By David Rohde

THE CAR’S ENGINE roared as 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.

A gunman in the passenger seat turned and stared at us as he gripped his Kalash-nikov rifle. No one spoke. I glanced at the bleak landscape and feared we would be dead within minutes.

It was last November 10, and I had been headed to a meeting with a Taliban commander named Abu Tayyeb, along with an Afghan journalist, Tahir Luddin, and our driver, Asad Mangal. The commander had invited us to interview him outside Kabul for a book I was writing 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. I thought of my wife and family and was overcome with shame. An interview that had seemed crucial hours earlier now seemed absurd and reckless.

Eventually, we arrived at 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.”
For the first time that day, I thought our lives might be spared. The guard led us into a living room decorated with maroon carpets and red pillows. I sat down across from a heavyset man with a patu-a traditional Afghan scarf-wrapped around his face. “I’m a Taliban commander,” he announced. “My name is Mullah Atiqullah.”

For the next seven months and 10 days, Atiqullah and his men kept the three of us hostage. We were held in Afghanistan for a week, then spirited to the tribal areas of Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden is thought to be hiding.

Atiqullah worked with Sirajuddin Haqqani, the leader of one of the most hard-line factions of the Taliban. The Haqqanis and their allies would hold us in territory they control in North and South Waziristan.

During our time as hostages, I told our captors that we were journalists who had come to hear the Taliban’s side of the story. I told them that I had recently married and that Tahir and Asad had nine young children between them. I wept, hoping it would create sympathy, and begged them to release us. All of my efforts proved pointless.

REPORTING FROM AFGHANISTAN David Rohde interviewed villagers in Afghanistan in the late summer of 2007, about a year before he was kidnapped. / TOMAS MUNITA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

BEHIND THE SCARF The Taliban commander, left, who abducted David Rohde introduced himself as Mullah Atiqullah. / FRANCE 24

Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taliban had become. Living side by side with the Haqqanis’ followers, I learned that the goal of the hard-line Taliban had become vastly ambitious. Contact with foreign militants in the tribal areas appeared to have deeply affected many young Taliban fighters. They wanted to create a fundamentalist Islamic emirate with Al Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world.

I knew Pakistan turned a blind eye to many of their activities. But I was astonished by what I encountered firsthand: a Taliban mini-state that flourished with impunity.

What follows is the story of our captivity there.

I flew from Helmand to Kabul on Sunday, November 9, to meet with Tahir, who worked for The Times of London and was known as a journalist who could arrange interviews with the Taliban.

I slept poorly the night before the interview with Abu Tayyeb, the Taliban leader. I left two notes behind. One gave Carlotta Gall, the Kabul bureau chief of The New York Times, the location of the meeting and instructed her to call the United States Embassy if we did not return by late afternoon. The other was to my wife, Kristen, in case something went wrong.

I met Tahir and Asad, a friend he had hired to work as a driver and lookout. From the car, I sent Carlotta a text message with Abu Tayyeb’s phone number. I told her to call him if she did not hear from me. If something went wrong along the way, Abu Tayyeb and his men would rescue us. Under Afghan tradition, if a guest is threatened, it is the host’s duty to shelter and protect him.

We arrived at the meeting point but none of Abu Tayyeb’s men were there. Tahir called Abu Tayyeb, who instructed us to continue down the road. Moments later, two gunmen ran toward our car shouting commands in Pashto, the local language. The gunmen opened both front doors and ordered Tahir and Asad to move to the back seat.

Tahir shouted at the men in Pashto as the car sped down the road. The gunman in the passenger seat shouted commands.

“They want to know your nationality,” Tahir said. I hesitated. Being an American was disastrous, but I thought lying was worse. If they later learned I was American, I would instantly be declared a spy.

“Tell them the truth,” I told Tahir. “Tell them I’m American.”

Tahir relayed my answer and the burly driver beamed, raising his fist and shouting a response in Pashto. Tahir translated it for me: “They say they are going to send a blood message to Obama.”

By the time I met face to face later that day with Atiqullah, our kidnapper, I still did not know which Taliban faction had abducted us.

