In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Contract Workers, Risk and the War in Iraq: Sierra Leonean Labor Migrants at US Military Bases by Kevin J. A. Thomas
  • Joseph R. Bongiovi
Contract Workers, Risk and the War in Iraq: Sierra Leonean Labor Migrants at US Military Bases By Kevin J. A. Thomas Montreal: McGill–Queens University Press. 2017. 256 pages. $110 cloth. http://www.mqup.ca/contract-workers—risk—and-the-war-in-iraq-products-9780773551220.php

"Stayingalive is, obviously, critical to occupational success in high-risk work environments, and, as migrants quickly realize following their arrival, safety is fundamental to their welfare in work and non-work environments. For migrants to Iraq, safety was emphasized even before they left the airport in Baghdad: they were made to put on helmets and bullet-proof vests before leaving the airport's premises" (100). This entry comes halfway through this book and speaks volumes about the risks involved in the work that Sierra Leonean and other labor migrants were taking to make "blood money" (as Thomas reports this income is referred to in Sierra Leone). Egyptians and other Arab, Muslim, and earlier labor migrants work in relatively safer and more stable Gulf Cooperation Council nations. Later entrants into the global labor migration systems have been left to fill in the gaps in these more precarious environments in order to get into the game. That has been the fate of Sierra Leoneans and other sub-Saharan Africans.

Thomas (2017) situates the migration of Sierra Leone workers to US bases in Iraq in the context of the history of both colonial and war-related labor migration dating back thousands of years. According to Thomas (2017), the best African warriors were prized as enslaved fighters for Arab Muslim empires. They were later employed to support European colonial fighting forces, reaching a peak in the First and Second World Wars. None of this, it would seem, is new. Today the state of Sierra Leone brokers these workers into the needs of the "global war on terror" through its Overseas Employment Bureau (OEB). This agency helped market, vet, train, and deploy these workers to fill US needs in Iraq.

While Sierra Leonean workers filled multiple roles, Thomas (2017) reports that 80 percent filled precarious mobile and static guard roles at the US bases in Iraq. These bases numbered roughly 500 at the high point, exhibiting the dramatic need for these guards. While these were dangerous jobs, the author argues that it was acceptable in the context of the poor domestic labor market and the "fatalistic" orientation they brought to their work.

An important context of this work is the backdrop of the Sierra Leone civil war and poor efforts at economic development at home. The author states that private companies in Iraq played a greater role in supporting the war effort than at any other time in history. What is less well developed in this book is the history of how these modern private company efforts came to be. He notes the presence of these companies in the Sierra Leone civil war but does not fully situate the evolution of this modern form in that context.

Not coincidentally, Sierra Leone was the crucible in which these modern military forms were forged. One of the earliest and most important modern private military companies (PMCs), Executive Outcomes, had its most significant early ventures there. This white South African veteran-led organization defeated the rebels on behalf of the internationally backed Sierra Leone government (Barlow [2007] 2008). Later, it was the British PMC Sandline that took over and continued the fight (Spicer 1999). Why this matters is that these same white South African mercenaries played a key role in providing experience to PMCs in Iraq. And it was Sandline's Tim Spicer, reorganized under Aegis Defense Services, that coordinated the PMC effort there under a master contract to the US government (Hagedorn 2014). This story is relevant not only because of Sierra Leone's late entrance to international labor migration but also because of that country's role as a crucible for the emergence of the modern PMCs, separated by half a millennium from its historic counterparts (Urban 2006). It may also help explain why...

pdf

Share