A Rope and a Prayer

by David Rohde

  As we descend into Dubai, I glance out the window. Dubai is eight hours ahead of New York. We have lost a day in transit, as if propelled forward in time chronologically and emotionally. The desert below begins to glow in the last vestiges of sunlight. I think about what I want to do when David and I are reunited. We traveled a lot throughout our courtship, and spent our honeymoon in France and India. Friends have assumed that we will now want to run off somewhere together. The truth is, the last thing I want to do now is jet to an exotic location. I simply want us to be at home together, enjoying the daily things—drinking coffee in the morning, grocery shopping, going to the dry cleaner, riding the subway—that give life continuity, consistency. I realize I have made many mistakes over the last few months. We probably both have. But, ultimately, we have each survived. David is alive. That is all that matters. We must have done something right.

  The Dubai airport is massive and modern with touches of Middle Eastern detailing. Female customs agents greet us at passport control in full headscarves, their eyeliner exquisitely applied in a striking contrast to the modesty of their dress. Large, modern white columns flank the sides of the baggage terminal. I am slightly tipsy from exhaustion and apprehension as we proceed to the exit.

  I spot David waiting with several men and carrying flowers. My first thought is that he looks unchanged. He is the David I remember, only slightly thinner and paler. His hair is well groomed, trimmed. His face is clean-shaven. He is wearing the same gray V-neck sweater and brown khakis he wore on our honeymoon and on the day he departed New York for Kabul in late October.

  He runs toward me.

  EPILOGUE

  David

  Five weeks after our escape, Asad crossed from Pakistan into Afghanistan, called his family, and said he was free. Ten days later, spoke with him by phone.

  Asad said the guards had slept until predawn prayers on the night Tahir and I escaped. At first, they thought we were in the bathroom. Then they realized we were gone.

  Asad said Timor Shah ordered the other guards to hunt for us. “If you find Tahir,” he said, “shoot him.” When Badruddin Haqqani learned we had escaped, Asad said, he “lost consciousness.”

  All three of our guards were jailed and questioned about our escape, according to Asad. The guards called Abu Tayyeb for help but he said he would face problems in Miran Shah and declined to return. Two of the guards were released but Timor Shah was taken to a Taliban jail in South Waziristan for punishment.

  Asad said Taliban commanders accused him of knowing about our escape plan. They chained and held him underground for seventeen days. For three of those days, he was beaten, he said. Removed from the underground jail, Asad was then used as a forced laborer on construction projects.

  In mid-July, Asad’s family, with the support of The New York Times, sent a tribal delegation to press his captors to release him. On July 27, Asad was building a wall and the guard watching him said he was going to make some tea. Left alone, Asad 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 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.

  After returning home, I learned of the wide array of people who had worked for our release. Among them were Afghans and Pakistanis who offered to try to obtain information about our whereabouts or to gain our release. Some of them volunteered; others asked for money. Two of the Afghan men died in ambushes. A man carrying a message to our captors was killed in Pakistan in January, and an Afghan died in an ambush in Afghanistan in April.

  Whether those attacks were definitely related to work on our case remains unclear. Determining the truth of events in the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan is notoriously difficult. Killings are rarely investigated. I believe the only responsible thing to do, though, is to assume that the two deaths were related to our case. I will always deeply regret going to the interview. I will always be deeply grateful to everyone who tried to help us.

  After our escape, rumors surfaced that a ransom had been paid. Neither my family nor The New York Times, nor any contractors who worked on our case paid a ransom. American government officials maintained their long-standing policy of not negotiating with kidnappers, freeing no prisoners and paying no ransom. Pakistani and Afghan officials said they also released no captives and provided no money.

  Reports also circulated that our guards had been bribed. Security consultants who worked on our case said paid Afghan informants reported giving cash to Taliban members who said they knew our whereabouts. The paid Afghan informants provided the detailed reports on our location that Kristen received from March through June, including the names of guards they said were bribed.

  None of the available information supports claims from the Afghan informants that they successfully bribed our guards. The locations where they reported us being held were wrong during three of the four months when they purportedly tracked us. In June, they correctly reported we were in Miran Shah but said we were being frequently moved around the town in a black Suzuki jeep, which was false.

  The names the Afghan informants gave for our guards were wrong and no guards helped us before or during our escape. On the night of our escape, the contractors expressed absolute surprise that we had gotten away and did not suggest to my family or newspaper that their informants had any involvement. After I returned home, American government officials said their sources were never able to pinpoint the exact house where we were being held or identify our guards. They backed the statement a senior American military official made to Kristen in April that “anyone who tells you they know exactly where your husband is is lying.”

  Tahir and I do not believe our guards were successfully bribed. We believe the local informants hired by the private contractors did what people who inhabit the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area have done for centuries: When being paid for information, they told the foreigners what they wanted to hear.

  Nine months after our escape, two of my colleagues at The New York Times reported that two of the contractors who worked on our case participated in a secret Defense Department project. Under the program, Pentagon officials reportedly hired private contractors to help track and kill militants. It is generally considered illegal for the military to hire contractors to act as covert spies. As a result, Defense Department officials launched an investigation.

