By Nick Schwellenbach and Carol Leonnig
Saturday, July 17, 2010; 2:58 PM An eight-year-old policy forbidding govenment contractors and employees from engaging in sex trafficking in war zones has proven almost impossible to enforce, despite indications that such activities are occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan
The policy, instituted eight years ago by President George W. Bush and still in effect today, calls for prosecutions of government employees and contractors and suspensions or disqualifications of companies whose workers engage in trafficking. Bush's get-tough language also threatened criminal prosecutions for solicitation of prostitutes because many of the women are forced into the work.
Agencies say the cases are difficult to pursue because of limited investigative resources and jurisdictional questions. But some experts and lawmakers believe that authorities are turning a blind eye to evidence of such crimes.
"Zero prosecutions," said attorney Martina Vandenberg, a former Human Rights Watch investigator, "suggests zero effort to enforce the law."
The State Department reported recently that allegations of contractor employees procuring commercial sex acts were "well publicized" but noted that no contractors have been prosecuted and no contracts terminated.
Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., author of 2000 U.S. anti-trafficking law, questions whether agencies vigorously pursue allegations. "If you care about the women who are being exploited, you don't look askance when those that we're paying to do jobs for us are exploiting them," he said.
Justice Department spokesman Alejandro Miyar said that the agency "investigates all credible allegations of human trafficking." An Army Report
Nearly a decade after Dyncorp International LLC employees were accused of buying and selling women from throughout Eastern Europe -- and not prosecuted -- the State Department alerted the U.S. Army to allegations made by a freelance journalist. The journalist said she had interviewed women held in Iraq as involuntary servants in debt slavery.
The February report, posted online as part of an Army PowerPoint presentation, alleged that supervisors of an Army subcontractor in Iraq had sexually assaulted some of the women.
"The women were recruited from their home nations with promises of well-paying beautician jobs in Dubai," said an Army summary, "but were instead forced to surrender their passports, transported against their will to Iraq, and told they could only leave by paying a termination fee of $1,100."
The subcontractors work for the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, which runs restaurants and other commercial operations on military bases.
An Army Criminal Investigation Command spokesman, who declined to discuss specifics, said the allegations "were investigated and not substantiated."
In another allegation, a former Blackwater guard said that he saw colleagues and American soldiers paying Iraqi girls for sex acts. The allegations surfaced in a lawsuit filed last summer in the Eastern District of Virginia, alleging wrongful death and abuse on behalf of families of Iraqi victims. But the anonymous statement detailing the allegations was withdrawn by the Iraqi families, who agreed to a settlement in January.
The former guard, who asked that his name not be used out of concern for his safety, said that in 2005 he watched older boys collect dollar bills while Iraqi girls, some as young as 12 and 13, performed the sex acts.
The former guard said he reported this to his Blackwater superiors, but no action was taken. "It sickens me to talk about it even now," he said.
The former Blackwater guard said he provided the information to a grand jury, but the Justice Department would not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation.
Stacy DeLuke, a spokeswoman for Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, said the firm "vehemently denies these anonymous and baseless allegations." She said Xe policies forbid human trafficking. Brothels in Afghanistan
In Afghanistan, trafficking evidence came to light after 90 Chinese women were freed after brothel raids in 2006 and 2007. The women told the International Organization on Migration that they had been brought into Afghanistan for sexual exploitation, according to a 2008 report.
Nigina Mamadjonova, head of IOM's counter-human trafficking unit in Afghanistan, said the women alleged in interviews that their clients were mostly Western men.
In late 2007, officials at ArmorGroup, which provides U.S. embassy security in Kabul, learned some employees frequented brothels disguised as Chinese restaurants and might be engaged in sex trafficking. A company whistleblower has alleged in an ongoing lawsuit that the firm withheld the information from the U.S. government. James Gordon, then an ArmorGroup supervisor, alleged that a manager "boasted openly about owning prostitutes in Kabul" while a company trainee boasted that he hoped to make some "real money" in brothels and planned to buy a woman for $20,000.
Gordon said he warned his bosses and also alerted Heidi McMichael, a State Department contracting officer.
Months later, according to Gordon, he asked McMichael why no action had been taken and she told him the matter had been referred to the FBI. She declined to comment, as did the bureau. Gordon said that the trainee was fired but no other action taken.
Susan Pitcher, a spokesman for ArmorGroup's parent company, Wackenhut Services Incorporated, said in an e-mail that the company would not respond to Gordon's allegations. She stressed that ArmorGroup policies prohibit trafficking.
An internal corporate investigation in November 2007 found that a Kabul program manager knew that some workers had violated company policies by "seeking out prostitutes." .
The report disputed allegations that the manager frequented brothels but concluded that he knew about activities "that could bring discredit upon both the company and the client." A letter of reprimand was placed in his file.
A Difficult Mandate
Justice Department prosecutors privately complain that the zero-tolerance policy is nearly unenforceable-- partly because it makes little distinction between organized sex trafficking and voluntary prostitution.
"Are we interested in chasing every contractor that gets a hooker, or using our resources to go after the guys who force people into modern-day slavery?" asks one former trafficking investigator, who requested anonymity.
Law enforcement faces two main challenges in pursuing such crimes -- gathering evidence and legal jurisdiction -- according to Laura Dickinson, an Arizona State University law professor.
The FBI has 35 to 40 agents in war zones, but they are focused on investigating fraud and corruption. The military's own law enforcement agencies have about 150 agents in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait handling all types of felony-level crimes.
Some experts say investigators and prosecutors will likely decline a trafficking case if it proves time-consuming and manpower intensive.
Gordon, the former ArmorGroup manager, questions whether agencies take the allegations seriously.
"If it's so serious," he says, "if you have a zero tolerance policy, why aren't you doing anything?"
This report is a collaboration between the Center for Public Integrity and The Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/17/AR2010071701401_3.html
No comments:
Post a Comment