Worried contractors fleeing jobs in Iraq

By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Jackie Spinner

WASHINGTON - With new violence erupting in many parts of Iraq, it is increasingly challenging for U.S. contractors to continue working on thousands of reconstruction projects.
More than a few have fled their jobs without notice. At the urging of their governments, many citizens of Russia, France, and South Korea are preparing to leave. Some contractors and aid organizations have packed up and moved workers to neighboring countries.

Some who remain say it has been difficult to do their jobs as movement around the country has come to a virtual standstill. For most of the past two weeks, the U.S.-led occupation government has been on "lockdown," meaning that personnel were prohibited from leaving the Green Zone, the fortified area in central Baghdad that is the headquarters of Coalition Provisional Authority.

"We can't work. We can't go outside. We live like in a jail," said Luma Mousawi, director of Nurses-Doctors Care Organization, which is working on the rehabilitation of Iraq's health care system.

Occupation officials and contractors working in the Green Zone this week said there has been no mass evacuation. A dozen U.S. companies providing workers for the reconstruction contacted Wednesday said they were trying to do their best to work around the security problems.

Portia Palmer, of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said the recent violence and kidnappings has not stopped reconstruction. "We are not working in some areas because of unsafe situations," she said.

"But that's been the case since the first day we started in Iraq."

The increasing violence has led many individuals to leave the country, vowing never to return, according to interviews. Meanwhile, many would-be replacements, looking for high-paying jobs, post resumes on Web sites.

The occupation government depends heavily on contractors to help with its work in Iraq. There is no official count, but tens of thousands are assisting with rebuilding schools, fixing power plants, building prisons and providing security. Dozens of civilians working on reconstruction have been killed in the past year.

The CPA said 40 people, including some contractors, are being held hostage.

Many contractors say they were lured to Iraq by both their desire to make money and their patriotism, but the new dangers have made some reassess their decisions. Vivid images of contractors' corpses hanging from a bridge or kidnapped workers staring into a camera have blunted some workers' enthusiasm.

As gunfire and grenades began flying at his convoy on a road north of Baghdad last week, Stephen Heering leapt from the fuel truck he was driving and began to run. He had served only four months of the one-year contract he signed with Kellogg Brown & Root Inc. to transport military supplies around the country, but he decided right then and there that he would quit.

On Monday, Heering, 34, was at home with his wife and son in Magnolia, Texas, one of several dozen drivers he said have quit recently. "The money really wasn't worth losing my life over," he said in an interview Wednesday.

A Kellogg Brown and Root spokesman said at least 30 employees and subcontractors have died in Iraq, and a series of ambushes in the past few weeks forced the company to halt some supply convoys for four days as new security measures were put in place. They resumed Wednesday, said Wendy Hall, of KBR parent Halliburton Co.

Hall said that in the past few weeks fewer than 1 percent ofKellogg Brown and Root's employees in Iraq have quit. "But in an operation that includes 24,000 people, that has no impact," she said.

Halliburton and KBR have more than 100,000 applications on file from people interested in working in the Mideast, she said.

From: http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/nation/8437314.htm