by David Rohde
In Miran Shah itself, I met the Pakistani government-appointed political agent charged with governing North Waziristan. He said anger was simmering in the town because of a recent joint Pakistani-FBI raid on the sprawling Manba Uloom madrassa the Haqqani family had built north of the city in the 1980s. No foreign militants—and no Haqqani family members—had been found.
Rumors abounded that the FBI agents wore boots into madrassas and mosques, an insult and desecration to Pashtuns. Furious local tribesmen fired rockets at an abandoned technical school where the Americans were believed to be staying. Six local tribal elders gathered by the North Waziristan political agent fumed. They denied that any Afghan Taliban or foreign militants were in North Waziristan.
“The Americans have fifteen to twenty times disgraced our soil and our sacred mosques,” one tribal elder told me, vastly exaggerating the number of raids. “They cannot produce a single man from the fourteen or fifteen attempts.”
The elders believed that the American bombing of Afghanistan in 2001 had killed 50,000 Afghan women and children. They said the United States had invaded Afghanistan to control the oil and gas riches of the Middle East and Central Asia. Asked about the 9/11 attacks, they said there was no proof who had carried them out.
“People have actually started believing Osama never existed,” one elder told me. “They think it is a conspiracy against us.”
I later learned that Americans—most likely CIA operatives—had, in fact, raided the Haqqani madrassa and found nothing. Before the raid, the Americans intercepted communications in which a local Pakistani official called the madrassa and warned the occupants that the Americans were on their way.
My trip was part of a sophisticated campaign by Musharraf’s government to show that the Afghan Taliban were not using Pakistan as a base. The Pakistani military ferried American journalists, diplomats, and intelligence officials to the tribal areas and told them the area was ungovernable. In many ways, the trips mirrored the tours the Pakistani military conducted in the 1980s for Congressman Wilson and other American government officials. The only difference was the message. Now, the Pakistani military said it could not control the tribal areas.
Evidence that the Afghan Taliban were, in fact, reorganizing inside Pakistan abounded. In September 2003, I interviewed two Afghan Taliban members in the southwestern city of Quetta, which lies several hundred miles south of the tribal areas. Afghan officials had long charged that Taliban leader Mullah Omar was based in the city.
Hajji Abdul Majid denied that the Afghan Taliban were receiving support from Pakistan. A wizened Afghan Taliban commander who had lost his right leg fighting Soviet troops, he appeared completely at ease in Pakistan. He and the other former Taliban commander met me in the basement of the office of a local radio reporter. He predicted the United States would eventually fail in Afghanistan. He said Afghans initially supported the Russians to “take their money” and then turned against them.
“The same case will be the Americans,” the Taliban commander told me confidently. “For two or three years, they will support the Americans for their money but after that they will leave them.”
Hostility toward Westerners simmered in Quetta as well. The same false stories of American bombs killing tens of thousands of civilians swirled. During a subsequent reporting trip to Quetta, a young Pashtun spit in my face as our car drove past a religious school. My translator, who was also a Pashtun, profusely apologized. He was ashamed that a Pashtun would do such a thing.
Complaints that Pakistan was failing to crack down on the Afghan Taliban reached the White House in October 2003. In a principals meeting, American military and diplomatic officials based in Afghanistan said that Pakistan had become a major safe haven for the Afghan Taliban. They presented their argument that Musharraf was playing a “double game,” periodically arresting Al Qaeda members but allowing the Afghan Taliban to regroup on Pakistani territory.
Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage believed the allegations that Musharraf was playing a double game were false. In meetings with senior American officials and interviews with me and other journalists, Musharraf vehemently denied the charges.
Armitage insisted that Musharraf did, in fact, break the ISI’s ties with the Taliban from 2001 to 2005. “There was little contact between the ISI and the Taliban other than liaison,” Armitage told me when I interviewed him for my book.
