Customer Reviews

Captive: My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I know Afghanistan and the Pakistani borderlands. I've been there many times over the past 30 years and have just written my fourth book (AFGHANISTAN: GRAVEYARD OF EMPIRES, published by Pegasus) about that area. So I have encountered Jere Van Dyk, whose expertise goes back many decades, and many of the same people, places and hazards that he did. I can vouch for the accuracy and authenticity of what he has written about. This is all the way it actually is out there. I can also attest to the vivid and compelling way in which he has told his story. This is the real high-stakes world. Unlike the embedded reporters with US and NATO forces, there was no one to call for a rescue helicopter or provide back-up. If anything counts as "extreme reporting" it was what Jere Van Dyk was doing.

The old calypso folk song, "The Sloop John B" has great resonance with anyone that has ever travelled through this part of the world, because of its heartfelt chorus "This is the worst trip I've ever been on". We've all thought we were on that trip on one time or other, but Jere Van Dyk, no fooling, found it. He ended up falling into the hands of some very evil guys and had no idea whether they were going to hack his head off with a blunt dinner knife as they did to Daniel Pearl, sell him to Al Qaeda, or use him to resolve generations of political and religious resentment in even more painful ways. That he not only endured but came through to write this book is a story both of endurance and a demonstration of what is at stake in the conflicts in the region.

Captivity narratives are fascinating in the way a train wreck is fascinating. We don't want to look, but we have to look. We are stunned and horrified at what we see. We desperately want to return to the decisive moment when it all could have been averted. Yet we cannot go back.

Jere Van Dyk wanted to return to the Afghanistan he loved as a young man and the Afghanistan he came to know more deeply when he traveled undercover with the mujahideen in the 1980s, reporting on their armed struggle against the Soviet Union. Given his connections, he thought he could report on the Taliban from the fractious tribal borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan, which no journalist had successfully navigated in years.

Renewing old ties and forging new ones, he makes brief forays across the border, but ultimately he is captured. His first look at his cell hints at what might lie ahead: "I was in a small baked-mud room.... I looked behind me to see if there was any blood on the wall. Was this a torture chamber? I saw black marks and wasn't sure. I saw chains on the dirt floor on my right. They were tied to a steel stake." Was Mr. Van Dyk betrayed? He doesn't know for sure. In fact, there isn't much he can know for sure as he endures the degradations of imprisonment. Most chillingly, he isn't sure he will live.

Mr. Van Dyk doesn't pretend to be brave or heroic or otherworldly spiritual. He writes of his fear, his sickness of body and heart, his shame and his grief. He admits to a fascination with his captors and their Islamic rituals, even their way of life. Yet he also feels the pull of his childhood Christian faith. The nuanced way that he experiences psychological torture and physical deprivations makes this a more engrossing narrative than other captivity stories I've read, such as Buried Alive or Kabul 24.

In the end, Mr. Van Dyk didn't get the story he went after, but he found an even more compelling one. His harrowing personal experience probably tells us more about the Taliban than could have been told from a more removed stance. I deeply regret the soul-rending terror he was forced to endure, but I am grateful as a reader that he could craft such a valuable memoir from it.

This was a fantastic read. Van Dyk creates a vivid account of his imprisonment with the Taliban - his fears and emotions are expressed so realistically, you will believe you are sitting right beside him throughout his journey. The paranoia, the fear, everything he experiences is written so hauntingly real that it is hard to put this book down; you will need to know what happens next.

It's not fair to point out particular scenes of interest, it's the kind of book one must experience for themselves and let the journey evolve as it does.

While he was not able to write the book he came to Afghanistan to write, the story Van Dyk tells is about as intimate a portrayal of the Taliban and Afghan culture as you could ask for. It's terrifying, yet disturbingly fascinating to understand the inner workings of the disjointed group of men who call themselves the Taliban.

I respect American journalist Jere Van Dyk for having the guts to go into the heart of Taliban territory on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. And I sympathize with him for having to endure a 45-day captivity.

But Van Dyk's account of his ordeal is frustratingly difficult to read. There's a good story in this book, but it's tough to sift out.

"Captive" begins with Van Dyk preparing to make a furtive trip into Taliban territory, a delicate process of shadowy negotiations. But shortly after the trip begins he and his companions are taken captive by men whose motives aren't entirely clear. After a month and half in which Van Dyk repeatedly fears his execution is imminent, they are mysteriously freed.

