The war contractor Blackwater USA became infamous when its employees shot 17 civilians in the streets in Iraq. As detailed by Jeremy Scahill’s book “Blackwater: The rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army”, an extremely critical expose on the company and military contractors in general, Joseph E. Schmitz, the Inspector General at the Pentagon, was accused of failing to investigate allegations of human trafficking by Iraq contractors. Some companies, including KBR (a subsidiary of Halliburton), had thirty-five thousand “third country nationals” working in Iraq. There was an article written by Cam Simpson of the Chicago Tribune called “Pipeline to Peril” documenting how twelve Nepalese citizens were sent to Iraq in August 2004, afterward which they were abducted and executed.
Other kinds of abuses, such as seizing the passports and other documents after they have entered the country so as to prevent them from leaving. This was after deceivng the workers about teir safety or contract terms, and in one case allegedly tried to force men into Iraq under the threat of preventing their access to food and water. It has been well known that the Coalition of the Willing, countries who joined in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, were fairly limited. The private contractors have found bodies within those countries, recruiting nationals from countries that forbid their military from engaging but could not keep their citizens from fighting of their own volition.
It is difficult to look at these instances from an outsider’s perspective without getting angry about what is happening and not being stopped. American-based companies like Blackwater are recruiting from countries like Chile and sending those troops, who have been trained both in their home countries in addition to Blackwater’s land in the United States, in to hostile territory. While the men (and it is mostly men) sign up on their own and are not forcefully conscripted the fact that they are sent to a war zone and possible forced into unsafe conditions is absolutely unbelievable. The act of holding somebody’s passport to make them work for you is the same situation workers face in countries like the United States and France in cases of domestic slavery, people forced to work as nannies, cooks and maids for no wages. The only difference with this situation is it is companies continuing the practice, not individual people, and that company is on direct contract with the United States of America.
A person could try to say that these men knew what they were signing up for, that it is their fault they are in that situation. But falsifying contracts is a common act in cases of human trafficking, and it in no way reflects the intelligence or competence of the person who finds themselves unwittingly trafficked. It is not their fault, something that has to be realized if any help can be directed their way. Sympathy for trafficking victims is usually reserved for children or people forced in to prostitution, and even then it is addressed by most people with either misunderstanding as to how people got in that situation or a serious amount of victim-blaming.
“How did they not suspect they were in danger?”
“Where were the parents, why didn’t they figure out what’s going on?”
None of those questions answer the problem of how the system allows for this to happen, yet they are what people think they need to be asking. 
It’s disturbing that a group would be willing to traffic people in this way. Not one person has a problem with it? Doing the right thing is so simple and people make it seem so difficult.
It is unbelievable that here in our developed country there are companies so desperate and immoral that traffic people into a form of slavery.