Armitage said that during those years the administration focused its efforts on persuading Musharraf to end the ISI’s support to two Pakistani militant groups targeting India: Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad. The two groups had carried out a December 2001 attack on India’s parliament that nearly sparked a war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
Armitage, who left the Bush administration with Powell in early 2005, said that he believes the ISI reestablished its ties with the Taliban later that year when the ISI saw the Taliban successfully reorganizing and the American-led military effort flagging. “My personal view is that the ISI began increasing support for the Afghan Taliban when they started to see the Talibs regrouping,” Armitage said. “ISI was coming of the view that the coalition might not prevail.”
In 2005, the Haqqani network and other Taliban did gain strength, doubling American deaths in Afghanistan from fifty-two in 2004 to ninety-nine in 2005. American military officials requested permission to carry out commando raids into Pakistan’s tribal areas. Military officials argued that as long as the Taliban safe havens existed in Pakistan, American troops could not stabilize Afghanistan.
American troops carried out two cross-border raids into the tribal areas in 2006 and 2008, but they sparked an immediate outcry from the Pakistani army. Bush opposed further operations inside Pakistan. He worried that unrest could topple Musharraf or derail his personal efforts to persuade the Pakistani leader to take off his military uniform, become a civilian president, and reinstate democracy in Pakistan. As part of his commitment to spreading democracy abroad, Bush had privately and repeatedly lobbied Musharraf—who was both Pakistan’s president and army chief—to resign from his army post and become simply president.
CIA officials based in Pakistan argued that it was far better to have Pakistani troops carry out such operations. The arrival of American troops in the tribal areas would confirm Islamist conspiracy theories that the United States planned to occupy Pakistan, the world’s only predominantly Muslim country with nuclear weapons.
In an attempt to get the Pakistani army to be more aggressive in the tribal areas, the Bush administration backed a loosely monitored billion-dollar-a-year reimbursement program where the United States paid fuel, ammunition, and other costs incurred by Pakistani forces in the tribal areas. The massive program was by far the largest source of American funding to Pakistan.
American military officials detected that the Pakistani military was inflating their claims under the program and receiving tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent reimbursements. They also warned of a more dangerous problem: The Pakistani army was so weak, they warned, that it could not defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda if it confronted them.
For the next three years, that appeared to be true. The Pakistani military fought brief operations against militants in the tribal areas and then struck two peace agreements. Each cease-fire further emboldened the militants, who killed more than 200 tribal elders they saw as potential rivals in 2005 and 2006. The army signed a third and final cease-fire agreement—known as the Waziristan accord—in Miran Shah in September 2006. In exchange for militants promising to halt attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Pakistani army agreed to withdraw its forces from all checkpoints in North Waziristan. The Taliban ministate that I later inhabited was born.
Militants in other parts of Pakistan were emboldened. Students in the Red Mosque, a hard-line mosque and madrassa in the center of Islamabad, demanded that local stores stop selling DVDs they considered indecent. Then they took a local woman hostage in Ju
ly 2007 and accused her of operating a brothel. Security forces surrounded the mosque and after an initial gun battle stormed it, killing roughly 100 people. Pakistani militants claimed that 1,000 students—many of them women—were killed in the attack.
Enraged, they declared war on the Pakistani government. In the tribal areas, the Haqqanis played a central role in brokering the creation of a powerful and unprecedented alliance of Pakistani militant groups—the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or Taliban Movement of Pakistan. Founded in December 2007, the alliance of previously disparate groups fielded an estimated 5,000 fighters. They unleashed attacks that killed former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007 and killed or wounded 5,000 Pakistanis in 2008.
As I received newspapers from my captors in January 2009, more Pakistanis were dying in terror attacks than Afghans or Iraqis. The Pakistani Taliban had seized control of all seven agencies that made up the tribal areas and a famed tourist area sixty miles from Islamabad known as the Swat Valley. Declaring a complete ban on girls’ education, the Pakistani Taliban destroyed or damaged 175 girls’ schools in Swat.
I recalled a meeting I had with a retired senior official from the ISI four months after the storming of the Red Mosque. Asking that he not be named, he was the first senior ISI official to admit to me that some ISI officials had been playing a “double game.”
