Today at Brown

“You must be strong, because I am strong.” If anything kept him going during seven months and 10 days as a hostage of a radical Taliban faction in Afghanistan, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter David Rohde ’90 says it was those words from his wife, Kristen Mulvihill ’91, written in one of the few letters his captors allowed him to receive.

Rohde was captured in the Afghan desert on November 10, 2008, en route to a meeting with a Taliban commander. In the car with him were Asad, his Afghan driver, and Tahir, an Afghan journalist who was serving as Rohde’s translator. After they were forced out of their car, Rohde feared “we would be dead within minutes,” he wrote in a five-part account of his capture and captivity published in the Times.

Rohde came to Brown on November 16 to talk publicly about his ordeal. He also spoke to visiting professor Tracy Breton’s journalism class earlier in the day. 

He said he had arranged the interview with the commander because he wanted to document the Taliban’s view of the Afghanistan war for a book he is writing. It’s a decision he will always regret.

“I unquestionably made a mistake with this interview,” he told a packed Brown audience in List 120 that included President Ruth J. Simmons, along with his wife and mother. He has since promised his family to stop his war reporting.

Shortly after midnight on June 20, Rohde and Tahir fled their captors by climbing down a towing rope Rohde had stashed under a pile of clothing. Asad would later escape by himself.

Rohde’s experience gave him an unusual look at the daily life of Taliban extremists, a life that he repeatedly described as “an alternate reality.” For one thing, he said, “I was shocked at how easy it was for the Taliban to move us around” in eastern Pakistan. “The Taliban government we supposedly defeated in 2001 moved just a few miles to the east,” where it operates as an independent emirate.

“Suicide bombers there were like movie stars in the United States,” Rohde observed. One day he talked to a boy who gives part of his allowance to a fund for bombers. When Rohde asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, the boy used the local word for suicide bomber. The Taliban he met, Rohde said, were determined to keep fighting until they could establish “a hard-line Islamic emirate that spans the Muslim world.” He described many Taliban leaders as more like members of a criminal organization than of a religious group.

Although Rohde twice said he did not want to comment on U.S. policy in the region, he also noted, in response to a question from the audience, “It’s up to the Afghan government and the Pakistan government to win the hearts and minds of the populace.” He observed that the United States’s approach of training local police in Iraq has not carried over much to Afghanistan, leaving the burden on U.S. troops.

Many Taliban members, Rohde said, believe the United States has committed unspeakable atrocities against Muslims and are convinced, for example, that millions of babies died as a result of U.S. sanctions against Iraq before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. As far as kidnapping Americans for ransom is concerned, Rohde said, “Many Taliban relish the idea of getting money from Americans to kill other Americans.”

Still, Rohde believes a solution to the situation may prove elusive. His experiences during captivity have convinced him that “we simply can’t walk away from the region and hope the problem goes away.” On the other hand, if the United States sends more troops, it risks further enraging many Afghan citizens. Average Afghans, he said, want “security, an honest government, good schools for their children, and jobs.”

What is needed, Rohde concluded, “is consistent, steady, and sustained support of moderates” within Afghanistan.

Norman Boucher is editor and publisher of Brown Alumni Magazine.