During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, tens of thousands of Nepalis and other Southasians migrated to conflict zones to take part in the United States' war efforts. Some worked as security guards, others were cooks and cleaners. Many were exploited, poorly treated and subjected to incredible hardships. We now have more information about these workers labouring in the shadowy corners of war, thanks to works like the 2011 New Yorker expose by Sarah Stillman and reporting Al Jazeera and others. (My own research has led me to interview over 250 contractors in Afghanistan, primarily from Nepal.)
Despite such coverage of the dangers and unintended costs of trafficking to conflict zones, the stream of labourers from poor countries towards America's international wars has not slowed, and rarely have contracting companies, which hire workers on the governments' behalf, been held responsible for the plight of these workers. How has this been allowed to continue despite the fact that this trafficking is largely funded by US tax payer dollars – through multiple layers of contracting and subcontracting – when there are laws and administrative structures designed to prevent such exploitation? The answer has partly to do with the pressures of poverty and unemployment in countries like Nepal. But it also has to do with the incredible success of contracting companies – who have profited greatly off the war economy – in using the American legal system to shield themselves from any accountability.
The Girl from Kathmandu is Cam Simpson's heartbreaking tale of the search for justice that followed the kidnapping and eventual execution of twelve Nepalis in Iraq in 2004, who were being taken to work for KBR Inc., previously known as Kellog Brown & Root – the large contracting firm under the Texas-based parent company Halliburton which was responsible for much of the logistical support for the US military in Iraq. Simpson tracks the plight of Kamala Magar, the widow of Jeet Magar – one of the twelve Nepalis killed in 2004 – in an epic legal odyssey that takes her from her home in the mountains of Nepal to a courthouse in Houston. It provides the first book-length case study of how difficult it is to halt human trafficking and hold large corporations accountable for the treatment of their workers.
Jeet and eleven other Nepalis are brought to Jordan through a network of traffickers. Here, they are housed in a grim compound, before being taken into Iraq by a Jordanian manpower agency, named Daoud and Partners, which subcontracted from the KBR. On the road, Jeet and his companions are kidnapped and eventually killed, their deaths captured in one of the first execution videos circulated on the internet. The book's focus then shifts to the work of a team of lawyers in the US, at Cohen Milstein (previously called Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll), who find the families of the victims and then file a series of lawsuits on their behalf. The tenacity of these lawyers is remarkable and much of the book centers on the various trials, detailing the legal tactics used by the KBR to stall the case, attack Kamala Magar's attorneys, and discourage those looking for some form of justice (though the legal material in the latter half of the book drags somewhat). Simpson catalogues the nefarious work of the KBR – he compares one of their lawyers to a Bond villain – and the involvement of thousands of other actors in the global supply chain of migrant labour who are complicit in exploitation, both minor and severe, or are simply willing to turn a blind eye to injustice.