Unfortunately, the book bogs down too often in Van Dyk's repetitive and circular emotional swings. He is distrustful of everyone (even those who help him after he is freed) and lurches between fears of death, suspicions about his companions, hopes for release, and, again, fears of death. Of course, these feelings are understandable under the circumstances, but detailing each mood change soon becomes tedious and advances the story nowhere.

"Captive" is also hamstrung by Van Dyk's use of short sentences almost exclusively ("It was dark and silent. No one talked. I put my head down and pulled my quilt over my head. I wanted to be alone. I thought of my family.") As a reader, you feel like you're constantly starting and stopping.

Van Dyk does succeed somewhat in putting a human face on the Taliban. He tries to understand his captors, and while they are often cold and exhibit a frightening religious fervor, they sometimes reveal a more compassionate side.

The book could really use a second voice to explain efforts to win his release and to show how his family is reacting. Even at the end, many questions are left unanswered: Why did this trip go awry? Did his interpreter betray him? How did he get freed? Was a ransom paid?

If you are interested in this sort of story, a much better book is "Buried Alive," by Roy Hallums, a contractor who was kidnapped and held for months in Iraq.

Captive narratives are hardly a new genre, but there is something profoundly deep about Jere Van Dyk's ordeal recounted here that gives tremendous insight not just into his captors psyche but also into what the U.S. faces in trying to establish democracy in Afghanistan that is light years beyond typical captive narratives. Of course it doesn't hurt that Van Dyk is a journalist, but "Captive" strips away the typical journalistic objectivity in favor of a truly direct narrative of his experiences. As a longtime correspondent in Afghanistan and someone quite familiar with the fluidity of Afghani politics Van Dyk thought he could navigate the shifting sands of post-liberation Afghanistan and get the inside story from the Taliban fighters he used to cover during the Soviet occupation. What results is that Van Dyk is instead taken captive, his very existence and survival uncertain from day-to-day, subject to the whims of his captors. In the end, what Van Dyk reports of his captors, their psyches, their motivations, and their behaviors tells the reader more about Afghani society and its people than any other reporting I've read. What readers will come away with is a sense that none of the sides involved in this seemingly intractable situation seems to know what the other sides wants, nor are any of them willing to concede anything to any of the others. Readers also get a sense of the paranoia and insecurity that the Taliban operate under and how they are able to cow Afghanis into obeying their edicts. "Captive" is by turns unsettling, frightening, and illuminating in ways you are unlikely to expect. I could scarcely put it down and believe others will feel the same way. Van Dyk's result is hardly an easy read, but one you won't regret poring over!

Jere Van Dyk went through a harrowing ordeal that should be wished upon no one. This book intimately captures the raw emotions of a hostage that doesn't know what is going on, if he will live through the day, or if he will ever be released.

That said, it is a tough read. It comes as a surprise that Van Dyk is a writer, given his constant use of 3,4, and 5 word sentences. In the midst of these simple sentences come beautifully constructed full sentences that are wonderfully descriptive, so he knows how to write well when he wants to. A second complaint is his jarring and continual use of non-sequiturs by everyone he quotes - Afghan, Taliban, or American. But it's evidently how he thinks and writes. Together the short sentences and non-sequiturs make for hard reading.

From the beginning Van Dyk seems willfully ignorant of the extremely dangerous feat he's attempting. Didn't he know the fate of Danielle Mastrogiacomo, an Italian journalist taken hostage by the Taliban a year before? He certainly knows of Daniel Pearl, whom he mentions in the book.

Van Dyk is strangely naive in his belief that Pashtun cultural norms are absolute and can never be broken. He certainly deserves recognition for his deep knowledge of Afghan culture and past reporting from there, but he is shocked over and over again that Pashtuns do things he thought were forbidden by their culture. Perhaps because of this Van Dyk assigns his captors almost superhuman abilities of perception, believing that they could tell if he was genuine or not about his conversion to Islam.

He also goes native, for whatever reason, to the point of dressing like an Afghan and trying to speak the language (poorly, it turns out). Contrast Van Dyk's attempts with Paul Refsdal, a Norwegian filmmaker who spent time with the Taliban and was also held as a hostage for several days. Like Van Dyk, Refsdal had spent time with the mujahadden during the 1980s. Unlike Van Dyk, Refsdal didn't feel the need to pass as an Afghan.

