A Drone Strike and Dwindling Hope

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A funeral in Miram Shah, Pakistan, for victims of what was believed tohave been an American missile strike in February. David Rohde, a NewYork Times reporter kidnapped by the Taliban, said a missile hit notfar from where he was being held in March.

By DAVID ROHDE

Published: October 20, 2009
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. Debriscovered the floor. Somewhere outside, a woman wailed. I wondered ifTahir Luddin and Asad Mangal, the two Afghans who had been kidnappedwith me, were alive. A guard grabbed his rifle and ordered me to followhim 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 itsexterior walls remained intact. Tahir and Asad looked worried. No onewas hurt, but I knew the three of us might not survive for long.

Itwas March 25, and for months the drones had been a terrifying presence.Remotely piloted, propeller-driven airplanes, they could easily beheard as they circled overhead for hours. To the naked eye, they weresmall dots in the sky. But their missiles had a range of several miles.We knew we could be immolated without warning.

Our guardsbelieved the drones were targeting me. United States officials wantedto kill me, they said, because my death would eliminate the enormousleverage and credibility they believed a single American prisoner gavethe Haqqanis, the Taliban faction that was holding us. Whenever a droneappeared, I was ordered to stay inside. The guards believed that itssurveillance cameras could recognize my face from thousands of feetabove.

In the courtyard after the missile strike, the guardsclutched their weapons and anxiously watched the sky. Fearing a directattack on our house, they ordered me to cover my face with a scarf andfollow them outside the compound. I knew that enraged Arab militants orlocal tribesmen could spot me once I was outside, but I had no choice.

They hustled me down a hillside to where a station wagon was parkedbetween rows of trees. Opening the rear door, they ordered me to lieinside and keep the scarf on so passers-by could not see my face.

Ilay in the back of the car and silently recited the Lord’s Prayer. Inthe distance, I heard men shouting as they collected their dead. Ifmany people had been killed, particularly women and children, we weresure to die. For months, I had promised myself that if they taped ourexecution I would remain calm for my family and declare our innocenceuntil the end.

After about 15 minutes, the guards returned to thecar and led me back to the house. The missiles had struck two cars,killing a total of seven Arab militants and local Taliban fighters. Ifelt a small measure of relief that no civilians had been killed. But Iknew we were still in grave danger.

Two weeks earlier our captorshad moved us from Miram Shah, the capital of the North Waziristantribal agency, to a remote town in South Waziristan. I had seen on areceipt from a local shop that we were in Makeen, a stronghold of theleader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud. The region teemed with Uzbek, Arab, Afghan and Pakistani militants.

Forthe next two hours, I did my best to placate the guards. I did not walkin the yard. I did not speak unless spoken to. I praised God for savingus.

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

The Taliban assailed the drone attacks, and my captors expressed more hatred for President Obamathan for President Bush. They bitterly criticized the Obamaadministration for increasing the missile attacks in Pakistan’s tribalareas and the number of American troops in Afghanistan.

Astalemate between the United States and the Taliban seemed to unfoldbefore me. The drones killed many senior commanders and hindered theiroperations. Yet the Taliban were able to garner recruits in theiraftermath by exaggerating the number of civilian casualties.

Thestrikes also created a paranoia among the Taliban. They believed that anetwork of local informants guided the missiles. Innocent civilianswere rounded up, accused of working as American spies and thenexecuted.

Several days after the drone strike near our house inMakeen, we heard that foreign militants had arrested a local man. Heconfessed to being a spy after they disemboweled him and chopped offhis leg. Then they decapitated him and hung his body in the localbazaar as a warning.

THE house in Makeen was the crudest we hadinhabited in Pakistan. Perched on a hilltop, it had no running water,fleas and a courtyard littered with trash.

Makeen was colderthan Miram Shah, and frequent rain and frigid temperatures createdmiserable conditions. Hailstorms were common and viewed as punishmentfrom God by our captors.

I was given daily chores by guards who were half my age. The tasks weredemeaning, since elders are treated with reverence in Pashtun culture,but I did not care. The chores helped me pass the time and appeared togive the guards the sense I was loyal.

Twice a day, I filled a barrel in the bathroom with water, which weused to flush the toilet, and methodically swept the dirt floors. Itwas a Sisyphean task, but cleaning gave me the illusion of control whenin reality I had none.

Rarely allowed outside the house, I saw my world shrink to a few dozen square feet. My daily focus simply became survival.

Tahir struggled as well, telling me at times that he could no longer remember the faces of his seven children.

“This is not life,” he said. “I want to die.”

With each passing month, we felt increasingly forgotten and at themercy of the young guards who lived with us. The chief guard was theyounger brother of Abu Tayyeb, the Taliban commander who had abductedTahir, Asad and me in November after inviting us to interview himoutside Kabul, Afghanistan.