  Michael Taylor of AISC and Duane Clarridge were subcontractors in the program, which was run by a civilian air force official named Michael D. Furlong. In the story, Taylor denied any wrongdoing and said they gathered information about possible threats to American forces but were not specifically hired to provide information to kill insurgents.

  After the story appeared, Taylor and Clarridge told me they worked for Furlong from November 2009 until the contract expired in May 2010. They said they did not work for the program while I was in captivity.

  My family and newspaper had no contact with Furlong and were unaware of Taylor and Clarridge’s work for him until my two colleagues learned of it. Furlong played no role in our case. When this book went to press in September 2010, military officials were still investigating the program.

  My suspicions regarding the Pakistani military’s relationship with the Haqqanis proved to be true. Some American officials told colleagues at the Times that the ISI provides money, supplies, and strategic planning to the Haqqanis. Other administration officials were more conservative and said there was no definitive proof of direct Pakistani military assistance to the Haqqanis.

  But nearly every American official interviewed agreed that the ISI at the least turns a blind eye to the Haqqanis’ activities in North Waziristan. Pakistani officials told my colleagues and me that the contacts were part of the Pakistani military’s long-standing strategy to maintain influence in Afghanistan to prevent India from gaining a foothold.

  After our escape, the Paki
stani army mounted major offensives in South Waziristan. To their credit, the town of Makeen—where the American drone strike occurred on March 25, 2009, just outside our house—was retaken by the Pakistani army. But Pakistani officials rebuffed a request from United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates in January 2010 that Pakistan launch a military offensive in North Waziristan, the stronghold of the Haqqanis. Pakistani officials said they did not have enough troops to carry out the operation, even though they later carried out a military exercise involving 50,000 Pakistani troops posted on the border with India.

  When this book went to press, the Haqqanis continued to use North Waziristan to train suicide bombers and explosives makers who kill Afghan and American forces. From its base in the tribal areas, the Haqqani network has carried out a series of high-profile attacks in Kabul, including one in February that killed nine Indian development workers. To me, the attack appears to be an effort by the Haqqanis to please the Pakistani military. At the same time, Pakistani Taliban are using North Waziristan to carry out attacks in Pakistan and the United States. Faisal Shahzad, the failed May 2010 Times Square bomber, was trained in North Waziristan.

  Pakistani military officials refuse to confront the Afghan Taliban inside their borders. They continue to differentiate between Afghan and Pakistani Taliban groups and insist Afghan Taliban are proxies they can use to counter Indian influence in Afghanistan. My own experience in captivity shows that the Pakistani differentiation between the two Talibans is false. The Afghan and Pakistani Taliban clearly work together, strengthening and supporting each other in myriad ways.

  The Haqqanis and other hard-line Afghan Taliban will not agree to a negotiated peace settlement unless the surge of 30,000 additional American troops in Afghanistan coincides with a serious Pakistani military drive to pressure the Haqqanis on the Pakistani side of the border. The Haqqanis, as they have done for decades, will continue to curry support from multiple sides, playing along with both Al Qaeda and the Pakistani army. They may tell the Pakistani military they are willing to break with Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, but use the time that buys them to build up all three groups’ strength in North Waziristan. They may even agree to expel Al Qaeda and claim they have done so but continue to harbor them in their territory as they have for decades.

  Pakistan’s relations with the Haqqanis is the focus of debate in the Pakistani government, according to a senior Pakistani official. Some Pakistani civilian officials argue that they should be confronted militarily. While many army officials and Pakistani nationalists argue they can be moderated and relied upon.

  “It’s an internal Pakistani policy debate,” said a Pakistani official who supports confronting the Haqqanis. “There are people in Pakistan who think that the Haqqanis are not reliable. We think that when the chips are down the Haqqanis will side with Al Qaeda.”

  What happens next with the Haqqanis and other Afghan Taliban groups will be telling. If the Pakistani military can convince them to reconcile with Karzai’s government, it will give the lie to years of Pakistani military protestations and prove that the Pakistani army does control the Afghan Taliban. It will show that since 2001 Pakistan’s military—even as it received $1 billion a year in American aid—backed the Afghan Taliban as they killed 1,200 American soldiers.

  If they show that they do, in fact, control the Haqqanis and the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani military will have cynically won the war in Afghanistan. They will have persuaded Washington to give them billions in aid while the ISI quietly supported militants the United States was trying to eradicate. The Pakistani military will have used those funds to bolster their own strength in Pakistan, frustrating the growth of civilian institutions there and thwarting Indian attempts to gain influence in Afghanistan.

  Another more frightening possibility is that the Haqqani sons and other young Afghan Taliban will prove immune to Pakistani influence. The Afghan Taliban will rebel against the Pakistani military, as the Pakistani Taliban have already done. Pakistan’s generals will find that they do not have the control over the Haqqanis and other Afghan Taliban that they believe. A new generation of Afghan Taliban could emerge, one unwaveringly committed to the jihad being waged with their Arab, Uzbek, and Pakistani allies.

