Even the holiday meal is outsourced in Iraq

CAMP SPEICHER, Iraq — Five years ago, Vincent Lobo was working as a tobacco salesman in his native India, and had no idea what Thanksgiving was.

On Thursday, Lobo spent a fifth year serving turkey, stuffing and candied yams to U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq, courtesy of one of the American military's biggest practices here — outsourcing.

"It was a job opportunity for me to come here. I make twice as much money as I did in India, and here I can save all of my earnings," Lobo said Thursday, looking out over a sea of U.S. military uniforms lining up for turkey at this U.S. base in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.

The U.S. military puts on a traditional Thanksgiving celebration for some 165,000 military personnel stationed across Iraq. The cost is in the "hundreds of thousands of dollars" at this dining hall alone — one of three facilities at this base north of Baghdad, said Chief Warrant Officer William Duff, who oversees contractors here.

That pays for turkey and all the trimmings for about 20,000 customers who include U.S. military members, contractors and an occasional visiting journalist.

The gymnasium-size facility was decorated with red, orange and brown paper streamers. Each long table was topped with a watermelon carved in the shape of a basket, filled with grapes and squash.

Sgt. Shawn Tostado, a 31-year-old member of the 44th Expeditionary Signal Battalion from Sacramento, Calif., said this was his first Thanksgiving since his mother died in August.

"This is the first holiday I've had without her. This is my extended family now," Tostado said, gesturing to his fellow soldiers at Camp Speicher in Tikrit. "I do more with these guys than anyone else."

But for this facility's 285 workers — all so-called "third country nationals" or TCNs — Thanksgiving is an American experience they've learned to celebrate in, of all places, Iraq.

"Americans eat a lot of turkey. Actually they eat a lot of everything now that I think about it," joked Gayan Thusitha, a Sri Lankan native who has spent more than three years here.

Thusitha and Lobo work for a subcontractor for KBR Services, a Houston-based company that has a multibillion dollar contract to provide food, laundry and other services to U.S. troops overseas. The men said they answered advertisements in local newspapers back home for food-industry jobs in Iraq and ended up here a few months later. A manager for their company, subcontracted to KBR, asked that the company's name not be published.

Some contractors in Iraq have come under criticism for allegedly paying TCNs — most of them from India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh — a meager wage, while allegedly overbilling the U.S. military.

But Thusitha, Lobo and others here said they were content with their steady jobs, which pay on average about $300 a month, and happy to partake in American traditions like Thanksgiving.