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WORK TITLE: The Girl from Kathmandu
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://camsimpson.com/
CITY: London
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | no2016169953 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/no2016169953 |
| HEADING: | Simpson, Cam |
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| 005 | 20161221073609.0 |
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| 010 | __ |a no2016169953 |
| 035 | __ |a (OCoLC)oca10663674 |
| 040 | __ |a PPD |b eng |e rda |c PPD |
| 100 | 1_ |a Simpson, Cam |
| 370 | __ |e London (England) |f Saint Charles (Ill.) |2 naf |
| 374 | __ |a Journalists |a Foreign correspondents |2 lcsh |
| 670 | __ |a Fresh Air with Terry Gross, October 27, 2005 |b (Cam Simpson, correspondent for the Chicago Tribune) |
| 670 | __ |a Wikipedia, viewed December 19, 2016 |b (Cam Simpson is a London-based writer and journalist. He is currently the senior international correspondent for Bloomberg Businessweek in London, and Bloomberg News. Previously, he worked for the Wall Street Journal, with posts in the Middle East and Washington and as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune where he was responsible for covering US foreign policy and investigative projects in Washington and overseas. Simpson was raised in St. Charles, Illinois. He obtained his degree in political science and journalism from Eastern Illinois University.) |
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Received degree from Eastern Illinois University.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and author. Chicago Tribune, Chicago, IL, foreign correspondent; Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago, reporter; Wall Street Journal, New York, NY, Middle East Correspondent; Bloomberg News, New York, senior international correspondent; Bloomberg Businessweek, New York, senior international correspondent.
WRITINGS
Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek, writer and editor.
SIDELIGHTS
Cam Simpson has become most well known through his work as a journalist. At the beginning of his career, he was affiliated with the Chicago Tribune, where he served as a reporter. He then moved on to the Chicago Sun-Times, fulfilling the same role. From there, he began working with Wall Street Journal, where he was their Middle East Correspondent. Since the year 2010, he has been aligned with Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek, where he serves as a writer and editor for their international investigations department.
In terms of subject matter, The Girl from Kathmandu: Twelve Dead Men and a Woman’s Quest for Justice aligns closely with Simpson’s regular work. The book traces back to when America was at war with Iraq, when a group of twelve men traveled from their home country of Nepal to obtain well-paying jobs. They believed that once they would be eligible to work in the country of Jordan, where they would serve as hotel staff members. Yet all that lay in wait for them was backbreaking work within the country of Iraq—and an even worse fate. On the way to their new work site, the men are suddenly and swiftly abducted. Their captors are a group of radicals, who decide to post footage online of them killing each of the men.
At the time the footage was released for public viewing, Simpson was active within the journalism scene and happened to be able to watch what was videoed. This sparked in him the urge to find out more about what happened, what ideologies and events could have led to such a horrific event, and why. In seeking an answer to his question, Simpson encounters a woman by the name of Kamala Magar, who had been married to one victim when he was killed. Over the years, Simpson is able to speak with Magar several more times, and through the information provided by her, he was able to help piece together the beginnings of a court case. Simpson, Kamala, and several law professionals went up against KBR, a massive corporation and the main culprit responsible for leading the men to their deaths. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews called the book “[a] powerful work of investigative journalism, one that speaks volumes about the business of war and of human slavery alike.” Booklist reviewer Carol Haggas felt that the book is “a mind-boggling story that champions courage, perseverance, and resilience.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, March 15, 2018, Carol Haggas, review of The Girl from Kathmandu: Twelve Dead Men and a Woman’s Quest for Justice, p. 14.
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2018, review of The Girl from Kathmandu.
ONLINE
Cam Simpson website, https://camsimpson.com (July 12, 2018), author profile.
New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/ (May 28, 2018), “Briefly Noted,” review of The Girl from Kathmandu.
NPR, https://www.npr.org/ (April 29, 2018), Lulu Garcia-Navarro, “A Long Fight For Justice For Contractors In ‘The Girl From Kathmandu,'” author interview.
ABOUT CAM SIMPSON
Cam Simpson is an international investigations editor and writer for Bloomberg Businessweek magazine and Bloomberg News based in London, where he’s worked since 2010.
Previously, he worked for The Wall Street Journal as a Middle East Correspondent and a Washington Correspondent. He covered U.S. foreign policy and national security for the Chicago Tribune from its Washington bureau, where he also did international investigative projects. He started with the Tribune in Chicago, covering federal crime and organized crime as an enterprise and investigative reporter, and previously covered the same beat for the Chicago Sun-Times.
He’s reported from more than four-dozen countries, and his award-winning investigations have taken him to Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, the Asia Pacific, and Europe. He grew up outside of Chicago.
Simpson, Cam: THE GIRL FROM KATHMANDU
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 1, 2018): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Simpson, Cam THE GIRL FROM KATHMANDU Harper/HarperCollins (Adult Nonfiction) $27.99 4, 17 ISBN: 978-0-06-244971-9
How war profiteering in the Middle East tore apart a village in the Himalayan foothills.