With Tahir translating, we explained that we had been invited to Logar Province to interview Abu Tayyeb, the Taliban commander. I said I had worked as The Times’s South Asia correspondent from 2002 to 2005. I described articles I had written during the war in Bosnia and told him that Serbian Orthodox Christians had arrested me there after I had exposed the massacre of Muslims.

Atiqullah remained unmoved. He denied our request to call Abu Tayyeb or a Taliban spokesman. He controlled our fate now, he said.

Several hours after sunset, we were hustled into a small station wagon.

“We have to move you for security reasons,” said Atiqullah, who was sitting in the driver’s seat, his face still concealed behind a scarf. Over the next hour, Atiqullah promised to do his best to protect us. I promised him money-“millions”-and prisoners.

For the next four days, we lived in another small dirt house.

One day Atiqullah announced that we would have to walk through the mountains. We hiked for 11 hours. I told myself that we were walking into southern Afghanistan, not Pakistan. I told myself we would survive.

THE ISLAMIC EMIRATE
No Place for Americans

Instead, on November 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 kilometers east, not eliminated it.

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.

Our first Pakistani home was in Miram Shah, the capital of North Waziristan. Two large sleeping rooms looked out on a small courtyard. One even had a small washroom, separate from the toilet, for showering. All day, a parade of Pakistani militants stopped by the house to stare at us. Among them was a local Taliban commander who introduced himself as Badruddin. He was the brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, who led the Haqqani network, one of the most powerful Taliban factions in the region. Miram Shah was its stronghold.

Badruddin, who appeared to be in his early 30s, said he was preparing to make a video of us to release to the media.

I asked if Tahir and I could speak alone with Atiqullah, and I told him we should not make the video. The American and Afghan governments were more likely to agree to a secret prisoner exchange, I said, than a public one.

I told him it would be easier to get prisoners from the Afghan- run prison outside Kabul, known as Pul-i-Charkhi. If the Taliban demanded prisoners from the American- run detention centers at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Bagram, Afghanistan, they would never succeed.

I was not worth that much, I told him, and he should compromise. I also wanted to spare my family the pain of seeing me in a video. To my surprise, Atiqullah agreed.

“I am one of those kinds of people,” he said at one point. “I am one of those people who like to meet in the middle.”

Tahir, Asad and I would be allowed to call our families that night to prove we were alive, he said. Atiqullah told me to emphasize that he wanted to reach a deal for ransom quickly. He continued to cover his face with a scarf. To me, that meant he did not want to be identified because he planned to release us.

Later I spoke to my wife for the first time in nine days. I had expected panic or tears, but she sounded collected . Her words “It’s going to be all right” would linger in my mind for months. Her composure would sustain me.

After the calls we were taken to a new house, and I was again surprised by the good conditions. It had regular electricity, and warm water for washing.

Atiqullah said he needed to return to Afghanistan, but two of his men stayed behind to guard us. “I will return in 7 to 10 days,” he promised .

That week, to help us pass the time, we received a shortwave radio and a board game called checkah. To my amazement, the guards even brought me English-language Pakistani newspapers. Instead of beating us as I expected, our captors were trying to meet some of our needs.

But reasons for optimism would be overtaken by harsh realities. For the next several nights, a stream of Haqqani commanders overflowing with hatred for the United States and Israel visited us, unleashing blistering critiques that would continue throughout our seven months in captivity.

They said large numbers of civilians had been killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories in aerial bombings. Muslim prisoners had been physically abused and sexually humiliated in Iraq. Scores of men had been detained in Cuba and Afghanistan for up to seven years without charges.

To Americans, these episodes were aberrations. To my captors, they were proof that the United States was a hypocritical power that flouted international law.

When I told them I was an innocent civilian who should be released, they responded that the United States had held and tortured Muslims in secret detention centers for years. Commanders said they themselves had been imprisoned, their families ignorant of their fate. Why, they asked, should they treat me differently?

Their hatred for the United States seemed boundless.

Ten days passed, but Atiqullah did not return as promised. Badruddin now seemed to be in charge. He moved us to a far smaller, dirtier house. The food was unclean and made me sick. Any sense of urgency about our release seemed to be fading. Before leaving, Badruddin told me the Taliban would not kill me.

