by David Rohde
The FBI learned of the imminent call from the newspaper’s Kabul bureau. Atiqullah has alerted Chris Chivers at the Kabul bureau that David will be permitted to phone home. Atiqullah says that when they call, I should look at the number that appears on caller ID and call him back at my own expense, as his phone card is running out of credits. This astounds me. In addition to being ruthless, the Taliban are also cheap! This is absurdly amusing. Finding humor in the most morbid and extreme circumstances actually keeps me from falling apart and gives me some minor sense of control.
At 8:30 A.M., the phone rings. It’s David. We have been sitting by the phone for two hours and yet the call still manages to take me by surprise. It’s very odd to be sharing this personal moment with a roomful of people I have only just met. I feel like our relationship, all our vulnerabilities, are on display. Oddly, though, this helps me maintain composure. There’s nothing like a crowd to ensure a steady performance. As instructed, I don’t answer and call David back on the number that appears on caller ID.
It is a relief to hear my husband’s voice, to know he is still alive. He sounds shaken, but his voice is strong, his thinking clear. This puts me at ease. I return the favor by maintaining composure for him. I realize this may be the only time we speak and I want to convey a sense that I am holding it together and will not give up, that I can handle this situation.
“Kristen?” David says, “Kristen?”
“David,” I say, “It’s Kristen, I love you.”
“Kristen?” he asks.
“Yes?” I say.
“I love you, too,” he says, “Write these things down, okay?”
“Okay,” I say.
“Do you have a pen?” David asks.
“I have a pen,” I say.
“I’m—we are being treated well,” David says.
“Being treated well,” I repeat.
“Number one,” David says.
“Number one,” I repeat.
“Number two,” he says. “Deal for all three of us, all three of us, not just me. The driver and the translator also; it has to be a deal for all three of us.”
“Deal for all three of us,” I repeat. “The driver and the translator as well.”
“Okay. Do not use force to try to get us,” David says.
“Do not use force,” I repeat.
“Four,” he says.
“Yes,” I say.
“Make a deal now or they will make it public,” he says. “They want to put a video out to the media.”
I repeat his words back to him.
“It will make it a big political problem,” he says. “They want to do it now,” David says. “They don’t want to make it public. They want—they want to make a deal now.”
“Want to make a deal now, okay,” I repeat.
“’Cause they don’t want, they don’t want a big political problem with the leaders on both sides,” he says. “They don’t want the elders to know.”
“Okay, they don’t want elders to know,” I say, “and they do not want problems on our side, okay.”
“Make a deal, just make a deal quickly,” David says. “Please make a deal quickly.”
He pauses for a moment.
“They said I can’t call you again,” David says. “They want a deal now and I can’t call you again.”
“You cannot call me again,” I repeat. “I love you. I love you, honey.”
“I love you, too,” he says. “Tell my family I’m sorry.”
“Your family is here,” I say. “Lee’s here with me.”
“I’m sorry,” David says. “I’m sorry.”
“Lee’s here,” I say, trying to reassure him.
“I’m sorry about all this,” he repeats.
“It’s going to be all right,” I say. “I love you. I am praying for you every day.”
I say I want to make sure I understand what they want. There is a pause and David relays a message from Atiqullah. He says the Kabul bureau should talk to him and negotiate with no one else. David says Atiqullah will call the Kabul bureau after we hang up and provide a list of demands.
“What is the deal? What is the deal?” I ask, trying to extend the call and get specifics. “Is it, what is the exchange? What do you want?”
David again says that Atiqullah will give his demands to the Kabul bureau.
“We are very concerned about you,” I say. “And we love you and we’re praying for you.”
David repeats that Atiqullah will provide his demands to the Kabul bureau.
“Okay, okay,” I say, “and how are you?”
There is a beep and the call ends abruptly.
After I catch my breath, our team reviews the conversation. I let them know which parts of the conversation were truly David—namely, the desire to make a deal for all three—and which seemed scripted. They are very optimistic about the call and my performance. I am patted on the back for my composure. It seems I have discovered a new skill set—one that enables me to be calm under pressure. My worst nightmare would be bursting into tears in front of a roomful of people.
At the same time, I feel completely enraged at my husband’s captors and utterly confused. If they want to make a deal so quickly, why won’t they list their demands? This is all part of a sick psychology on the captors’ part: make the family feel totally responsible and utterly without control. Demand they meet demands, but fail to name them. I begin to wonder if the “make a deal quickly” was a signal from David, that perhaps he would be moved or sold up the food chain to a more powerful group of criminals or terrorists. This, I am told, often happens in kidnappings in Afghanistan.
My mind is racing, and I feel trapped. Our one-bedroom apartment is swarming with people. Mismatched dining and living room chairs are scattered all around. There doesn’t seem to be enough space or air in our modest living room to accommodate them all. My mother steps in and urges everyone to clear out. She encourages me to go to work to take my mind off the situation—seemingly impossible—or at least to pass the time. I wonder how I can possibly do that.
