Soldiers who return home from combat zones have veterans' support groups, a plethora of charities and an entire government agency intended to see to their needs for illness and injuries. But contractors who take jobs in those same areas have had no such institutional support – until now.
These workers face the same mental traumas associated with combat deployment, and thousands who have been exposed to burn pits face the same cancers that have claimed the lives of American service members. But before the Association of War Zone Contractors (AOWC) formed this week, they did not have any of the same support groups that take care of veterans, according to the group's organizers.
"We’re looking to make sure contractors are seen, heard and counted, because those things haven’t been happening for a long time," Scott Dillard, co-founder of the new nonprofit, told Fox News Digital.
The American public often forgets that contractors make up much of the workforce on overseas bases. An estimated half of those employed in U.S. positions during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were civilian contractors, not military members.
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"Some contractors go outside the wire, but many of them are just changing light bulbs, slinging mashed potatoes, cleaning toilets, whatever the case may be. But they’re on these bases, they’re in a hostile environment that gets attacked," Dillard said.
Known as "hidden casualties" during the Iraq War, many were convoy drivers who carted supplies across dangerous terrain. More than 8,000 contractors died over two decades in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as did an additional 7,000 U.S. service members, according to a Brown University count. The U.S. government does not thoroughly report contractor deaths, and their families often struggle to receive any compensation.
"A contractor's function is kind of an invisible army, and we don't want that," said Cory Archibald, another co-founder and former contractor. "The public deserves to know, policymakers need to know in order to make the right decisions, how integrated contractors are in everything that the military does, fully integrated in military operations, and that needs to be understood and acted on."
Like the veterans’ groups that for decades have advocated for better post-mission care for U.S. troops, AOWC hopes to educate contractors who return home with mental and physical injuries and illnesses associated with their work on the resources currently available to them, and to advocate for U.S. policymakers to streamline the arduous process that comes with filing a claim.
Thanks to the PACT Act, the VA recognizes an automatic link between 23 different conditions and burn pits. But civilians, whose claims are managed by the U.S. Department of Labor, have to prove a connection between the same medical conditions and deployment.
Through the Defense Base Act, contracting companies’ insurers are required to cover care for work-related injuries, like the cancers arising in many of those who served on bases in Iraq and Afghanistan in close proximity to burn pits.
"It’s an adversarial process for contractors," said Dillard. "The insurer is almost certainly going to deny the claim."
For claims that are successful, contractors wait years to see any form of payment.
For unsuccessful claims, contractors have to retain a lawyer and wait for the litigation process to play out in court.
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The research behind the PACT Act, which found a direct link to certain medical conditions and the pits used to burn medical waste, arms materials and other things near military bases, focused on service members whose deployments last between a few months and a year and a half. Little research has been done on the effects those pits had on contractors, who in many cases took work on overseas bases for years at a time.
AOWC's first order of business is to get names on its burn pits registry to garner data and establish a direct connection between certain illnesses among contractors and exposure to burn pits. Then the group will take that data to policymakers and implore them to make it easier for contractors to get help with care.
As the military's size has diminished over the years, U.S. forces have increasingly outsourced work to civilian contractors. And contractors are conveniently left out of the count when the nation’s leaders boast about reducing the footprint of the U.S. military on foreign bases.
"They say, 'We're drawing down the troops.' Okay, great. But they don't say that on the backside there's contractors coming back in," said Dillard.
"The fact that all these jobs have been outsourced to private contractors means that the public has less of an understanding of what is the cost of war, because they're not seeing that reflected in the casualty figures, not just deaths, but also injuries as well," said Archibald.
He said he first recognized the "invisibility" of contractors after serving in the Army and then working as a contractor himself for six years, largely in Afghanistan.
"I did not know what my rights were," he said. "I had no clue that there was that help available. And a vast majority of contractors have a similar lack of knowledge."
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