The promise to build a better life in the Philippines for himself and his young family took Ramil Autencio to Kuwait. He never suspected that a month after leaving home in December 2003 he would be living a wartime nightmare in northern Iraq, pushing boulders 11-hours a day, seven days a week for a contractor fortifying a US military camp in Tikrit.

Showers to wash off the day’s sweat were an uncertainty, and in the chilly January and February nights of 2004, he and seven other Filipinos would live in an empty truck with no windows, sleep on cardboard boxes for a bed, and eat leftovers and meals-ready-to-eat from soldiers. It was the only way to have enough food. He says crackling gunfire and crashing incoming mortar would wake him at all hours of the night and the unfortified trailer would tremble and shake from nearby rocket blasts.

It was not what he had planned at all.

Recruitment

Trained as an air conditioning repairman and technician, Autencio says his recruiter in the Philippines agreed to place him in a two-year job at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Kuwait for $450 a month -- maybe more with overtime. But when he arrived at the Kuwait airport, he was quickly shuttled to a rundown apartment building managed by First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting, a Kuwaiti firm doing a booming multimillion-dollar business with the US military and the Pentagon’s primary support contractor KBR. To date, the company has billed the US government perhaps $2 billion for work in Iraq, including the $592-million US embassy in Baghdad now nearing completion.

There were no more jobs at the hotel, Autencio was informed, and because the job recruiter had only processed him for a one-month travel visa, he could not work in Kuwait. Autencio said First Kuwaiti offered him one of three options: pay a $1,000 penalty and work in Kuwait for free for six months, be arrested and jailed, or work in Iraq. As he weighed these choices, he would live in an apartment building with 800 other Filipinos where there were no mattresses or blankets. They ate only chicken and rice under the building’s crumbling ceilings.

“A jail would be better,” Autencio recalled. “We were ordered to go.... They forcibly brought us to Iraq.”

Former supervisors with First Kuwaiti who have since left the company call the three-story building Jaleeb.

“They would lock them in without documents -- no passports or IDs,” recalled one longtime supervisor. “The building was so crowded, you could barely breathe.” Many say one Filipino lost his mind and died while Autencio was there.

Another supervisor agreed the building was “a mess,” and said after much urging, it was cleaned up sometime in 2006.

First Kuwaiti’s general manager, Wadih Al-Absi consistently denies that his company would ever endorse such recruitment practices. During numerous conversations, he has said that First Kuwaiti never pressured workers into Iraq or violated international visa requirements. During one meeting in Washington, DC, in September 2005, he said that people were envious of his company’s success. “People will never criticize someone who fails,” he said.

Al-Absi also flatly accused Autencio of lying. His proof is a working agreement, purportedly signed by Autencio before leaving the Philippines. Although Al-Absi admitted that unscrupulous recruitment agencies do sometimes misrepresent jobs and take money from people eager to work, he provided Autencio’s undated contract with First Kuwaiti that identified the job site as both Kuwait and “mainly” Iraq.

The agreement also lays out salary: $346 a month for 8-hour days, seven days a week, plus $104 a month for a mandatory 2 hours overtime every day.

Because of allegations of labor trafficking and other abuses, First Kuwaiti is now under investigation by the US Justice Department, precipitated by American employees reporting that workers transiting Kuwait were handed boarding passes for Dubai before landing in Baghdad.

The company was also investigated for similar allegations by US State Department Inspector General Howard J. Krongard, who did a site review of the US embassy in September. “Nothing came to our attention,” Krongard wrote in his nine-page memorandum released in late April. However, an addendum by the Multi-National Force inspector general in Baghdad did report complaints about deceptive hiring practices by recruitment agencies after interviewing 36 workers in a March 2007 site inspection.

Autencio recounted his tale last November while sitting in front of his home – a two-room shack assembled with old wood and sheet metal back a dirt alley off a busy commercial street in metropolitan Manila. A tattered curtain hangs across the front entrance. Jets fly overhead connecting some 8 million Filipino laborers, 10 percent of the nation’s population, to the global economy – all seeking more than the $10 a day that most make at home.

A stray dog and a few cats amble by as his wife Angela and his two small children watch Ramil carefully unfold a plastic bag holding his documents. Speaking in Tagalong, he holds each paper like a sacred text supporting his resolve to share the hell he says he endured.