Our case agents as always advise me to take care of myself. This, they say, is my number one responsibility. I will be better able to help my husband if I am in good physical shape. “Do not forget to eat, try to sleep. A call could arrive at any moment. You need to be prepared. This is the best thing you can do for your husband. David is going to need you to stay strong now and especially for when he returns.” I will hear these directives repeatedly over the next few months.
As I walk to the subway, questions reel through my mind: Should I just jump on a plane to Kabul? Is it wrong for me to continue the routines of daily life? Am I being cowardly, or selfish, seeking refuge in my work? Practically speaking, I need to keep working. We have burned through our savings over the past few months between the wedding and honeymoon. And our country is facing the worst economic downturn in decades. Even in the fog of this crisis, I realize I need to keep my job as long as possible. In terms of my own sanity, I know it does me no good to stay in the apartment all day and sit by the phone. The last thing I want to admit to is that I am a victim as well, captive to a call that might or might not come. If I give up on daily activities, his captors will have succeeded in thoroughly disrupting our lives. I do not want them to win. Anger at the creeps holding David and his colleagues propels me forward.
I feel relieved when I ascend the subway steps to 57th Street in Midtown. I give myself a mental pat on the back as I approach the Hearst Publications building, where Cosmopolitan is headquartered, and pass through the shiny glass doors, past the security kiosks, and up the escalator. The office building has an air of glamour about it. It’s modern, clean, bright. A waterfall serves as a calming backdrop in front of which the escalators ascend. The sound of cascading water soothes my mind. I feel like I have entered a sequestered world, one of well-dressed women and polite security guards. Everything is picture-perfect. Nothing need be explored or examined in too much depth. And you can start ov
er again every month with some new outlook, style, or workout. I am able to skim the surface here and put the vortex of the last few hours behind me, momentarily. I breathe a sigh of relief and feel my energy restored.
An idea meeting has been scheduled for this afternoon. We will be discussing production and casting for our Man Manual shoot. This month it’s “Bachelors in Their Boxer Shorts.” I wonder if the Taliban wear boxers or briefs.
ALL THREE OF US
David, November 19, 2008
Standing in the remote darkness of Waziristan at the mercy of Taliban militants, I feel at peace. I have spoken to my wife for the first time in nine days. I expected panic or tears, but Kristen sounded collected and confident. Her words “It’s going to be all right” will linger in my mind for months. Her composure will sustain me.
Atiqullah and Badruddin had driven us fifteen minutes outside Miran Shah, stopped the car in a dry riverbed, and turned off the engine. Leaving the headlights on, I called Kristen from a small handheld satellite phone Badruddin produced and followed their instructions to tell her we were being held in terrible conditions. I hope the tone of my voice somehow comforted her.
Now Badruddin and Atiqullah tell me to call The New York Times bureau in Kabul. Instead of ordering me to make specific demands, they instruct Tahir, Asad, and me to exaggerate our suffering. They also tell me to say that Atiqullah is not with us, even though he is standing beside me.
“We are in terrible conditions, Tahir is very sick,” I tell Chris Chivers, a close friend and Times reporter who answers the phone.
Tahir then speaks to Chris and asks him to tell his family that he is alive and in good health.
“They keep telling me that if things go wrong they will repeat the story of Helmand,” Tahir says, referring to the beheading of the Afghan journalist in 2007. “So I am just afraid they are going to kill me.”
Asad then speaks in Pashto with an Afghan reporter in the bureau.
“I am fine, I am okay,” he says. “Tell my family that we are in the mountains but we are okay.”
The conversation drags on, with Atiqullah continuing to tell me what to say. He orders me to tell Chris that Asad and Tahir will be killed first.
I refuse. “Kill me first,” I tell Atiqullah, “Kill me first.”
Chris overhears me and interrupts.
“Nobody needs that, David,” he says. “Nobody needs to die.”
“They are threatening to kill the driver and the translator,” I explain to Chris. “I have to tell you, I have to tell you. I don’t want to tell you.”
“We understand that they are making those threats,” Chris says. “But that will not make our job easier.”
Chris explains that if the Taliban kill anyone it will make government officials angry and make any deal even more difficult.
“Please don’t let them kill the driver and the translator,” I say. “Please don’t let them kill the driver and translator. I am sorry about this,” I add. “I apologize to everyone.”
“David, this is not your fault,” Chris says. He urges me to tell Atiqullah to keep calling.
I can tell Chris is trying to prolong the call, which drags on for twenty minutes. Growing impatient, Atiqullah and Badruddin order me to end the call.
“Okay, all three of us, Chris,” I say. “It’s gotta be all three of us. I gotta go.”
I hang up the phone and Atiqullah and Badruddin order us back into the car. Worried that the call has been traced and a drone may be approaching, they quickly drive us out of the barren riverbed. Sitting in the back of the car, I am relieved. Kristen sounded calm. Chris said the paper was doing all it could. I feel that I fought for Tahir and Asad.
The car stops. With a scarf placed over my face, I am hustled into a new house. We have returned to Miran Shah.