He began pocketing some of themoney given to him to buy our food and supplies. He dared us to try toescape so he could end our captivity with “one bullet.” He complainedthat mujahedeen were dying in the drone strikes yet enormous attentionwas being wasted on one American prisoner.

When I showed himseveral dozen flea bites on my stomach and arms, he bought a pesticideand suggested that I put it on my sleeping bag. Fearing it would makeme sick, I declined. When the bites continued, I showed another guard.His response was to show me his own stomach, which had no bites on it.

“I never get sick while I’m on jihad,” he said.

Afterlong conversations between Tahir and me prompted the guards to accuseus of planning an escape, we spoke less. Some days, we talked only afew minutes. Increasingly, I became lost in my own thoughts, and mymemories of the world I had known began to fade.

Trying to stay connected, I listened to the BBC’sshortwave radio broadcasts for hours at a time. The news broadcastsraised my spirits, but they also gave me the sensation of being in acoma. I could hear how the world was progressing but could notcommunicate with anyone in it.

THE video image was grainy but Iimmediately recognized the hostage’s face. “Hello, Peter,” anoff-camera questioner said. “How are you?”

“Fine,” answered PiotrStanczak, a soft-spoken 42-year-old Polish geologist kidnapped by theTaliban in September 2008. Two masked militants holding assault riflesstood on either side of him. A black sheet with jihadi slogans hung onthe mud-brick wall behind him.

In mid-March, one of our guardsarrived with a DVD player. After that, watching jihadi videos becamethe guards’ favorite pastime. Playing along with his captors in thevideo, Stanczak called for the Polish government to stop sending troopsto Muslim countries and to break relations with the Pakistanigovernment.

I had never met Stanczak but had read about hisordeal in Pakistani newspapers. When I realized the video would end inhis beheading, I stood up to leave. I did not want to watch it — orgive the guards the satisfaction of seeing me watch it.

“ ‘I would say people of Pakistan is very good, people is very good,’ ” I heard Stanczak say as I walked out of the room.

Thevideos were impossible to avoid at night, when I was confined to theroom the guards were in. They were little more than grimly repetitivesnuff films. The Taliban executed local men who had been declaredAmerican spies. Taliban roadside bombs blew up Afghan government trucksand American Humvees. The most popular videos documented the final daysof suicide bombers.

As I silently watched, the guards repeatedlyasked me what I thought of seeing American soldiers killed on thescreen in front of us.

“All killing is wrong,” I said.

Theguards would watch for hours at a time. Over all, the videos created analternate, pro-Taliban narrative of the war in Afghanistan. A recurringtheme was that the United States and NATO underreported the number of foreign troops dying in Afghanistan.

The videos were not limited to the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Images of dead Palestinian, Kashmiri and Iraqi civilians delivered the message that vast numbers of Muslims were being slaughtered across the globe.
The constant images of death seemed to be cynical efforts by Talibancommanders to numb their young foot soldiers to the prospect ofsacrificing their lives. Death, the message went, was not a distantfate. Instead, it was a friendly companion and a goal.

The guards knew little of the outside world and had limitededucation. They shared a book that glorified martyrdom, promisingsaccharine fruit juices, sumptuous food and 70 virgins in heaven. Oneof the guards read haltingly, pronouncing each word out loud as if hewere an elementary school student.

I feared that the videoswere brainwashing our driver, Asad. After we moved to Makeen, he seemedmore friendly toward the guards and began carrying a Kalashnikov theyhad given him. He also stopped smoking, which the guards said wasforbidden under Islam. He was only doing what he needed to do to stayalive, I told myself.

IN late April, a surprise visit by AbuTayyeb, the commander who had kidnapped us, raised our hopes that ourfreedom was being negotiated. Dressed in an expensive white tunic, hestrode into our compound just before dinner.

“Dawood,” he asked, “what would you say if I told you that you could start your journey back to New York tomorrow?”

“That would make me incredibly happy,” I said.

He told me to get a notebook and pen and ordered everyone to leave the room except for his deputy commander, Tahir and me.

“Your family has been very slow,” he said. “Write this down.”

“This is my proof-of-life video,” he dictated. “Maybe another video will come that will be very bad.”

He paused and tried to think of his next line.

“If this message does not help,” he said. “I cannot say what will happen to me.”

I quickly realized that Abu Tayyeb had not shown up to complete a deal.His visit was another effort to extort money from my family. Fivemonths into our captivity, he had refused to lower his demands below a$5 million ransom as well as an exchange of prisoners.

Calmly sitting across the room from me, he dictated more lines.

