Eurest Support Services - Iraq and Kuwait Contracting

Iraq and Kuwait Contracting

As preparations for the invasion of Iraq were being made in early 2003, and continuing through 2006, ESS was contracted by the U.S. Marine Corps, the 82nd Airborne Division, the British Ministry of Defence, the Coalition Provisional Authority, and major defense contractors Fluor, RMS, Bechtel, and most notably KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton under the U.S. Army troop support contract called LOGCAP III to provide dining and construction services at desert bases and encampments in Kuwait and Iraq. ESS, through its office in Kuwait, bid for, was awarded, and built and operated ten dining facilities in Kuwait and later thirteen facilities throughout Iraq, and routinely served meals to 50,000 U.S. and other Coalition service members each day. Over 100 Western managers and 1,500 Indian workers manned the dining facilities, some open 24 hours per day, and lived in harsh conditions inside the camps for months at a time.

Although ESS achieved many successes in serving troops in Kuwait and Iraq, overshadowing this was the incident in which four Blackwater security contractors were killed in an ambush in Falluja, a city west of Baghdad, on March 31, 2004, while protecting an ESS convoy en route to a Fluor construction site elsewhere. It has been widely but erroneously reported that the convoy attacked had been destined for a KBR location. That prompted a further contention that the contract between ESS and Blackwater for Iraq road transport and personnel close protection security, through a joint venture business formed by Blackwater and Regency Hotels of Kuwait, was known to Halliburton and therefore violated Halliburton's contract with the U.S. Army.