I awake the following morning and I’m surprised by the quality of our new house. It is the finest of any we have been held in so far. The house has freshly painted white walls and regular electricity. We can wash ourselves with buckets of warm water. I receive a new set of clothes, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and shampoo. Guards allow us to walk in a large dirt yard, which is roughly fifty feet by thirty feet and has a small patch of grass near the well. The weather is unexpectedly warm. We receive pomegranates and other fresh food. Nestlé Pure Life water bottled in Pakistan is delivered for me to drink. To my amazement, I am even brought English-language Pakistani newspapers. Delivered to a shop in Miran Shah, the newspapers are only a day or two old.
For years, the Pakistani military has portrayed the tribal areas to American officials and journalists as the deeply isolated mountain stronghold of primitive Pashtun tribes. Instead, I find the tribal areas to be more developed than many parts of neighboring Afghanistan.
After breakfast, Badruddin visits us. He sits me down on the house’s front steps and explains to me that the Haqqanis are loyal servants of Taliban leader Mullah Omar. He says that American military reports that the Haqqanis work with foreign militants and operate independently are false. I don’t believe him. His father, Jalaluddin Haqqani, is a legendary Afghan anti-Soviet mujahideen fighter who is believed to shelter Al Qaeda members on the family’s territory here in North Waziristan. The Haqqanis are aligned with the Afghan Taliban but they have grown so powerful that they largely operate on their own. They personify how American support for fundamentalist fighters in the 1980s backfired.
During the anti-Soviet jihad, Badruddin’s father, Haqqani was on the payroll of the CIA. Twenty year later, he and his sons are allies of the Taliban and operate the most lethal insurgent force the United States faces in Afghanistan. I also know that they are at the center of one of the most hotly contested debates in the American military and intelligence community. Is the Pakistani military—the United States’ purported ally—covertly aiding the Haqqanis and other Afghan Taliban as they attack American troops?
Twenty-one years before I arrived in Miran Shah as a prisoner, an American congressman named Charlie Wilson met Badruddin’s father here in 1987 and declared him “goodness personified.” Jalaluddin Haqqani, the family patriarch, was the favorite Afghan mujahideen commander of Wilson, a garrulous, hard-drinking Democrat from the Houston, Texas, area who was famous for womanizing. Eager to exact revenge on the Soviet Union for American deaths in Vietnam, Wilson secretly funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in covert funding to the Afghan mujahideen.
Dressed in Afghan clothes and escorted by Pakistani intelligence officers, Wilson passed through Miran Shah in Pakistan’s tribal areas and then secretly crossed the border into Afghanistan. For the next four days, he received a covert tour of mujahideen operations in the Afghan province of Khost from Haqqani and other Afghan commanders. Living in the mountains, Wilson ate dinner in caves with bearded gunmen he saw as the descendants of indomitable mountain warriors who stood their ground against vastly more powerful foreign armies. The Afghans’ religious devotion seemed to give them no fear of death, Wilson later recalled. At one point, the congressman even gleefully fired a salvo of rockets at a Soviet base.
On the final night of Wilson’s trip, Jalaluddin Haqqani apologized to the American politician for not having a good-bye gift for him. Haqqani demanded that Wilson name the gift he wanted. The congressman half jokingly replied that he wanted helicopter pilots shot down by American-provided Stinger antiaircraft missiles. Roughly thirty minutes later, Haqqani’s men produced two terrified-looking Afghan pilots. Wilson expressed his appreciation but said he meant Soviet pilots. Haqqani promised to produce them in two weeks. The following morning, as Wilson prepared to leave, Haqqani had hundreds of mujahideen gather to say good-bye. One of the congressman’s guides snapped a photo of a grinning Wilson sitting astride a white horse with four Kalashnikov-wielding Afghans behind him.
“I felt I had entered the ranks of the initiated,” Wilson later recalled.
Wilson, like the other American architects of the anti-Soviet jihad, ignored the militant Islam that Haqqani and other muja
hideen fighters fervently embraced. In the late 1980s, CIA officers viewed him as one of the most impressive, fearless, and organized Pashtun battlefield commanders. They trusted him with new tactics and weapons, including Stinger antiaircraft missiles, rockets, and even tanks.
Born in the village of Srana in the Garde Serai district of southeastern Afghanistan’s Paktia Province, Haqqani was a deeply conservative rural Pashtun cleric. After studying in a local Afghan madrassa as a youth, he completed his religious studies at the hard-line Darul Uloom Haqqania, or “University for Education of Truth,” in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. Several other future Taliban leaders would attend the same school as well. The school banned televisions and music, taught young boys to memorize the Koran, and indoctrinated them in conservative Deobandi Islam.
In 1974, Haqqani took up arms against the Afghan government after the country’s king was overthrown in a coup Haqqani perceived as left leaning. He left Afghanistan, crossed into Pakistan’s tribal areas and based himself in Miran Shah. The town would serve as his headquarters for decades. His presence in Pakistan’s tribal areas caught the attention of Pakistani intelligence officials, who began funding him. Later, they introduced him to CIA officials, who did the same. To the delight of his Pakistani and American backers, Haqqani and his men laid siege to Soviet and Afghan forces garrisoned in the Afghan city of Khost in southeastern Afghanistan.