at home, some 1,000 Latin Americans are working in Iraq today, estimates the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). These recruits are joined by thousands of others - from the US and Britain, as well as from Fiji, the Philippines, India and beyond. Close to 20,000 armed personnel employed by private contractors are estimated to be operating in Iraq, making up the second largest foreign armed force in the country, after the US. <snip>

Throughout Latin America there have been numerous press reports of contracting and subcontracting firms recruiting in Chile, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Each of the countries has had recent - and in Colombia's case, ongoing - wars, which make for large pools of experienced military and police. <snip>

The practice has its critics. "This is all very deeply wrong," says Geoff Thale, a senior associate for Central America at the left-leaning WOLA. He argues that the developing world should not serve as a cheap labor source for life threatening work that the US government has chosen to undertake. "It may be tempting to hire low-wage workers to take risks for us, so that we don't experience the human cost of casualties or deaths ourselves. But it's not morally acceptable," he says. <snip>

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0303/p06s02-woam.html

[sasquatch]

1. They're looking for Reagans death squad guys

[Say_What]

2. Today on Pacifica radio's Flashpoints an interview with a Salvadoran who

lives now in SF but recently returned from a trip there. Thanks to RayGun, the US-supported military dictators, and the war that raged through most of the 1980s, El Salvador now has more people leaving the country than ever in its history. Thousands and thousands of kids are being raised by their grandparents because the parents have to leave the country to work--usually in the US--they send home more than 8 billion a year--sustaining the country. He said that throughout the country the 35-50 year olds are pretty much non-existent.