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David Rohde: There Are More Kidnapped Journalists Still in Pakistan
Why Did Nobody Pick Up The David Rohde Kidnapping Story?
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TheSometimesWhy
11/13/09

In reply to David Rohde: There Are More Kidnapped Journalists Still in Pakistan
Mr. Rohde's situation in this video is a lot like the one he faced when held captive. The picture he painted of that experience was a dark and undecipherable as you can imagine. His insight that our view of the Taliban as some static organization is wholly inaccurate was chilling. It seems to be an ever-changing mass, coming together almost transactionally, and then spinning itself into its next iteration. This kind of inherent confusion was buttressed by the realization that the man who kidnapped Rohde was the man he was supposed to interview, a fact he didn't come into possession of until well into his captivity.

I don't know what a shit storm looks like, but the more I read about Afghanistan/Pakistan and the marauding hordes that rule its nether regions, I am definitely getting an image.

And it is not pretty. #davidrohde
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Adah
11/13/09

@TheSometimesWhy: It frustrates me when Rohde gives the impression that everyone thinks of the Taliban as a strict hierarchy. I know that when I was in Afghanistan, none of the people I worked with thought of it that way, and we all worked to get a better understanding of the various networks and the differing operational methods between each. For Rohde to come back and say how foolish we all are, and please, let him tell us how it really is, is incredibly irritating. #davidrohde
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TheSometimesWhy
11/13/09

@Adah: I appreciate your frustration, but what if what he is reporting is accurate in the sense that our perceptions are inherently flawed because the thing we are trying to perceive defies static perception? That it is morphing every day into something that defies categorization, let alone a coherent policy for engaging militarily.

I, for one, wouldn't want Mr. Rohde's job, not so much for the obvious danger posed but because the act of communicating what he is learning as the result of being embedded as he is has to be beyond comprehension to most people. #davidrohde
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Adah
11/13/09

@TheSometimesWhy: Well, of course the insurgency is constantly changing. But from reading Mr. Rohde's five part series from a few weeks ago, I'm not sure his understanding of it is as great as he thinks it is. He was kept in various rooms for seven months, and his main source of information appears to come from the low level men guarding him. The appearances of high level leaders in Rohde's narrative were remarkable because, by his own admission, they were fairly rare. Now, who knows, maybe when his book inevitably comes out, I'll be proven wrong and Rohde will reveal some remarkable details from these conversations with high level leaders. But he certainly didn't have anything terribly revealing in his Times piece that hasn't been said better and with a greater understanding in many other books. #davidrohde
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TheSometimesWhy
11/13/09

@Adah: I don't see how you can take issue with Mr. Rohde for the lack of high-level leaders being conspicuously absent from his narrative. I dare say he was playing the cards he was dealt, so to speak. I think you're losing sight of the fact that his core mission was to interview the man who ultimately kidnapped him as part of an on-going series of reports. A reporter in the field functioning as Mr. Rohde did is per force sending back a mosaic of what he sees. Over-arching analysis isn't the immediate by-product of the kind of reportage he was responsible for. He is essentially a scout, hopefully a very insightful, well-informed one, but given the environmental obstacles to performing that task, i.e., staying alive, I think he did yeoman's work. What his pieces as they appeared in the NYTs revealed was the insanity of our presence there as currently constituted.

I would hope that people like yourself would wait for Mr. Rohde to have the luxury of some time to distill the sheer viscerality of that experience, and then see what analysis he puts forth. Given what he has been through, it not only seems fair but necessary if we are going to learn anything beyond what he has already imparted. #davidrohde
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Adah
11/13/09

@TheSometimesWhy: I think it's unlikely that he got the larger picture of how the insurgency functions from talking to some guards. I understand he goes in for a mosaic piece, but you seem to think this will contribute to ground-breaking changes in how we view the Taliban and the Haqqani Network. I disagree. Rohde went in with an outdated and inaccurate impression of Afghan culture and local Taliban politics. That's what got him kidnapped - that and his threat assessment appeared to be limited to asking the advice of one French reporter who'd interviewed the same Taliban leader a few years ago. Rohde failed to update his own understanding of how the Taliban works. I'm not sure that reflects on the U.S. government's or even better informed citizens and reporters' impression of the Taliban.

I would recommend Seth Jones's book In the Graveyard of Empires for a much better understanding of our situation in Afghanistan right now, and how our actions along with local Pashtun culture and history have contributed to the rise of the insurgency in the last few years.