Most disturbing is Van Dyk's begruding admiration for his captors and nearly univeral distrust of the Americans he interacts with on release. He even wonders where his captors spent the night after his release and if they were back in village where he was held. He is eager to prove his opposition to the U.S. efforts while in captivity and disdainful of the American Embassy compound after release. All together it makes him an unsympathetic victim.

Another reviewer is right - Roy Hallums book is better. I also recommend Danielle Mastrogiacomo's "Days of Fear" and "Out of Captivity" by Stansell, Howes and Gonsalves (held by the FARC in Colombia).

I heard about the tragic news of the death of 10 aid workers killed in Afghanistan just as I was finishing journalist Jere van Dyk's book "Captive." "Captive" is the story of Mr. van Dyk's 2008 return visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan where he set out to conduct research on the northwest tribal areas. On the way to a chieftain's home, van Dyk and three Afghanis were captured and held prisoner for several weeks.

With years of experience with the mighty pen, van Dyk is able to convey the gut-wrenching feeling psychological torture and possible death. Every day van Dyk wondered who might behead or shoot him as he pleads for his life with his captors. van Dyk repeatedly states that he wasn't physically tortured.

van Dyk's descriptive writing puts the reader into a constant state of claustrophia as the events unfold in a barbaric Afghan "structure."

"Captive" will bring you one step closer to gaining a better understanding of the Taliban and Pashtun mindset

By the author's own admission, this is not the book he set out to write. I think he was hoping to offer us insight into the people who live in this place. We do get some of that, if only obliquely, through the chaos of loyalties, both to persons and ideologies, that we experience through the almost comically strange and often inscrutable behavior of his captors - the blind obedience to Islam in some things, the trumping of Islam by tribal code in others (mostly, but not always as a matter of convenience), and the rationalizations of greed and selfishness. The conflicting loyalties, even among those in his group, are hinted at, but never really understood or resolved (hey, that's real life, I guess).

Center stage of this tale is the emotion - the frustration, the sense of injustice, and the fear the author experiences as a prisoner. It is easy to get caught up in it, but at the same time, here is a guy that went into the region knowing Daniel Pearl's story, and he seems almost surprised that he might end up in the same kind of situation. And he declines to draw any parallels to the experiences of the guys the US has hustled off to Guantanamo. The most interesting parts of the book are the exposition of the "tribal code", and explanations of how that has played out in world events, and a sentence or two of speculation as to the whereabouts of Bin Laden.

In the end, we seem to learn what we mostly already knew:
1. Americans are not especially welcome in the region, and are seen at worst as enemy spies, or at best, extortion opportunities.
2. It sucks to be held prisoner and fear for your life.
3. Various governments advise everyone to stay the hell out of the region - the author hoped his contacts there, his experience, and his profession would get him through - oops, they didn't.
4. It's kind of hard to convert to a religion under duress.

In the end, I do sympathize with his plight; I don't mean to diminish the authenticity of the experience and his skill in describing it - but I do wish I could finish the book feeling more informed than I do about the region. Maybe that is the point, that we can't know much - and we do get a vague sense of the insular society that makes this so - but this book is a long way to go for such a small degree of enlightenment. Bottom line, it's a decent play-by-play of the capture, imprisonment, and ultimate release of a guy who insisted on sticking his head into the lion's mouth.

It hard to believe this book is not available hard copy in retail book stores...I read this book AND THAN I BOUGHT IT FOR MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY.
Blew my mind. It has such politcial and ecomonic ramifications its hard to describe...The basis of Western thought and morality is turned on its head when you read this story.

Gripping, captivating ( :)), thought provoking and leaves you with a deeper understand of how some parts of our universe operate and to some degree the hopelessness of some of the US's endeavor...
Did i say i liked it....YES...its a must read...excellent for a book club.
Meticulously written, TRUE and best of all- a happy ending.....

This book is an interesting document from the front lines of the war Afghanistan, showing the messy reality of this conflict. (I like the way he notices he is in Pakistan is when the Taliban start driving on the right hand side of the road.) However captivity is dull, repetitive and scary, and that is reflected in the writing style. This would have been better as an article than a book. Dyk grows to dislike his companions, but he does not admit that he got them into that mess by paying them thousands of dollars to smuggle him into Pakistan, in order to satisfy his own desire to prove that he was still up to the challenge. Did he really think that he could pass as a Pushtun not speaking the language? Did he really think that the Pushtun code of protecting guests could protect him with all that money on the table? Dyk's own narrative shows that radical Islam was pushing aside traditional values, and that traditional Pushtun culture includes bloody rivalry between members of the same family.