Forced Into Iraq

While at Jaleeb in Kuwait, Autencio claims he signed papers as a supervisor placed his hand over the paragraphs. “I don’t read Arabic or English, but it was that, or jail,” he recalled. Before leaving the Philippines, the papers he signed at the airport were for work in Kuwait, he stressed again and again. He did not want to go to Iraq.

Autencio said after a few weeks in the Jaleeb, a hand-written memo listing his name among others was posted warning people to prepare for travel to Iraq:

"People received $100 salary deductions for failure to get on the buses. Furthermore, their daily deductions will be made from their salary until they reach Iraq, and their salaries will not be paid until the end of the month. If your name is on the list below and you wish to go back to the Philippines, you will still have to work until you can pay for your ticket expenses equivalent to USD$1,000.

“These people failed to meet their departure dates for Iraq, which means that they also delayed many of your departures. Delayed departures mean that you might receive your salary late bec no more salaries will be paid in Kuwait. All salaries will be paid in Iraq!!! If everyone wishes to receive their salary on time, you must make sure that you do not miss your departure date, and make sure no one else fails to go!!!"

Once in Tikrit, Autencio said he was not getting paid. He was told the money was waiting in Kuwait, but the conditions became increasingly unbearable for him and the Filipinos working with him.

The Escape

As if sharing a secret, Autencio carefully unfolds a dog-eared yellow piece of paper and passes it over. He had circulated it among the workers, and forty signed, agreeing to flee Iraq with him. Autencio quickly set about making arrangements for the 40 Filipino workers to escape their unwanted servitude.

Autencio got a sympathetic Filipino soldier in the US Army to convince the driver of a flatbed truck headed south towards the Kuwaiti border to give them a ride. For three nights they rode in darkness, packed tight in an empty transport container with very little food or water. “We were nearly starved,” Autencio said.

When they arrived at the border, the sheer number of desperate Filipinos arriving without papers stunned the Kuwaiti police. “We were even angrier then because one of us had died so there was nothing they could do to stop us,” Autencio continued. “We pushed them away when they asked for our papers.... We outnumbered them.”

The group made their way to the Philippines embassy, where the ambassador reluctantly allowed them shelter until their return home could be arranged.

Ramil claims he was only paid $300 for the entire three-month ordeal. He sued First Kuwaiti for back pay, but lost in court. He blames that on his lawyer who was unqualified. A second lawyer he hired disappeared.

That is enough for First Kuwaiti to conclude that Autencio’s allegations are nothing but fiction.

“He sued me in court over this, and he lost,” Al Absi said. “He doesn’t have a case against us.”

Investigating First Kuwaiti

The Philippine government placed First Kuwaiti on a Watch List on June 15, 2005 as a warning to the company to comply with worker contracts, though Al-Absi said he was unaware of that action. As Slogger reported Monday, a Filipino official announced last week that the government is looking into the recruitment practices of firms that supplied workers to First Kuwaiti.

One frequent complaint Filipino workers make to their government is that they are issued tourist visas when traveling to the Middle East for work, said a government official. That prevents them from getting the jobs they planned to have and they are then pressured to take work in Iraq. “So many were issued tourist visas,” the official said. “We have no concrete evidence, but there are so many workers with these complaints.”

In April 2006, the Pentagon confirmed in a new contracting order that an investigation of US-funded contractors in Iraq found significant evidence of deceptive hiring practices, excessive recruiting fees indebting workers for months if not years, substandard living conditions that include crammed sleeping quarters and poor food, and the circumventing of Iraqi immigration procedures. It also noted that the passports were illegally confiscated by employers and the lack of mandatory “awareness training” in labor trafficking.

“Leaders must understand the dynamics and indicators of trafficking and be vigilant in correcting and reporting suspected violations or activities,” the Pentagon stressed in the

No company or contractor is named in the Pentagon’s findings. Nor has the US government publicly penalized or prosecuted any US-funded contractor in Iraq for labor trafficking and abuse.

The US State Department recently awarded some $200 million in new contracts to First Kuwaiti for embassy work in Africa, India and Indonesia. The company also is said to be competing for a new US embassy project in Lebanon.

Autencio’s story is now featured in the new documentary Someone Else's War, currently circulating in the Philippines and at US film festivals.

Journalist Lucille Quiambao contributed research and translation to this report. David Phinney can be contacted at phinneydavid@yahoo.com.