Americans Plan to Return to Jobs in Kuwait

In the world of oil rigs and refineries that had become his home in Iraq, Gene Lovas grew accustomed to on-the-job hazards.

Now, as the Westminster man prepares to return to the region in which he was a captive until three months ago, the list of hazards has grown to include mine fields, environmental perils and the constant threat of renewed violence.

But the construction superintendent downplays the risk: “The fact that there was a little bit of a problem there isn’t going to stop me. . . . That’s how I make my living.”

Now that the Persian Gulf War is over, Lovas is one of many Americans making plans to return to Kuwait--a land where, less than four months ago, many had been forced into hiding or had been captured by Saddam Hussein’s regime and employed as “human shields” in Iraq.

It is a region ravaged by fire and war. But at the same time, many of these hopeful returnees--blue-collar workers and professionals alike--insist that the oil-rich area offers more in the way of jobs and money than the United States.

Joseph Lammerding of Sacramento said he never doubted that he would return to the nation he had adopted as a second home in 1983. While hiding out in Kuwait from Aug. 21 until Dec. 9, he worked with the Kuwaiti resistance, he said, helping to build home-made explosives.

“I liked it there. People were definitely friendly and hospitable,” Lammerding said. Before the Iraqi invasion, Kuwait was “very peaceful, very peace-loving.”

Lammerding, who works as calibration specialist for a Kuwait government subcontractor had hoped to return soon, but was recently told his services would not be needed for at least another 90 days. Rebuilding Kuwait--especially in restoring full electrical and plumbing services--is proving “easier said than done,” Lammerding said.

“A lot of people have expressed an interest in going back--they liked their life there and they want it back,” said Irene Saba of Champaign, Ill., who with her husband, Michael, helped organize a now-defunct support group called Coming Home, which aided relatives of Americans held hostage by Iraq.

“Why?” comes the near-daily question of incredulity from friends and family members. Or, from those more blunt, “Are you crazy?”

Like Lovas’ answer, the responses are more nonchalant than defiant.

“There will always be unrest in that part of the world,” said Jack Frazier, a Persian Gulf oil field supervisor from Santa Ana who returned home in October after spending three months in hiding in a Baghdad “safe house”.

“I think it just goes with the territory,” Frazier, 53, said in a telephone interview from Montana, where he is temporarily staying with his new bride.

Freed by the Iraqis because of health problems, Frazier was scheduled to go to San Francisco this month for medical exams and administrative processing with his past employer, the Bechtel Corp., and expects to be in Kuwait with a new but still-unspecified assignment within two weeks.

Lovas, another Bechtel employee, also expects to leave for Kuwait within two weeks, pending orders from the company. Among several hundred employees from the company set to do restoration work, they will probably be among the first post-war influx of foreigners allowed to re-enter Kuwait.

Randall Trinh, a 50-year-old engineer from Fullerton who was held hostage in a Baghdad factory after being taken from his home in Kuwait, where he worked for the Santa Fe International Corp., said: “I already told my employer of my intentions (to return to Kuwait), and they said that when security conditions permit they would call me back. . . . So I’m just waiting for them.”

Uniting these people is a resentment over the way they were forced to flee a region that they had come to know and love, a place that they say has been left scarred by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Kim-Yen Trinh, 44, was on her way back to Kuwait from Paris at the time of the Aug. 2 invasion but never made it, having to return to Fullerton instead to await word on her husband, Randall. She voices the sentiment of many returning ex-hostages.

“Leaving was very emotional. All of us want to see the place again, to see our friends again,” she said. “And I want to leave it on my own terms--not the Iraqi terms.”

Frazier, who has traveled to the Gulf for work in the oil industry, said he expects to work with Bechtel subcontractors to put out oil well fires, re-lay pipes and get the refineries in Kuwait up to speed again. He has no experience putting out fires, but isn’t bothered by that.

“Being able to go back and be a part of another phase of history is unique in itself,” Frazier said. “That’s a good feeling.”

Several former hostages say they have had trouble finding work here, and they say they can generally make more money in Kuwait anyway.

Before the war at least, an oil rig supervisor could reportedly earn as much as $85,000 a year in the region--with the first $70,000 non-taxable if the worker spent most of the year abroad.

U. S. companies sending workers to the region have also offered generous vacation plans--10 days off for every three months on, for instance--along with free air travel to Europe during vacations.

And the devastation wrought on the Kuwaiti countryside by Iraq will very likely create an even larger demand for workers to help build the nation, many suggest.

“There clearly are going to be lots of contracts there--across quite a broad spectrum of areas,” said Mike Kidder, a spokesman with Bechtel in San Francisco, which has reached tentative agreement with the Kuwaiti government for restoration work in the oil industry. The company plans to send at least several hundred employees initially, with more later.

Lammerding expects to find Kuwait a much different nation--and not only because of the destruction left behind by the Iraqis and the warfare.

Before the war, for example, Kuwaiti women talked casually that the right to vote would come eventually, but exerted pressure quietly. Now the demands for democratic reforms are being voiced loudly, especially by Kuwaitis who remained in their country during the invasion and war.

“People are definitely taking advantage of the country’s chaos,” Lammerding said. “There’s the feeling that when the time is right, you go for it.”

Times staff writer Scott Harris in Los Angeles contributed to this story.