In 2004, writes London-based Businessweek senior international correspondent Simpson, not long after the U.S. invaded Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a recruiter came calling in Kathmandu, ostensibly looking for workers at a luxury hotel in Jordan. In fact, those who answered the call were placed in the hands of people such as a former dry cleaner who ran a so-called body shop in Amman: "If you needed the 'bodies' of menial laborers, you went to Ali al-Nadi." So it was that American military contractors in Iraq found their way to al-Nadi's door to fill their ranks, and a dozen men from that Nepali village found themselves on the way to enriching everyone but themselves--but briefly, for on their way to the contractor's camp within a vast U.S. air base, they were kidnapped by Islamist militants who declared the Nepalis "infidels" inasmuch as they were working in the service of the "Crusaders." The Nepalis were executed, leaving it to their survivors to wonder how they had ended up in an American war zone in the first place. The answer, untangled by Kamala Magar, the widow of one of the Nepalis--whom the author interviewed numerous times in 2005, 2013, 2014, and 2016--came to implicate the largest American military contractor in Iraq in a sordid chain of human trafficking. Of course, the contractor continually denied the allegations throughout a long process of legal discovery, parts of which went all the way to the Supreme Court. Suffice it to say that, given the choice of ruling in favor of an utterly commendable Nepali widow of questionable legal standing but with an unflagging commitment to justice or a multibillion-dollar corporation with unlimited legal funds, the courts did not often honor the ideals of the law.
A powerful work of investigative journalism, one that speaks volumes about the business of war
1 of 3 6/11/18, 11:08 PM
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
and of human slavery alike.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Simpson, Cam: THE GIRL FROM KATHMANDU." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. Book
Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528959948/GPS?u=schlager& sid=GPS&xid=4e95af86. Accessed 12 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A528959948
2 of 3 6/11/18, 11:08 PM
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
The Girl from Kathmandu: Twelve
Dead Men and a Woman's Quest for
Justice
Carol Haggas
Booklist.
114.14 (Mar. 15, 2018): p14. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The Girl from Kathmandu: Twelve Dead Men and a Woman's Quest for Justice. By Cam Simpson.
Apr. 2018. 400p. Harper, $27.99 (9780062449719). 954.96.
At the height of the Iraq War, Jeet Magar and 11 of his countrymen went into debt to secure employment in the Middle East, where wages were better than in their native Nepal. They thought they were bound for work at a luxury hotel in Jordan; instead, they were sold into menial labor at a U.S. military base in Iraq operated by Halliburton subsidiary KBR. They ended up being kidnapped and executed en route by Islamic extremists, and their murders were videotaped and broadcast online, catching the attention of investigative-journalist Simpson. As he uncovered the labyrinthine and corrupt supply chain of human labor, he met Jeet's young widow, Kamala, whose life in an impoverished Nepali village became infinitely harder after Jeet's death. Along with a team of intrepid human rights' attorneys, Simpson battled one of the world's most powerful corporations to gain justice for Jeet and compensation for his widow. The ensuing court battle and Kamala's personal journey of redemption is a mind-boggling story that champions courage, perseverance, and resilience.--Carol Haggas
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Haggas, Carol. "The Girl from Kathmandu: Twelve Dead Men and a Woman's Quest for Justice."
Booklist, 15 Mar. 2018, p. 14. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc /A533094398/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=606a5c6c. Accessed 12 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A533094398
3 of 3 6/11/18, 11:08 PM
A Long Fight For Justice For Contractors In 'The Girl From Kathmandu'
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April 29, 20188:10 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday
Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks with author and journalist Cam Simpson about his new book, The Girl from Kathmandu, about the life of contract employees from poor countries working for the U.S. in Iraq.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
During the war in Iraq, there was another army that served the war effort but got very little attention. They were the cooks, the cleaners, the drivers that worked on U.S. military bases and American outposts in Iraq. They came from the poorest parts of the world - India, Nepal and Pakistan, among others - and faced the same dangers and risks of living in a war zone but with almost none of the protections.
And, as journalist Cam Simpson reveals in his new book "The Girl From Kathmandu," they were often trafficked with the alleged full knowledge of U.S. companies, in particular, KBR Halliburton. His book traces the story of 12 Nepalese workers who were brutally killed by insurgents in Iraq at the start of the war and the widow who dedicated her life to finding justice for them. This pipeline of human labor that led to their deaths began with a promise of a job in Jordan.
CAM SIMPSON: They had contracts for a five-star hotel in Amman, Jordan. They wound up being held in a room for 45, 50 days without knowing what was going to become of them. They were loaded into gypsy taxicabs, driven down the most dangerous road in the world, the Amman to Baghdad highway, which I think you had some experience with, as well, right?
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Indeed, too many times. The Highway of Death.
SIMPSON: And, predictively and foreseeably, they were kidnapped from two cars that got away from the rest. It was the first mass execution video of this horrible modern era of terrorist theater that we've all come to know, but it was a blip. The deaths of contractors - it was a parade every day. It was horrible, and it's the most horrible thing I've ever seen in my life. And, sadly, I had to watch it several times just to understand, you know, what happened to them really.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Your book begins with Kamala.
SIMPSON: Yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Tell us who she is.