[www.amazon.com] #davidrohde
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gawkimo
11/13/09

@Adah: Bollocks. Most Afghanis aren't kosher with the Taliban's world view. The Taliban are a foreign influence on Afghanistan from the tribal regions. In the 1970s Afghanistan was a place where hippies used to go to listen to live music and smoke hash. Afghans don't burn down girls schools, the influence of outside Islamist forces (and first-world foreign occupiers) have led to that.
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Edited by gawkimo at 11/13/09 7:08 PM gawkimo was starred gawkimo was unstarred

Adah
11/13/09

@gawkimo: In the cities, sure. But the country has always been more traditional and rural, even predating the Soviet invasion. The Afghan monarchy basically controlled the large cities and left huge areas of the population for the local tribes to control. When the Soviets invaded, and during the war that followed, those middle and creative classes left the country en masse, most never to return. Those cities are all a lot less hippie-ish today. About one million fled to Iran, about three million to Pakistan. The Taliban emerged out of those Pakistani refugee camps along the border, from Peshawer down to Balochistan. In that instance, I suppose you're right, but the Taliban was always a Pashtun power, and in some ways that's more important than what side of the border it originated on. Most Pashtuns consider the Pashtun area of Pakistan to practically be part of Afghanistan anyway. In addition, many of these insurgents were already radicalized in the 1970s. It's not al Al Qaeda coming in and changing the poor defenseless Pashtun people. See Gulbuddin Hekmatyr in the 1970s and 1980s.

I didn't mean to imply that all Afghans are Taliban sympathizers. In this you are correct. But they're a lot more scared of the Taliban than they are of us. If the Taliban (and I'm using Taliban as shorthand for the various insurgent networks active in Afghanistan) tells them to never breathe a word when Americans are around or they'll kill their family, you can bet they're not going to be overly helpful. On top of this, the rural areas are still much more conservative and more likely to be sympathetic to the Taliban than they are to us. Our COIN strategy, if we choose to keep following it, has us supposedly withdrawing from these areas as they are so hard to control. These are the areas where you get your battles of Wanat or battle at COP Keating. #davidrohde
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Edited by Adah at 11/13/09 7:34 PM Adah was starred Adah was unstarred

gawkimo
11/13/09

@Adah: Even in the traditional, rural countryside: they don't like the Taliban any more than the foreign occupiers. These are tribal folks who will side with anyone (Muslim or otherwise) who a.) Leave them alone and b.) pay them more. These folks don't sympathize with the Taliban for being "more conservative" -- they sympathize with anyone who adheres to a.) and b.). #davidrohde
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gawkimo
11/13/09

@Adah: I would also point out that the Mughal Empire basically began in Afghanistan (well, Samarkand, but mostly in what we call Afghanistan today) and those Muslims drank alcohol and depicted Muhammad in paintings. Afghanistan is not the Whahabbist Kingdom we portray it to be. They are moderates when it come to religion -- they are radicals when it come to foreign intervention -- we can thank the Russians for that. #davidrohde
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Cecil's Wielder
11/13/09

In reply to David Rohde: There Are More Kidnapped Journalists Still in Pakistan
But who is going to play him in the movie adaptation?! #davidrohde
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gawkimo
06/21/09

In reply to Why Did Nobody Pick Up The David Rohde Kidnapping Story?
NYT reporters are protected by the advanced technology of the NYT press badge. It's bulletproof, you know.
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abettertomorrow
06/21/09

In reply to Why Did Nobody Pick Up The David Rohde Kidnapping Story?
Why would reporters and editors heed Bill Keller? Occam's razor - because they think he can give them a job, or keep them from getting a job.
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Foster Kamer
06/21/09

@abettertomorrow: Eh. Somehow I don't think Gabriel's angling for a job at the Times anytime soon. What if they were just acting in good fatih?
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abettertomorrow
06/21/09

@Foster Kamer: I'm in no way suggesting this wasn't the right thing to do.

Just that in the search for an explanation, there's not a lot of difference between this case and others in which publishers, editors and reporters have decided that the 'newsworthiness of the information' or the 'public right to now' is more important than the individual's needs.

So rather than split hairs, worth at least exploring the reasonable assumption that the actual individuals who made these decisions did so because it was a friend of a friend of a friend, or a potential employer saw the Times publisher occassionally at events, etc.

It's not venal, it's just human nature and worth discussing I think.
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PandoraSpocks
06/20/09

In reply to Why Did Nobody Pick Up The David Rohde Kidnapping Story?
Indeed. As the current situation in Iran suggests, there is no need to jeopardize the lives of reporters when hundreds of people on the scene can Rweet, upload and cell phone cam the story straight to CNN.
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PandoraSpocks
06/20/09

@PandoraSpocks: That's TWEET. Jackass.You never could proof.
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Lulupasternak
06/20/09

In reply to Why Did Nobody Pick Up The David Rohde Kidnapping Story?
Well, Current might be smaller, but it's got big names (and access to more) behind it. And unless Rhode's got some female relative with daily access to electronic media that no one knows about, I'd say the NYT was right. Also, Rhode was kidnapped. Ling and Lee, perhaps on orders from their overlords or perhaps over-zealously, appear to have actually broken a North Korean law, unwittingly or by design. Not that their trials and sentences aren't to be condemned.

And Rhode has yet to be called a "boy" in any press account.
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Foster Kamer
06/20/09

@Lulupasternak:

And Rhode has yet to be called a "boy" in any press account.

Nice. I can't give gold stars, but you'd get one for that.
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Grim Reaper of the Forest
06/22/09

@Lulupasternak: My boss this weekend referred to them as "two 20-year old girls snapping pictures who had gotten into trouble". Given my response to him, I'm glad I didn't get fired.
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