TRIVANDRUM, 4 May 2004 — Hundreds of Indians are working for the occupation forces in Iraq. The federal government yesterday ordered an investigation after media reports said private security agencies have illegally hired 1,500 ex-combat troops as private guards to protect installations in Iraq.
Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha said his ministry had asked the Labor Ministry to launch an inquiry “and take appropriate action against agencies which had fraudulently taken these men without valid documents.”
“These men were originally permitted to go to Jordan and Kuwait,” Sinha told a news conference in Madras after at least one political party accused his government of sending “mercenaries” in the guise of job-seekers to Iraq.
On April 15, New Delhi banned Indian citizens from traveling to Iraq because of deteriorating security there and the bar would only be lifted once the situation improved, Sinha said. Before the ban came into force, the Foreign Ministry permitted some Indian companies to send 360 men to safeguard their offices in Iraq.
The reports said some ex-soldiers applied for permission to work in Kuwait and Jordan but traveled instead to Iraq.
But some others were simply duped. Four Keralite workers, who were forced to work as kitchen assistants in a US military camp near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul for nine months, related their harrowing tale to Arab News.
The four were recruited to work as butchers in Kuwait and taken to Iraq by the manpower agency that contracted them. They were among 16 Indians who escaped from the camp, some 70 km from Mosul.
Faisal, Shahjehan, Mansoor and Hameed, natives of Velichakala in the Quilon district of Kerala, said they lived in a virtual battlefield among many other Indians doing menial jobs amid frequent resistance attacks. The US Army gave them training on how to remain alert and get into the bunker and every time the camp was attacked, they took shelter there. They were also beaten when they refused to work and even the sick were not spared,” they said.
Bombay-based Trig Guard Force, the privately-run security agency which has admitted recruiting ex-soldiers as guards in Iraq, said it has stopped the deployment because of the worsening situation there.