SIMPSON: She grew up in the most beautiful place my eyes have ever seen in the world. I mean, in the foothills of the Himalayas, their lives are difficult. They work very hard, but they never want for anything. But there was this lure of foreign work. At about that time, in about 2001, 2002, Nepal started feeding this cheap global pipeline and labor to the Middle East, to factories in Asia. And her husband became a part of that.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Why did her husband decide to take a job abroad? And talk me through how something like that normally happens, how it's not just an individual decision.
SIMPSON: Yeah. Exactly. So, I mean, he had put his passport with an agent, and his passport had sat with his agent forever. And then, all of a sudden, as the war in Iraq is raging, you know, they hear back from the agent. You've been accepted for a job in Jordan. And so they took out massive loans because you have to buy the job. You have to pay the agent.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And so Kamala's husband did not end up at a five-star hotel in Jordan.
SIMPSON: He wound up in a room in Jordan for 45 days and sent along the most dangerous road in the world and then become some kind of global symbol.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And then what happened to Kamala?
SIMPSON: To be a widow in Nepal, you're pretty much - you become the property of your husband's family after you get married. And if he dies, you're sort of treated that way, sadly. So she was completely isolated by his family. She was cast out. She wound up at a home for widows and their children in Kathmandu, an ashram. I found her there in 2005. She was so devastated, she couldn't even look at me.
I went back to Nepal in 2013 to write about the same supply chains feeding guys making cameras for the iPhone 5 in Malaysia. And some of the families that I wrote about at the time and got together and - was this woman, this magnetic woman who lit up the room, who was leading the conversation that everybody was deferring to. She was cutting off the men, which you also don't see much of in Nepal. And I didn't even recognize her.
And it was the same young woman. This woman, who was broken when I saw her in 2005 at this ashram, had just completely transformed her life. She not only made herself self-sufficient, but she rebuilt herself emotionally and has just this incredible self-awareness about everything that's happened to her and her refusal to be a victim and to rise up and face KBR Halliburton as a key witness in this case.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I was about to ask. How...
SIMPSON: Yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...Does her story intersect with KBR Halliburton's?
SIMPSON: I mean, you know, there was a group of human rights lawyers here in the United States who heard about this case, who read my work more than a decade ago. And three very idealistic young human rights lawyers, one of them had been a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal. And, you know, they took up this case. This was really the dawn of the era of modern-day slavery and international human trafficking. And the U.S. government had fueled it with our own tax dollars.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What were these human rights lawyers trying to prove against KBR?
SIMPSON: Well, they were trying to prove their culpability. First, they just needed to prove that these men were in KBR supply chain in order to get U.S. government compensation for them, which took two years. And the key witness, you know, they needed the families. They represented the families, then, in a human trafficking civil action that they brought, hoping to end this practice in the U.S. military and also hoping to get some justice for the - for Kamala and the other victims.
And she was the key witness, you know? She came here, and she faced them in a deposition. And her performance, her testimony was really extraordinary over two days.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: You, as you've mentioned, investigated the fate of these 12 Nepalese at the time. And you have come back to this story over and over again...
SIMPSON: Yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: This book is the product of, I think, over a decade of investigation.
SIMPSON: Yeah.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Why did you continue to tell this story?
SIMPSON: You know, for a few reasons. I mean, Kamala - her courage when I met her again and saw the transformation in her life. She was the reason I did this investigation, originally. Just that someone who couldn't be further from the war was so victimized in a way by globalization, by outsourcing, by privatization, by the war. It just - it staggered me. And it was just an extraordinary story.
But it also speaks to these incredibly powerful forces that we're all looking at today. The U.S. is withdrawing its leadership on human rights around the world, you know? We were just at the point where some of this was starting to be cleaned up. And now all that is gone. It's so important for people to understand the mechanics of how this works, why it's so difficult, why it's so pervasive.
Again, from our electronic devices to the U.S. military running our wars, it's such an important issue. But I also think it says a lot about - we all rely on the justice system. We have this sort of magical view that people can get justice. And I think it's really important for people to understand what that actually looks like in a case where, clearly, it's hard to imagine anyone more deserving of justice than the people in this case, especially Kamala.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Cam Simpson, investigations editor and writer for Bloomberg Businessweek and author of "The Girl From Kathmandu." Thank you very much.
SIMPSON: Thank you, Lulu. It's been a pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF MASERATI'S "BEING A PRESIDENT IS LIKE RIDING A TIGER")
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The Girl from Kathmandu, by Cam Simpson (Harper). In the coverage of the Iraq War, the kidnapping and murder of twelve Nepalese men by a terrorist group, in 2004, was merely a detail. But Simpson’s investigations into how these men ended up in Iraq helped launch a decade-long legal battle on behalf of the victims’ families. Simpson tells a complex story about how the intersection of privatized wars and globalization heightens the vulnerability of transnational laborers. The book has several unassuming heroes: a young widow and a resourceful sociologist in Kathmandu, and legislators and tireless pro-bono lawyers in Washington. Still, the pursuit of justice, as Simpson recounts, is endlessly hampered by the cynical tactics of deep-pocketed defense contractors.