Bizarre Bazaar
Postcards from Around the World
ABC News' Terry McCarthy has been reporting on war, peace, and everything in between from all around the world for 20 years. He writes about daily life in the areas he is reporting from.
RECENT POSTS
MONTHLY ARCHIVES
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
| 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
| 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
| 28 | 29 | 30 |
« Previous | Main | Next »
OUTSOURCING
July 19, 2006 12:25 PM
The Green Zone, that heavily protected chunk of real estate in the center of Baghdad, at first looks like a set from Star Trek. In addition to all the uniformed Americans, there are several thousand so called TNC’s (Third Country Nationals) who provide security, do the cooking, cleaning and other work necessary to keep the whole place running. Peruvians cheerfully man the main gate of the US Embassy, Georgian soldiers with red crosses on white badges make some checkpoints charmingly confusing as not one of them appears to speak a word of English. Sri Lankans run the PX, Bangladeshis cook the food, Filippinos do the cleaning. Fijians, Salvadoreans, Portuguese… Chinese who run a restaurant, Italian military attaches who stride around looking like Armani models… There are even a handful of Indians – from Kerala - who run an American-style coffee shop inside one of Saddam’s old palaces, complete with a full-sized cappuccino machine, freshly baked muffins and CD’s of world lounge music, all priced in US dollars.
As I sat at one of their tables nibbling a banana muffin and drinking my first café latte since leaving LAX several weeks ago, I realized the Green Zone was not so much Star Trek, as an enormous experiment in real-time outsourcing.
The Americans in-country are too busy hunting insurgents and hosting congressional delegations to whip up the scrambled eggs every morning or launder the sheets. But in today’s global economy, there are plenty of other nationalities who are willing to do this work. Salaries are paid tax-free, and there is nowhere to spend it, so for those who are willing to endure the heat and the security risks, it seems to represent good earning potential. It may not feel much like Iraq inside the Green Zone, but who cares? Geography no longer counts in today’s outsourced global economy. And the latte tasted great….
July 19, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (2)
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
Outsourcing occupation and reconstruction of a war-ravaged country--a truly capital(ist) idea! You should let Tom Friedman ("The World Is Flat") know about this, if he doesn't already! It must be somewhat surreal to be surrounded by hardworking third-country nationals while in the Green Zone, but I'll bet anything that reality comes back quickly when you're outside that protective area.
Posted by: chuck | Jul 19, 2006 1:47:50 PM
Interesting parallel to a domestic scenario, the Millitary equivalent of the guest worker program.
Posted by: Brian K | Jul 20, 2006 1:01:30 AM
Post a comment
