By Peter Graff, Reuters, 29 August 2007
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BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Constantine Rodriguez had just fetched chilli peppers and was going out to get some onions when he heard the siren for an incoming rocket. All he remembers was a door blasting open and a loud explosion.
A quiet man from the former Portuguese colony of Goa in southwestern India, Rodriguez was working at a Pizza Hut restaurant at Taji, one of the main U.S. air bases in Iraq, when he was caught up in an attack.
[…]
The Kuwaiti firm that employed Rodriguez, Al Homaizi, operates 11 Pizza Huts, 13 Burger Kings and five Taco Bells on American bases in Iraq, said Joe Petrusich, who runs the firm’s Iraq restaurants.
It employs about 300 workers, recruited in Kuwait but nearly all from poor countries in Asia: India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and the Philippines.
They are a small part of the vast army behind the army — the tens of thousands of “TCNs” — “third-country nationals” — hired to feed U.S. troops, wash their laundry, build their compounds and clean their toilets, for salaries of at most several hundred dollars a month.
The U.S. military says that by contracting out tasks like cooking and cleaning, it can provide its soldiers with a better environment at a lower cost.
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