  As in the past, India and Russia will back northern militias, Pakistan will back the Taliban, and regional rivalries will beset Afghanistan again. A civil war far bloodier than the one of the 1990s will emerge in Afghanistan. A hasty withdrawal by defeated American forces and the chaos that ensues will be a triumph for Al Qaeda, the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, and jihadists worldwide.

  The Taliban continue to abduct journalists. Three months after our escape, on September 6, 2009, fighters in the Afghan province of Kunduz kidnapped a New York Times correspondent, Stephen Farrell, and the Afghan journalist working with him, Sultan Munadi, as they reported on a NATO bombing that had killed dozens of civilians. Four days later, a raid by British commandos freed Stephen, but Sultan was killed, along with a British soldier and an Afghan woman. Sultan was the father of two and home on a break from studying public policy in Germany. After receiving his degree, he planned to return to Afghanistan and work to stabilize his country. He was also a wonderful colleague and friend.

  British officials defended the military raid that killed Sultan. They said they had received intelligence that the Taliban planned to move Steve and Sultan to Pakistan’s tribal areas. Afghan journalists dismissed the British claim and accused The New York Times of approving the raid instead of taking more time to negotiate. In truth, the British government carried out the raid without asking Farrell’s family or The New York Times for permission. While the American military seeks family approval to intervene in such cases, the British military does not.

  The discrepancy reflects the far broader problem of the lack of a coordinated international response to kidnapping by Islamic militants. The American and British governments refuse to pay ransoms, but the French, Italian, Dutch, and Korean governments reportedly pay them.

  Around the world, Islamic militants are increasingly using kidnapping as a weapon of war. In Iraq, an estimated two hundred foreigners and thousands of Iraqis have been kidnapped since the American-led invasion of 2003. Some of the kidnappers were insurgents. Some were criminals. Many were kept quiet. At least forty hostages are believed to have been killed.

  Islamic militants in Somalia, the Philippines, Yemen, and North Africa have adopted the tactic as well. Three weeks before our escape, a North African military group that calls itself Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb executed Edwin Dyer, a British tourist it kidnapped in Mali. The group released other foreign hostages it had abducted after their governments reportedly paid ransoms or members of the group were released from local prisons. Dyer was executed after British officials refused to release Abu Qatada, a hard-line preacher with close ties to Al Qaeda imprisoned in the U.K. In July 2010, the group killed a seventy-eight-year-old French hostage, Michel Germaneau, after a rescue attempt by the French military failed.

  Today, dozens of people remain captives in the tribal areas of Pakistan, most of them wealthy Pakistanis. Tahir and I were extraordinarily fortunate to have escaped. Countless others in the tribal areas have not been—and will not be—so lucky.

  American officials say a unified international approach will not stop Islamist militants from kidnapping, but could make it less lucrative and appealing over time. So far, attempts to broker an agreement among industrialized nations have failed. The lack of a coordinated approach to kidnapping makes it easier for families to be thrust into the murky world that we inhabited. Governments will say they are working closely with local officials to free hostages, but often be unable to do so. Contractors will continue to make promises that may be beyond their reach. And militants will continue to trade lives for ransom and executions for publicity.

  Six years after I first journeyed to “Little America,” southern Afghanistan is the epicenter of what is now called “Obama’s war.” Over 20,000
American troops and 10,000 British soldiers battle the Taliban in Helmand, where twice as many American, British, and NATO troops have died as in any other Afghan province. As has occurred throughout the war, American troops are able to drive the Taliban out of districts but Afghan government troops and police are too weak to hold the areas on their own.

  In phone conversations in July 2010, Fowzea and Andiwal—the two moderate Afghans I had followed in Helmand—apologized to me for the kidnapping. They also called on the Obama administration to not hurriedly withdraw American soldiers from Afghanistan when the eighteen-month deadline Obama set for his troop surge arrives in July 2011.

  With the arrival of more foreign troops, security in Lashkar Gah improved in 2010, according to Fowzea. She reopened the women’s center she shuttered after the killing of her driver in 2006 and expanded programs for women. The amount of poppy produced in Helmand dropped by one-third in 2009, fueled both by a flooded market and a crackdown on growers. And the number of Americans assigned to training the Afghan army and police is beginning to finally reach the levels American commanders have requested for years. Some Taliban commanders in southern Afghanistan have reportedly expressed interest in a political settlement of the conflict. Both the Afghan government and the Pakistani military are now trying to broker peace agreements with the Afghan Taliban.

  Enormous challenges remain. Fowzea’s department and the provincial government in Helmand are wholly dependent on American funding. In February 2010, more than 5,000 American marines and soldiers retook Marja—the district that Andiwal lost his job over—but the Taliban contine to mount ambushes and few Afghans are willing to join the area’s new police force. Eight years after the fall of the Taliban, the Afghan central government remains a shell. Fairly or unfairly, it is widely viewed as ineffective and corrupt. At the same time, distrust of the United States is increasing among Afghans. Tahir says the United States was initially welcomed by Afghans in 2001 but did too little in the early years and has now lost the trust of the population. He believes all foreign troops should withdraw from Afghanistan and Afghans should be allowed to choose their own future without foreign meddling.