Washington Post
NEW YORK, June 20 -- A New York Times reporter kidnapped by the Taliban and held for seven months in the rugged mountainous region along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border escaped Friday, along with a local Afghan reporter, by climbing over a wall and finding a nearby Pakistani army base, according to the newspaper, U.S. officials and the journalist's family.
David Rohde, 41, was taken captive Nov. 10 along with local reporter Tahir Ludin, 35, and their driver while Rohde was researching a book on Afghanistan. News organizations, including The Washington Post, did not report on the abduction at the request of the Times and Rohde's relatives, who feared that publication of the news could endanger the lives of the captives.
Rohde was kidnapped after he, Ludin and their driver, Assadullah Mangal, 24, set out by car for a prearranged interview with a local Taliban commander. Rohde, described by friends and colleagues as a brave but cautious reporter who always measured risks before traveling, told colleagues at the Times' Kabul bureau that he expected to be fine. But as a precaution, he left instructions on whom to call if he did not return.
The reporter, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner, was beginning work on a book about the history of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. He had been held captive in 1995 in Bosnian Serb territory while reporting for the Christian Science Monitor on mass killings at the height of the Bosnian war.
Rohde was apparently planning to journey to the eastern province of Logar to meet with a top commander linked to the insurgent network controlled by Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son, Sirajuddin Haqqani. The Haqqani network, believed to control large swaths of eastern Afghanistan, has emerged in recent years as a powerful antagonist to U.S. efforts to stabilize that country and root out insurgent havens in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. The Haqqani network is suspected of launching a number of spectacular attacks in recent years, including a deadly suicide bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul that killed more than 50 people in July 2008.
Ludin, the local reporter, has worked with several Western news organizations and arranged other high-level meetings with Taliban commanders for journalists over the years, and he arranged the meeting at Rohde's request.
The Times reported on its Web site Saturday that at the time of their escape, Rohde, Ludin and Mangal were being held in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan. The paper said it was unclear why the driver did not escape with the others. The Times initially reported that Mangal opted to stay behind.
The Times said Rohde and Ludin escaped by climbing over a wall of the compound where they were being held. They walked until they came upon a Pakistani soldier, near Miran Shah, the main town of North Waziristan. The soldier escorted them to a nearby Pakistani military base.
Senior U.S. and Pakistani officials with knowledge of the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic and security concerns, have confirmed that the abductors initially demanded a multimillion-dollar ransom and the release of several insurgent commanders in exchange for Rohde's safe return. State Department officials at U.S. embassies in Islamabad and Kabul have been aware of the kidnapping for months.
According to sources, the FBI worked closely with the Times in Afghanistan to negotiate his release. There were intermittent communications with the kidnappers, who also provided several "proof of life" videos confirming Rohde was alive. But sources said the family insisted on using private security consultants to resolve the case, and it was those consultants who insisted on an absolute news blackout.
Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, and Rohde's family declined to discuss details of the efforts to free the captives except to say that no ransom was paid and no Taliban or other prisoners were released. "Kidnapping, tragically, is a flourishing industry in much of the world," Keller said. "As other victims have told us, discussing your strategy just offers guidance for future kidnappers."
A senior Pakistani official said that "Pakistan released no Taliban prisoners" and that "no concessions were made to the kidnappers."
Rohde's family issued a statement saying: "It is hard to describe the enormous relief we felt at hearing the news of David and Tahir's escape and learning they were safe. Every day during these past seven months, we have hoped and prayed for this moment. During this time, we received the generous support of many people at The Times, in the media, in the U.S. State and Defense Departments and other parts of our government as well as the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere."
In Maine, Rohde's father, Harvey Rohde, said by telephone that he had not yet heard from his son and that he had no information other than what he read on newspaper Web sites. "We're obviously delighted," he said.
At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement: "We are very pleased to see that David Rohde is now safe and returning home. This marks the end of a long and difficult ordeal for David's family, friends, and co-workers." Gibbs added that the FBI had been "the lead agency on his case." Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she was "pleased and greatly relieved" at Rohde's release.
Law enforcement officials said the long and complex case involved FBI agents in Kabul and Pakistan; the bureau's field office in Boston, which made the initial contact with Rohde's family in Maine; and eventually the FBI's New York field office, which has experience in counterterrorism cases, kidnapping and the Taliban.
The officials said hostage negotiators and behavioral scientists from the bureau's Critical Incident Response Group in Quantico, Va., worked with Rohde's family and the Times. New York-based agents traveled to Pakistan and worked leads for many months. Some had worked on the 2006 kidnapping of Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll in Iraq.
A senior Pakistani official and a Western journalist, both of whom had knowledge of Rohde's kidnapping and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Rohde and the other captives were moved constantly between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to several locations in the North Waziristan area. North Waziristan is a remote tribal region along the border that is a longtime haven for an array of allied Islamist insurgents including Pakistani Taliban, Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda members from other countries.
There was some concern among those looking for Rohde that increased military pressure and intensified U.S. drone attacks -- begun under President George W. Bush and continued by the Obama administration -- had forced his captors to move him around. The American military, as well as other U.S. government officials, were actively looking for Rohde, but reporters who were aware of the case said there had been few updates lately. "His case went cold. We hadn't heard anything about him," the reporter said.
Rohde set out for Logar province by car only days after another Western journalist -- kidnapped four weeks earlier -- had been released. Canadian journalist Mellissa Fung was working on a story about Afghanistan's growing population of displaced people for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. when she was abducted near a refugee camp at the edge of western Kabul by Taliban gunmen in October. She was apparently held in chains in a cave in neighboring Wardak province for about four weeks before her release was negotiated.
Some Canadian media reported that a ransom was paid, but the Canadian government and the CBC denied it.
Fung's kidnapping, like Rohde's, was kept secret by news organizations at the request of the CBC.
Sources in Afghanistan told a Washington Post correspondent Saturday that tribal elders and other leaders in Logar worked over a long period to negotiate Rohde's release and that this may have helped keep him alive. Law enforcement officials reportedly told his family and co-workers that the longer Rohde was alive, the less likely he was to be killed.
At one point, people familiar with the case said, Rohde refused an offer to be released because it did not include Ludin.
Kidnapping of journalists and aid workers has become a major industry in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Westerners increasingly taken for ransom rather than for political reasons. Local residents have been angered by what they see as a double standard in resolving the cases. When an Italian journalist was kidnapped two years ago in Afghanistan, a public outcry followed when the reporter was released after ransom was paid, but his Afghan interpreter was killed.
Rohde is known by his colleagues as an intrepid reporter willing to work in some of the world's most dangerous places, and he has won numerous awards for his war coverage. He won a Pulitzer Prize while with the Christian Science Monitor for his coverage of the Srebrenica massacre in 1995 and was part of another Pulitzer-winning New York Times team this year for work in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Before joining the Monitor, Rohde was a freelance journalist in the Middle East and the Baltic States. He wrote a book based on his war reporting in Bosnia. But colleagues said he was no "cowboy," the term journalists use for colleagues who take careless risks. He was described as a cautious risk-taker who carefully calculated whether the story warranted the danger involved.
Rohde worked on the Times' Metro staff until the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when he joined the team of reporters dispatched to cover the war in Afghanistan. He grew deeply interested in the country and the region and later became the newspaper's South Asia co-bureau chief.
Rohde, a 1990 Brown University graduate, married Kristen Mulvihill in September in Maine. They honeymooned in the Asian subcontinent, until Rohde returned to Afghanistan to begin researching his book.
"We've been married nine months," Mulvihill told the Times. "And seven of those, David has been in captivity."
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