Held By The Taliban: NYTimes' multi-part series

['BusNative]

All:

I didn't want to muddy the Afghan thread, because I'm not really arguing a political point here. As I'm catching up on some reading (not much to do at work today), I realized I missed this series by David Rohde of the Times, which started this past Sunday. It really is a very cool read, if you have time. I'm guessing a book version of his story is in the not-too-distant future, as well.

Here's part 1:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/wo...tage.html?_r=1

October 18, 2009

7 Months, 10 Days in Captivity

By DAVID ROHDE

THE car's engine roared as the gunman punched the accelerator and we crossed into the open Afghan desert. I was seated in the back between two Afghan colleagues who were accompanying me on a reporting trip when armed men surrounded our car and took us hostage.

Another gunman in the passenger seat turned and stared at us as he gripped his Kalashnikov rifle. No one spoke. I glanced at the bleak landscape outside - reddish soil and black boulders as far as the eye could see - and feared we would be dead within minutes.

It was last Nov. 10, and I had been headed to a meeting with a Taliban commander along with an Afghan journalist, Tahir Luddin, and our driver, Asad Mangal. The commander had invited us to interview him outside Kabul for reporting I was pursuing about Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The longer I looked at the gunman in the passenger seat, the more nervous I became. His face showed little emotion. His eyes were dark, flat and lifeless.

I thought of my wife and family and was overcome with shame. An interview that seemed crucial hours earlier now seemed absurd and reckless. I had risked the lives of Tahir and Asad - as well as my own life. We reached a dry riverbed and the car stopped. "They?re going to kill us," Tahir whispered. "They?re going to kill us."

Tahir and Asad were ordered out of the car. Gunmen from a second vehicle began beating them with their rifle butts and led them away. I was told to get out of the car and take a few steps up a sand-covered hillside.
While one guard pointed his Kalashnikov at me, the other took my glasses, notebook, pen and camera. I was blindfolded, my hands tied behind my back. My heart raced. Sweat poured from my skin.

"Habarnigar," I said, using a Dari word for journalist. "Salaam," I said, using an Arabic expression for peace.

I waited for the sound of gunfire. I knew I might die but remained strangely calm.

Moments later, I felt a hand push me back toward the car, and I was forced to lie down on the back seat. Two gunmen got in and slammed the doors shut. The car lurched forward. Tahir and Asad were gone and, I thought, probably dead.

The car came to a halt after what seemed like a two-hour drive. Guards took off my blindfold and guided me through the front door of a crude mud-brick home perched in the center of a ravine.

I was put in some type of washroom the size of a closet. After a few minutes, the guards opened the door and pushed Tahir and Asad inside.
We stared at one another in relief. About 20 minutes later, a guard opened the door and motioned for us to walk into the hallway.
"No shoot," he said, "no shoot."

Tahir and Asad were ordered out of the car. Gunmen from a second vehicle began beating them with their rifle butts and led them away. I was told to get out of the car and take a few steps up a sand-covered hillside...

['BusNative]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/wo...19hostage.html

October 19, 2009

Inside the Islamic Emirate

By DAVID ROHDE

A YOUNG Taliban driver with shoulder-length hair got behind the wheel of the car. Glancing at me suspiciously in the rearview mirror, he started the engine and began driving down the left-hand side of the road.

It was some sort of prank, I hoped, some jihadi version of chicken - the game where two drivers speed toward each other in the same lane until one loses his nerve.

Which lane he drove down showed what country we were in. If he continued driving on the left, we had crossed into Pakistan. If he drove on the right, we were still in Afghanistan.

A mile down the road, traffic signs appeared in Urdu.

We're in Pakistan, I thought to myself. We're dead.

Eight days earlier, a Taliban faction had kidnapped me along with an Afghan journalist, Tahir Luddin, and our driver, Asad Mangal, during a reporting trip just outside Kabul. The faction's commander, a man who called himself Atiqullah, had lied to us. He had said we were being moved to southern Afghanistan and would be freed.

Instead, on Nov. 18, we arrived in Pakistan's tribal areas, an isolated belt of Taliban-controlled territory. We were now in "the Islamic emirate" - the fundamentalist state that existed in Afghanistan before the 2001 American-led invasion. The loss of thousands of Afghan, Pakistani and American lives and billions in American aid had merely moved it a few miles east, not eliminated it.

Through seven years of reporting in the region, I had pitied captives imprisoned here. It was arguably the worst place on earth to be an American hostage. The United States government had virtually no influence and was utterly despised.

Since 2004, dozens of missiles fired by American drones had killed hundreds of militants and civilians. The Taliban had held Afghan, Pakistani and foreign hostages in the area for years, trading lives for ransom and executions for publicity.

"We're in Pakistan," I said out loud in the car, venting my anger.

Atiqullah laughed, and the driver appeared surprised.

"How does he know it's Pakistan?" the driver asked.

"Because you're driving down the left-hand side of the road," I answered.

"How do you know that?" he asked. "When were you in Pakistan before?"

Atiqullah smiled and appeared amused by the conversation. He knew I had been to Pakistan many times on reporting trips...

['BusNative]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/wo...20hostage.html

October 20, 2009

'You Have Atomic Bombs, but We Have Suicide Bombers.'

By DAVID ROHDE

A NERVOUS-LOOKING Pakistani soldier pointed a rocket-propelled grenade at our pickup truck in late January. The Taliban guard beside me loaded his rifle and ordered me to put a scarf over my face. A group of Pakistani civilians standing nearby moved out of the way, anticipating a firefight.

