Adding Insult to Injury: Halliburton

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Mark Baltazar was between jobs operating heavy construction equipment when he heard he could make $84,000 doing the same work in Iraq. When he took the job, his plan was to save up the tax-free money and then buy a new home for his family back in Texas.
A suicide bomber near Mosul changed all that last December, just one month and three weeks after Baltazar started work with Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), the largest military contractor in Iraq.

On Dec. 21, 2004, the 32-year-old father of five, who was raised in Odessa, Texas and moved to Houston 14 years ago, had just finished lunch when it happened. He was in the sprawling KBR mess tent at Camp Merez where hundreds of U.S. troops, Iraqi security forces and U.S. civilian contractors were eating. The bomber then launched one of the bloodiest attacks on U.S. forces since the invasion began. The explosion swept through the tent, hurled Baltazar into the air and sent him crashing down over the back of a chair.

A total of 69 people were wounded, including Balthazar and 24 other civilian contractors. Seven of the 22 left dead were KBR employees and subcontractors. One was a co-worker of Baltazar's who had just left the table to get some ice cream. It was the last time Baltazar saw him alive.

Six months later, like many civilian workers injured in Iraq, Baltazar is still battling with KBR's insurance adjusters. If he wins, he hopes to be paid the disability benefits he needs to support himself and his family.

Instead of saving for a new home, Baltazar finds himself worse off then he was when he left for Iraq; he's jobless because of his injuries, living in a Houston apartment, and relying on a $368 disability check every two weeks.

"You make more money working at McDonald's," he says dejectedly.

Because he worked for Halliburton's KBR, which uses Cayman Island subsidiaries to employ 70 percent of it's workers, Baltazar is not eligible for unemployment.

Baltazar's lawyer says he is also being denied full insurance coverage worth more than $1,000 a week as outlined in the Defense Base Act (DBA). The DBA requires businesses working overseas under U.S. funded contracts to provide insurance coverage for injuries and disabilities of all employees. Subcontractors are responsible for providing similar coverage to their workers. Baltazar's projected DBA amount is a sum based on the comparative annual income he would be making if he hadn't been injured.

Immediately after the bombing, KBR medics x-rayed Baltazar's back. They gave him morphine and said he was fine. But after spending two days resting in his trailer, Balthazar recalls, he told his supervisors he wanted medical leave to go back to the United States and see a doctor of his choice.

"I wanted to return to work after some medical leave," Baltazar explains. "They said my injuries weren't severe enough to send me home, so I either had to stay in Iraq or quit."

Since January, he has been getting spinal injections and visiting a physical therapist three times a week to help ease the pain of the back injury he sustained when he landed on the chair. He also suffers from hearing loss and blurry eyesight because of the blast and receives psychological counseling for post-traumatic stress disorder.

PTSD

Commonly known as PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder often appears as a temporary psychological condition, but it can also last a lifetime. Symptoms include major depression and anxiety that can lead to suicidal behavior. The disorder haunts an estimated 15 to 17 percent of soldiers returning from Iraq, according to a study published by the New England Journal of Medicine in their summer 2004 issue. The condition is also currently affecting an unknown number of contractors who witnessed the horrors of war firsthand.

Little data is available on just how widespread the problem may be among civilian workers. According to Dr. Charles Figley, Director of the Psychological Stress Research Program at Florida State University and one of the country's most prominent PTSD experts, the number of contractors suffering from the disorder will likely remain an estimate.

"No one is counting, no one is noticing and no one cares," said Figley, a former Marine and Vietnam veteran who believes that the risks contractors face are the main reason that many of them earn high salaries.

Figley predicts that a PTSD study would document the danger to contractors and force wages up even higher because fewer skilled Americans would be willing to work in Iraq.

"These people are non-combatants in a combat environment, but I am sure there are no studies about them." Figley adds. "Besides, it would be bad for business."

PTSD is bad for Baltazar as well.

"I wake up with nightmares, sometimes four times a night, sweating and yelling," he says.

It takes enormous courage to admit psychological baggage brought home from war, but for contractors back in the US it is necessary for recovery.

Taken for dead

Like Baltazar, another KBR employee, Samuel Walker, says KBR denied him medical leave after he was injured in the Camp Merez bombing. His only options at that point were to quit or stay in Iraq. Walker, who now lives in Augusta, Georgia, worked for over a year in Iraq as a fitness and recreation supervisor at the camp. An Army veteran of 24 years, Walker joined KBR one month after retiring as a Combat Communications Specialist. He recalls that he was eating French fries when the explosion blasted through the mess tent.

"Body parts were flying all over and pieces of flesh flying in my face," Walker says.

When it was over, the former contractor was drenched in the blood of the victims around him and rescue workers took him for dead. "I was so close to the bomber," he adds. "There was copper wire from the bomb embedded in my jacket."

Walker took a full blast to the side of his head and shrapnel pitted his body. But when KBR medics treated him following the bombing, he says they merely rubbed Vaseline on his burns and gave him Motrin for pain.

"For two days I told them my side was hurting but they said I would be okay, and wouldn't give me medical leave," Walker says.

A week and a half later, like Baltazar, Walker quit and headed home to Houston. Now he complains of ringing in his ears and migraine headaches. He's in physical therapy for his neck, back and right knee. Walker also believes suffers from PTSD. Questions about his work in Iraq, scenes from the TV news, even French fries, all bring back the moment when the bomb flashed before him.

"I can't even walk into a restaurant without remembering the screaming, the hollering, the yelling and everyone thinking I was dead," Walker says. With the memories haunting him daily, Walker knows it's unlikely that he'll be able to re-enter the workforce. In the meantime, he's waiting on his claim for disability and medical bills.

"I haven't gotten one red cent from them," Walker says.

KBR responds

KBR insists that it is committed to ensuring its employees receive quality medical treatment.

"KBR employees work side-by-side with the troops, and they do the jobs that, here at home, are routine, such as planning and preparing meals," said KBR spokeswoman Cathy Gist. "In a war zone, however, these jobs require courage, resolve and skill."

When asked if employees had been denied medical leaves after being injured at Camp Merez, Gist answered indirectly. "As KBR's history of contracting for the U.S military in remote environments continues, the company remains committed to ensure its employees receive quality medical treatment and care, either locally or by means of evacuation to a more advanced medical facility as dictated by the nature of the situation, " she told CorpWatch,

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0525-27.htm