He said that while he and other ISI officials arrested Al Qaeda operatives and impressed American officials, other ISI officials turned a blind eye to the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani militants they thought could be useful proxies against India. With suicide bombings besetting Pakistan’s largest cities, the former ISI official admitted that his agency had lost control of the militants it had nurtured for the last thirty years.
“We indoctrinated them and told them, ‘You will go to heaven,’” he told me. “You cannot turn it around so suddenly.”
After a two-hour drive in Badruddin’s truck, we arrive in a snow-covered valley with towering pine trees. The hills and snow, he hopes, will convince the world we are being held in Afghanistan, not in a bustling town in Pakistan.
The drive has been a delight for me. After nearly three months of living in walled compounds, I relished looking out the window as we drove through towns, villages, and open spaces of North Waziristan. Much of the landscape is dry, desolate, and reminiscent of the American Southwest. Other areas have the rolling hills and soaring trees of the Rocky Mountains.
Badruddin orders Tahir, Asad, and me to put on new black Chinese-made high-top basketball sneakers he has purchased. I fold my pants into the tops of the sneakers and wrap the blanket Badruddin gave me months ago around my neck as a scarf. I hope both steps will make the video look more ridiculous than frightening. Badruddin tells his men to set up a tent he has purchased as a prop on the hillside. His men can’t figure out how to assemble it. I think about helping them but decide not to.
As a backup plan, Badruddin instructs us to walk up a snow-covered hillside with a half dozen guards. Scarves cover their faces and each carries a machine gun or Kalashnikov. Timor Shah leads the way. He peers through a tiny pair of binoculars Badruddin has given him. We follow him up the hill, and I exaggerate my movements to try to make the video appear staged.
We are led into a small cave where one of Badruddin’s men has lit a fire. Badruddin orders us to say we are sick and in the mountains of Afghanistan. I do so but try to show little emotion. As I speak, I place my left hand over my right, hoping my wife will see that I am flashing my wedding ring at her.
Outside the cave, we sit on the hillside and Badruddin orders me to again call for President Obama to meet the Taliban’s demands. I do so but add a new line. At Tahir and Asad’s request, I explicitly ask journalists to publicize our case.
“We ask journalists to please help us,” I say. “Please write stories about us. Please don’t let us be forgotten.”
I fail to cry. After the last video, I am less willing to placate our captors. Badruddin does not seem to care. After a few more minutes, he stops filming. Our location shoot has taken roughly thirty minutes.
As we walk down the hill, the guards get into a snowball fight with Tahir and Asad.
A FRENCH STREET GANG
Kristen, Early to Mid-February 2009
Arumor has spread that an unidentified person has a video of our three and is shopping it around Kabul to American and foreign news organizations. The BBC and several others refuse to purchase it. Al Jazeera Arabic allegedly buys it for an undisclosed amount.
Michael Semple and I are now in daily contact. He tells me not to panic—this is most likely what he refers to as “a midterm fund-raising effort.” Most likely the captors have raised a few thousand dollars from the sale of the video footage, he says. Kidnapping is a group endeavor and the individuals guarding and feeding David, Tahir, and Asad need to be compensated for their time and effort. Michael has been the one consistent presence in this experience—in advice and in manner. For this reason, I have come to trust his opinion above the others.
A colleague of David’s in Kabul, Dexter Filkins, tracks down an Al Jazeera representative and asks to see a copy of the video. While he isn’t permitted to copy it, he and his translator are allowed a viewing and type up notes.
His transcript serves as a preview for Lee and me. We are struck by a few observations he makes, namely that David looks old and “his shoes are not his own.” This seems odd. How would Dexter know this? Soon enough, we understand.
Al Jazeera Arabic airs a snippet of the video a few days later. It is a twelve-second segment in which David, Tahir, and Asad appear outside, against a snowy backdrop. This is the promotional teaser to a full-length broadcast scheduled for that day.
