Under Contract
The Invisible Workers of America's Global War
-
- $22.99
-
- $22.99
Publisher Description
War is one of the most lucrative job markets for an increasingly global workforce. Most of the work on American bases, everything from manning guard towers to cleaning the latrines to more technical engineering and accounting jobs, has been outsourced to private firms that then contract out individual jobs, often to the lowest bidder. An "American" base in Afghanistan or Iraq will be staffed with workers from places like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Turkey, Bosnia, and Nepal: so-called "third-country nationals." Tens of thousands of these workers are now fixtures on American bases. Yet, in the plethora of records kept by the U.S. government, they are unseen and uncounted—their stories untold.
Noah Coburn traces this unseen workforce across seven countries, following the workers' often zigzagging journey to war. He confronts the varied conditions third-country nationals encounter, ranging from near slavery to more mundane forms of exploitation. Visiting a British Imperial training camp in Nepal, U.S. bases in Afghanistan, a café in Tbilisi, offices in Ankara, and human traffickers in Delhi, Coburn seeks out a better understanding of the people who make up this unseen workforce, sharing powerful stories of hope and struggle.
Part memoir, part travelogue, and part retelling of the war in Afghanistan through the eyes of workers, Under Contract unspools a complex global web of how modern wars are fought and supported, narrating war stories unlike any other. Coburn's experience forces readers to reckon with the moral questions of a hidden global war-force and the costs being shouldered by foreign nationals in our name.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this insightful study, Coburn (Losing Afghanistan: An Obituary for the Intervention), an anthropologist at Bennington College, turns his eye to an infrequently discussed element of the war in Afghanistan. He interviewed about 250 of the more than 117,000 contract workers hired by the U.S. Defense Department to work on tasks including security and preparing meals for the U.S. military, hoping to get an in-depth sense of their experiences. The book's subtitle is somewhat misleading, because it is not a broad overview of such workers around the world but is focused specifically on Nepalese workers employed by the U.S. in Afghanistan. Coburn shows how some prospered, making far more money than they could in Nepal or elsewhere, while others faced economic hardship or such extreme dangers as kidnapping and murder at the hands of terrorists. He also finds that contract workers engaged by U.S. companies usually didn't receive disability payments or pensions and, even when in danger, only rarely received visas to come to the U.S. Some material, though interesting, is largely extraneous; Coburn digresses on Gurkhas in the British army who, after retiring, went into business in Aldershot, England, and Nepalese men who, after employment in Afghanistan, did security work for a shady Russian billionaire. Still, this work contains some excellent insights into and personal stories about the risk-laden employment and economic opportunities facing those who assume the many ancillary roles afforded by America's "endless war."
