Iraq is urging foreign transport companies to employ Iraqis instead of foreign truck drivers in an effort to stem a growing wave of kidnappings, a senior government source said on Saturday.
Dozens of foreign drivers have been taken hostage in Iraq over the past few months, and the kidnappers have usually threatened to kill them unless their employers cease operations in the country or meet other demands.
The transport companies, many of them from Jordan, Kuwait, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, employ poor migrants as drivers, drawing workers from India, Pakistan, Turkey or further afield.
Three Indians, three Kenyans, four Jordanians, a Somali and an Egyptian are being held hostage by militants. A Bulgarian hostage was beheaded this month and another is feared dead.
"We have contacted several foreign companies that use foreign drivers and are trying to convince them to use Iraqi drivers instead," said the senior government source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"We want to minimise the risks of kidnapping and also to minimise the diplomatic and media attention on this issue."
At the same time, he said, it might help to increase employment in Iraq, where vast numbers of young men are jobless.
"Why are these companies using Somalis and Indians when they could just as well employ Iraqis?" the source said.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of foreigners are working as truckers in Iraq, where there is a huge trade in supplying everything from petrol to refrigerators, televisions, clothes and supermarket produce.
The US military, through its American contracting agents such as Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown & Root, also employs foreign transport companies to deliver supplies to its bases.
Since April, guerrillas have launched a countrywide campaign of hostage-taking, mostly targeting truckers, in an effort to disrupt Iraq's reconstruction and force companies to pull out.
Truckers are often an easy target as they travel in poorly protected convoys across Iraq's sparsely populated western desert from Jordan or enter the country from Kuwait and Turkey.