The New York Times comes to our rescue. Bill Keller, the executive editor, calls the head of Al Jazeera’s station in Doha and requests that it refrain from showing the video in its entirety because of our safety concerns. Al Jazeera agrees to pull it off the air. We are terrified the video will be leaked and end up on the Internet. Our main concern is that a public airing will give the captors the attention and acclaim they seek in holding an American.
We do not want David’s value to become that of a political spectacle. We do not want him to be used to test or challenge the new Obama administration.
With the video taking up my attention, I cancel my flight to Pakistan. I will stay put.
Keller’s office alerts me to expect a call from Secretary Clinton. She has heard about the Al Jazeera segment. I am told she wants to console me and provide reassurance.
I am at home when she calls. I am struck by her appealing combination of warmth and composure. Helpful and efficient, she assures me that David’s case is being worked on “at the highest level.”
“My heart goes out to you,” she adds. “I can only imagine—actually, I cannot imagine what you must be going through.”
I ask her if David’s captors have made additional demands—political demands—that perhaps we as a family are not aware of. She reassures me that no one in our government has received communication from the group holding David. Holbrooke will be making a trip to the region soon, she says, and I should stay in touch with him.
“I am a longtime admirer and supporter of yours,” I say, thanking her. “I feel very confident knowing you are at the helm and aware of this issue.” I can’t resist adding, “And, frankly, I am so thrilled and relieved to have another woman in the mix!”
She bursts into laughter. “Oh, dear,” she says, “I know exactly what you mean!”
The next day, February 7, I receive a call from a journalist in New York who has obtained a copy of the video. The sound is still spotty but the visuals are clear. The journalist offers to meet me at the United Nations building.
I have spent the last few days agonizing over my decision not to travel to Pakistan. Tonight I am thankful that my gut check was right: I am relieved to be in New York to view the only communication from my husband in six weeks.
Lee fli
es in to join me. He is able to do so on a moment’s notice because he runs a corporate aviation consulting company. He’s constantly flying somewhere for work and often makes last-minute pit stops in New York. This also serves as his cover with business associates and some family members who are not yet aware of David’s situation. Our immediate family knows, but the extended family—cousins, uncles, nieces—do not.
It is 5 P.M. on a snowy, cold Saturday. The journalist meets me at the security gate and assures me that while I cannot obtain a copy of the video, I can make arrangements for our security advisers to view it.
Apparently, our security advisers don’t want to wait that long. AISC has overnighted to me a pen that doubles as a camera. They suggest I use it to take covert footage of the video. I was expecting something worthy of James Bond—perhaps a chic, ultra slim version of a Bic pen. Instead, a large heavy fountain pen, the size of a small telescope—or an engorged Mont Blanc—arrived this morning. It looks like a sight gag from a Peter Sellers film.
It has a hole toward the top and a small blue light the size of a pinhead that lights up when it’s filming. I call the security team and tell them that while I appreciate their efforts, I do not feel comfortable with their plan. I do not want to be busted by UN security for packing a suspicious fountain pen.
I breeze through security. They do not X-ray me. I could have gotten the pen in no problem, I say to myself. Lee, however, is asked to submit to a full security screening. At six feet tall, with a buzz cut and military training, he looks like a contractor or government agent.
The journalist ushers us into an elevator, then through increasingly narrow corridors to a small, carpeted room at the end of a neglected, dimly lit hallway. The windows of the room overlook the East River. The three of us cram into the tiny room and gather around a small monitor.
The video is rather surprising, and long—twelve minutes in total. It begins with David. “I want to apologize, from the bottom of my soul, to my wife Kristen,” he says. I am moved by this genuine expression. Soon after, it is followed by an obligatory plea and what look clearly like fake tears. David makes it obvious he is reading from a script. He is dressed in a salwar kameez, prayer hat, and jacket. His hands are unbound. He is still wearing his wedding ring. A banner hanging behind his head bears the emblem of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and an Arabic slogan that says “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.”