In the driver's seat of our vehicle was Badruddin Haqqani, a senior commander of the Haqqani network, one of the Taliban's most hard-line factions and the group that was holding me and two Afghan colleagues hostage in Pakistan's tribal areas.

Obeying the guard, I covered my face. The soldier was in the lead vehicle of a Pakistani Army supply convoy in North Waziristan. After surveying the road, the soldier got back in his truck, and the convoy rumbled forward.

I hoped that the Pakistanis might somehow rescue us. Instead, I watched in dismay as Badruddin got out of the truck and calmly stood on the side of the road. As trucks full of heavily armed government soldiers rolled by, he smiled and waved at them.

After the convoy disappeared, Badruddin seemed amused.

"Do you know who that was?" he asked me.

"No," I said, trying to play dumb.

"That was the Pakistani Army," he said.

He explained that under a cease-fire agreement between the Taliban and the army, all civilians were required to get out of their cars when an army convoy approached. For Taliban vehicles, though, only the driver had to get out. The practice, I realized, allowed the Taliban to hide kidnapping victims and foreign militants from the Pakistani Army.

That morning, Badruddin arrived at the house in Miram Shah where I was being held with Tahir Luddin, an Afghan journalist, and Asad Mangal, our driver. We had been taken hostage on a reporting trip south of Kabul, Afghanistan, in November 2008 and moved to Pakistan's tribal areas...

[BuckeyeMike80]

suicide bombers =/= atomic bombs



If this series in any way glorifies what the Taliban stands for or is fighting for, that will be a complete and total travesty.

['BusNative]

Originally Posted by BuckeyeMike80

If this series in any way glorifies what the Taliban stands for or is fighting for, that will be a complete and total travesty.

You might try reading it...

['BusNative]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/wo...21hostage.html

October 21, 2009

A Drone Strike and Dwindling Hope

By DAVID ROHDE

TWO deafening explosions shook the walls of the compound where the Taliban held us hostage. My guards and I dived to the floor as chunks of dirt hurtled through the window.

"Dawood?" one guard shouted, saying my name in Arabic. "Dawood?"

"I'm O.K.," I replied in Pashto. "I?m O.K."

The plastic sheeting covering the window hung in tatters. Debris covered the floor. Somewhere outside, a woman wailed. I wondered if Tahir Luddin and Asad Mangal, the two Afghans who had been kidnapped with me, were alive. A guard grabbed his rifle and ordered me to follow him outside.

"Go!" he shouted, his voice shaking with fury. "Go!"

Our nightmare had come to pass. Powerful missiles fired by an American drone had obliterated their target a few hundred yards from our house in a remote village in Pakistan?s tribal areas.

Dozens of people were probably dead. Militants would call for our heads in revenge.

Outside, shredded tree leaves littered the yard, but the house and its exterior walls remained intact. Tahir and Asad looked worried. No one was hurt, but I knew the three of us might not survive for long...

[BuckeyeMike80]

Originally Posted by 'BusNative

You might try reading it...

Nope. NYSlimes. Next.

['BusNative]

Forgot to post these...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/wo...22hostage.html

October 22, 2009

A Rope and a Prayer

By DAVID ROHDE

I STOOD in the bathroom of the Taliban compound and waited for my colleague to appear in the courtyard so we could make our escape. My heart pounded. A three-foot-tall swamp cooler -an antiquated version of an air-conditioner -roared in the yard a few feet in front of me. I feared that the guards who were holding us hostage might wake up and stop us. I feared even more that our captivity would drag on for years.

It was 1 a.m. on Saturday, June 20, in Miram Shah, the capital of the North Waziristan tribal agency in Pakistan. After seven months and 10 days in Taliban captivity, I had come to a decision with Tahir Luddin, the Afghan journalist I had been kidnapped with, to try to make a run for it.

By then, we had concluded that our captors - a Taliban faction led by the Haqqani family - ere not seriously negotiating for our release. In the latest of countless lies, they announced that the United States would free all the Afghan prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in exchange for us. We found the statement ludicrous and insulting. As they had a dozen times in the past, our captors claimed that a deal was near. Then nothing happened.

Tahir and I had decided that I would get up first that night and go to the bathroom without asking the guards for permission. If the guards remained asleep, Tahir would follow. Twenty feet away, on a shelf outside the kitchen, was a car towrope we planned to use to lower ourselves down a 15-foot wall ringing the compound. I had found it two weeks earlier and hidden it beneath a pile of old clothes.

Several minutes went by, but Tahir did not come out of the room. I stared intently at the entrance to the living room where we slept side by side with the guards -roughly 15 feet away and directly across the courtyard from the bathroom -and waited for Tahir to emerge. I had pulled his foot to rouse him before I crept out of the room. He had groaned and, I assumed, awakened...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/wo...2epilogue.html

October 22, 2009

Epilogue

By DAVID ROHDE

FIVE weeks after our escape, Asad crossed from Pakistan into Afghanistan, called his family and said he was free.

Ten days later, I spoke with him by phone. Asad said the guards had slept until dawn on the night Tahir and I escaped. At first, they thought we were in the bathroom. Then they realized we were gone.

Asad said he was accused of knowing about our escape plan. A Taliban commander then chained and held him underground for 17 days. For three of those days he was beaten, he said.

Asad's family sent a tribal delegation to press his captors to release him. Asad said that after a guard left him alone on July 27, he fled, found a taxi and took it to the Afghan border.

In our phone call, Asad denied cooperating with the guards during our captivity and said that he had carried a gun because the Taliban had ordered him to do so. In the end, I believe that Asad played along with the Taliban to survive...