While working our way out of the Himalayas we paused for a break near a small shop. A man wearing a tank top and orange shorts initiated a conversation, and we soon found that he had spent the previous six months as a guard for a DEA (the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency) compound in Kabul. His slight build and easy manners belied his military training, but speckles of spit forcefully punctuated his more emphatic points.
Trained as a commando in the Nepali Army, Saraj found ample work opportunity after he quit. His employer is ‘Global Logistics Security’ or some other equally ambiguously named international private security company. His co-workers come primarily from the U.S. and British special forces, who swell the ranks of private contractors supporting low troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Saraj is by no means the only Nepali lending man-power to the U.S. war effort. We met another gentleman in Eastern Nepal who had spent a year in Iraq working as a cook. With domestic salaries low, many Nepali men flock to the Middle East, Malaysia and other places with higher pay rates to cash in on globalization.
There’s something odd about the U.S. looking outside of its borders for manpower for its wars. Before the collapse of the Spanish empire, they began outsourcing important trades like ship building to other countries. They became lethargic and unskilled, while their neighbors built up their own empires through crafty use of revenues coming from Spain.
The wars the U.S. currently fights seem managed by bureaucrats who’s ideology finds little root at the grassroots level in America. They push the affairs of the country in a direction most citizens do not wish to follow. Perhaps our the shortage of soldiers to execute these wars should be an indication of the lack of support they have. However, the bureaucracy simply looks outside the borders of our country for manpower, and continues trudging in the same direction, sustaining conflicts their own citizens refuse to support with their lives.
Maybe this situation is more a sign of the global times in which we live. Wars without outsourcing may be as impractical as manufacturing without a global supply chain. I’m afraid I, for one, will remain ill at ease having my countries dirty work be done by non-citizens.
There are actually a lot of Nepalis in Iraq. One of our Nepali friends lives in a U.S. military compound and does laundry for the soldiers. Another one of our friends wants to go and work as a cook.