“You are the golden hen,” he said.
Several days before Christmas, Atiqullah finally returned. He announced that he had spectacular news. “We are here to free you,” he said, wearing no scarf over his face for the first time. “We have come here to release you.”

At first, I was euphoric. Then, later that night, the conversation turned menacing.
The American military had mounted an operation to arrest Abu Tayyeb on the morning that we were to interview him, Atiqullah said, referring to the Taliban leader we had been traveling to meet when we were kidnapped.

Shocked, I told Atiqullah I knew nothing about a military operation.

He replied that I was a spy, along with other employees of The Times in Afghanistan. Talk of our imminent release now seemed farcical.

The following morning, Atiqullah insisted that there was, in fact, a deal. At one point, he said we would be exchanged within “days.” By this point, I began to doubt everything he said. Then I learned that he had lied to us from the beginning.

Tahir and Asad told me that Atiqullah was, in fact, Abu Tayyeb. They had known since the day we were kidnapped, they said, but dared not tell me. They asked me to stay silent as well. Abu Tayyeb had vowed to behead them if they revealed his true identity.

Abu Tayyeb had invited us to an interview, betrayed us and then pretended he was a commander named Atiqullah.

I was despondent and left with only one certainty: We had no savior among the Taliban.

1 IN THEIR 9TH DAY OF CAPTIVITY After an 11-hour hike through the mountains, they are picked up by a car. As they drive down the left-hand side of the road, Mr. Rohde realizes they are no longer in Afghanistan, where people drive on the right, but in Pakistan.

2 They drive through Wana and on to a house in Miram Shah, a stronghold of the Haqqanis, a hard-line Taliban faction.

3 OVER THE NEXT 7 MONTHS They are taken to a series of homes in the tribal areas, where the Taliban have established a mini-state since being driven from Afghanistan in 2001.

THE NEW YORK TIMES


A HAQQANI REALITY
Winning Hearts and Minds

My captivity confirmed suspicions that the Haqqanis oversaw a sprawling Taliban mini-state in the tribal areas with the de facto acquiescence of the Pakistani military. The Haqqanis were so confident of their control of the area that one day they took me-a person they considered to be an extraordinarily valuable hostage-on a three-hour drive in broad daylight to shoot a scene for a video outdoors.

Over the winter, I would come to know the reality the Haqqanis had created.

My captors assailed the West for killing civilians, but they celebrated suicide attacks orchestrated by the Taliban that killed scores of Muslim bystanders. They bitterly denounced missionaries, but they pressed me to convert to their faith. They complained about innocent Muslims being imprisoned by the United States, even as they continued to hold us captive.

Yet in our day to day existence, when commanders were absent, some of our guards showed glimpses of humanity. Those moments gave us hope .

Tahir, Asad and I had received comforting letters from our families through the International Committee of the Red Cross. But I hadn’t spoken to my wife, Kristen, in three months.

Finally, on February 16, Abu Tayyeb drove me to a remote location and allowed me to call her. The Taliban told me to give her the number of their cellphone and have her call us back. They were demanding $7 million at that point but were too cheap to pay for the phone call.

“This is my last call,” I said to her, repeating what they had told me to say. “This is our last chance.”

Abu Tayyeb promised that he would reach a settlement with my family. Then, as he had many times before, he left without doing so. My conversations with him during his brief visit left me doubtful that he would ever compromise in a case involving an American.

THE TALIBAN AND THE DRONES
Staying Alive

On March 25, missiles fired by an American drone obliterated their target a few hundred meters from our house in a village in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Two weeks earlier our captors had moved us from Miram Shah, the capital of the North Waziristan tribal agency, to Makeen, a town in South Waziristan that was a stronghold of the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud. The region teemed with Uzbek, Arab, Afghan and Pakistani militants.

Later, I learned that one guard called for me to be taken to the site of the drone attack and beheaded as a video camera captured the moment. The chief guard overruled him.

The Taliban assailed the drone attacks, and my captors expressed more hatred for President Obama than for President Bush. They bitterly criticized the Obama administration for increasing the missile attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas and the number of American troops in Afghanistan.

With each passing month, we felt increasingly forgotten and at the mercy of the young guards who lived with us. In mid-March, one of our guards arrived with a DVD player. After that, watching jihadi videos became the guards’ favorite pastime. They were little more than grimly repetitive snuff films.