“If you don’t help me, I will die,” he said. “Now the key is in your hand.”

He paused again for a moment.

“Please save me, I want to go home,” he said. “Don’t you want me to stay alive with you? Hurry up. Hurry up.”

Thenhe told me I would need to cry for the video. I stared at Tahir. If Irefused, the Taliban might kill him or Asad to drive up a potentialransom payment. I hated the thought of my wife, Kristen, and my familyseeing such a video, but Tahir was the father of seven children, andAsad the father of two. I agreed to make it.

The deputycommander, a man in his 50s, placed a scarf over his face and picked upa .50-caliber machine gun. He pointed it at my head, and one of theguards turned on a camera.

During the filming, I tried to conveythat I was reading a prepared statement by intentionally looking downat the pad of paper. I sobbed intermittently but no tears flowed frommy eyes.

After the first take, Abu Tayyeb announced that Ihadn’t cried enough. He ordered me to read the message a second time.Standing behind the guard holding the camera, Abu Tayyeb waved hishands in the air, as if he were a film director, motioning for me tosob louder.

I tried to cry in an exaggerated fashion so that my family would recognize that none of it was real.

Laterthat night, Abu Tayyeb announced that the Afghan government had agreedto free 20 prisoners in exchange for our release. The problem, he said,was that my family would not agree to pay the $5 million ransom.

“Myfamily does not have $5 million,” I told him angrily. “Why do you thinkwe have been here for so long? Do you think they’re sitting on $5million and just playing a game? If they had the money, they wouldoffer it.”

Abu Tayyeb continued. He smiled and told me I was a“big fish.” He said my brother was the president of a company thatmanufactured jumbo jets. If my brother would sell one plane, heexplained, my family could pay the ransom.

He had clearlylooked up my family on the Internet. My brother was, in fact, thepresident of a small aviation consulting company, but it consisted ofsix people and manufactured nothing.

Abu Tayyeb claimed that the American government paid $10 million for the release of John Solecki, a United Nations worker kidnapped in Pakistan in February. As I had for months, I told him that the American government didn’t pay ransom.

Ignoring me, he said that the head of the F.B.I.’soffice in New York had traveled to Afghanistan to secure my release. Hevowed to force the United States government to pay the $5 million.

“You know where the money will come from,” he said. “And I know where the money will come from.”

Itold him that he was delusional and that he should just kill me. Tahirrefused to translate my words. “Don’t provoke him,” he said.

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 that he was absolutely wrong and that 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.”

ABUTAYYEB disappeared the following morning. We spent the next six weeksin a new house in a remote village in North Waziristan.
Each week, we received bits of information about the negotiations.First, our captors informed us that an agreement had been reached onthe 20 Taliban prisoners who would be exchanged for our release. Thenthey said that not enough money was being offered along with theprisoners. Finally, they told us that only 16 of the 20 prisoners hadbeen agreed upon.

In late May, we were taken back to Miram Shah, where we wereinformed of a final deal. All that was needed, they said, was for thetwo sides to agree to where the prisoner exchange would take place. Thenext day, they announced that there actually was no agreement.

In early June, Abu Tayyeb reappeared and announced that the Americangovernment was offering to trade the seven remaining Afghan prisonersat Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for us. I told him that was ridiculous.

For months, Abu Tayyeb had been vastly exaggerating my value. He falsely claimed that the American diplomat Richard C. Holbrookehad freed Serbian prisoners in 1995 to win my release in Bosnia, whereI was arrested while reporting on war crimes against Muslims.

Heinsisted that I was best friends with Mr. Holbrooke, now the Obamaadministration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“Then why I am still sitting here after seven months?” I asked him.

Hesmiled. If I made one more video, he said, we would be released.Ashamed of my previous video and convinced that Abu Tayyeb was lyingyet again, I refused.

“This is all about you,” I said, raisingmy voice. “You are demanding millions of dollars so you can makeyourself look good to the other commanders. You are the problem.”

Hedeclared that he was doing everything “for the jihad.” Visibly angry,he again told me to make the video and then left the room.

Thirtyminutes later, he returned and said that making the video was not achoice but an order. The half-dozen guards in the room stared at me.

Onceagain, Abu Tayyeb repeated his order, and I said no. I knew it wasreckless, but standing up to him felt enormously liberating aftermonths 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.

Ifinally relented, but I was determined to turn it into an opportunityto console our families, not worry them. No guns were pointed at myhead. I refused to cry. I spoke to the camera calmly and said the threeof us were well.

At the end of the video, I included a message I had wanted to relay since the day we were kidnapped.

“Howeverthis ends, Kristen and all my family and friends should live in peacewith yourselves,” I said. “I know you have all done absolutelyeverything you can to help us.”