I feared that the videos were brainwashing our driver, Asad. After we moved to Makeen, he seemed more friendly toward the guards and began carrying a Kalashnikov they had given him. He also stopped smoking, which the guards said was forbidden under Islam. He was only doing what he needed to do to stay alive, I told myself.

In late April, a surprise visit by Abu Tayyeb raised our hopes that our freedom was being negotiated. Then he told me I would need to cry for a new video he wanted to make. I stared at Tahir. If I refused, the Taliban might kill him or Asad to drive up a potential ransom payment. I hated the thought of my wife, Kristen, and my family seeing such a video, but Tahir was the father of seven children, and Asad the father of two. I agreed to make it.

I told Abu Tayyeb we would “be here forever” if he did not reduce his demands. “You are a spy,” Abu Tayyeb declared. “You know that you are a spy.”

I told him I was a journalist. Then, I tried to shame him in front of his men.

“God knows the truth,” I said. “And God will judge us all.”
Abu Tayyeb disappeared the following morning. We spent the next six weeks in a new house in a remote village in North Waziristan.

In early June, Abu Tayyeb reappeared and announced that the American government was offering to trade the seven remaining Afghan prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for us. I told him that was ridiculous.

He smiled. If I made one more video, he said, we would be released. Ashamed of my previous video and convinced that he was lying yet again, I refused.

Once again, Abu Tayyeb repeated his order, and I said no. I knew it was reckless, but standing up to him felt enormously liberating after months of acquiescing. Sensing that Abu Tayyeb and his men were about to beat me, Tahir and Asad told me to make the video. “Just do it,” Tahir said.

I finally relented. But at the end of the video, I included a message I had wanted to relay since the day we were kidnapped. “However this ends, Kristen and all my family and friends should live in peace with yourselves,” I said. “I know you have all done absolutely everything you can to help us.”

THE ESCAPE
Rope, and a Plan

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, Tahir and I had decided to make a run for it.

We had arrived at the Miram Shah compound the first week of June. It was our ninth location in the tribal areas. As I had done when we arrived in each new place, I swept floors and picked up trash to create a sense of order. It was then that I found a car towrope. Thinking we might be able to use the rope during an escape, I hid it under an old shirt and pants.

In the days that followed, I tried to think of ways we could flee. When the guards let us sit on the roof with them at dusk, I noticed that it was surrounded by a wall about 1.5 meters high. If we could hoist ourselves over it, I thought, we could use the rope to lower ourselves to the street.

At the same time, Tahir surveyed the area around the house when the guards took him with them to buy food and watch cricket games once or twice a week. He determined that the compound was closer to Miram Shah’s main Pakistani militia base than any other house we had been held in.

Tahir and I kept our conversations brief about how we could escape, worrying that the guards or Asad would overhear us. Several weeks earlier, we decided we could no longer trust Asad. That afternoon, Tahir and I made a gut-wrenching decision to leave without him, fearing that he would tell the guards of our escape plans.

Our rupture with Asad had become the darkest aspect of an already bleak captivity, although later I would learn that he, too, had escaped.

In truth, I expected our escape attempt to fail quickly. Instead, to my amazement, our plan actually worked. That night, after Tahir and I made it to the courtyard, I retrieved the rope and we crept up a flight of stairs leading to the roof.

Shortly thereafter, for the first time in seven months, I walked freely down a street.

We made it to the Pakistani base. For the first time that night, it occurred to me that we might actually succeed.

The powerlessness I had felt for months began to fade. We were achingly close to going home.

About an hour later, a soldier arrived with a phone card, and I wrote my home number on a white slip of paper. The captain dialed the phone on his desk and handed me the receiver. On the second try, Kristen picked up.

“David?” she said, breathlessly.
“David?”
“Kristen,” I said, savoring the chance to utter the words I had dreamed of saying to her for months.
“Kristen,” I said, “please let me spend the rest of my life making this up to you.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

David Rohde and two Afghan colleagues were held in Miram Shah, Pakistan, a town where the Taliban operate freely. / HASBANULLAH KHAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS, FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES