Vancouver native Jere Van Dyk set out two years ago to write a book about the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
His connections — including three months with Afghan mujahedeen fighting Soviet invaders in 1981 — would get him into places where no other reporter could go. He’d get an inside look at what was happening in that region.
He never wrote that book. But Van Dyk has a new book that hit the stores this week, and its title explains what happened in 2008. The book is “Captive: My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban.”
Van Dyk, 64, and three Afghan companions had barely started their trek into the mountains when they were captured by a band of Taliban fighters.
? What: Jere Van Dyk's book tour.
? When: 7 to 10 p.m. Thursday, July 15.
? Where: On the grounds of the Fort Vancouver National Site at Hamilton Hall (the old Red Cross Building), 605 Barnes Road, in the West Barracks.
? What: Jere Van Dyk’s book tour.
? When: 7 to 10 p.m. Thursday, July 15.
? Where: On the grounds of the Fort Vancouver National Site at Hamilton Hall (the old Red Cross Building), 605 Barnes Road, in the West Barracks.
They spent 45 days locked inside a room in a house in a remote village. Van Dyk found himself wondering if this was the day his captors would shoot him or cut off his head. That was the fate of Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded in 2002.
In his book, Van Dyk recounted how he and his companions discussed another possibility: trying to kill their captors.
“After two years, it’s hard to imagine this is what I was thinking,” Van Dyk said last week as he looked back on his imprisonment. “I didn’t think when I was crossing the mountains that what I was doing was suicidal. It never entered my mind.
“When my two bodyguards said if they torture us, we have to kill them … I knew my life has changed. I have to kill those people, or they will kill me. It’s not something you think about in normal life,” said Van Dyk, a 1964 graduate of Hudson’s Bay High School and a former University of Oregon running star.
The incident was settled without bloodshed when Van Dyk was released on April 2, 2008. Two hours later, he was under the protection of FBI agents at a U.S. base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
Gained perspective
The experience was not what he had in mind when he started. Was it worth what he had to endure?
“Ultimately, yes,” Van Dyk judged. “They didn’t kill me.”
“I had to go through this experience and come out the other side. I’d never wish it on anybody, and I’d never wish to repeat it,” he said by phone from New York City. “But it’s given me a great deal, an opportunity now to talk and express things in a way I never could have done before.”
It’s also given Van Dyk some perspective to go along with his extensive background in that part of the world. In 1981, Van Dyk spent three months with Afghan resistance fighters, which led to the book “In Afghanistan: An American Odyssey.”
He established ties with people who went on to become tribal and political leaders in that region. After 9/11, Van Dyk made several reporting trips to Afghanistan for CBS News.
And in 2006, he served as a consultant for the Tom Hanks film “Charlie Wilson’s War,” an account of the Afghan-Soviet war. That led to his 2008 journey into the tribal badlands.
During filming in 2006 in Morocco, Van Dyk became intrigued with the death of Pat Tillman, a former pro football player who gave up NFL fame and fortune to become a U.S. Army Ranger. Tillman was killed in combat, by what turned out to be friendly fire.
As an athlete and Army veteran himself who had connections in Afghanistan, Van Dyk decided to learn more.
“I went to Pat Tillman’s father, and he gave me all the information he could. I made arrangements with Afghans to go to where Pat Tillman was killed, get the Afghan point of view.
“I was in Taliban country, I was dressed as an Afghan for the first time since the early 1980s,” Van Dyk said. He decided to undertake an in-depth expedition for a book about the Taliban region.
“I saw I can do this. I want to do this. With my knowledge and ability,” Van Dyk told himself, “I’ve got to do this.”
Looking back at it now, “I was driven,” he said. “I was consumed with the idea of crossing over the mountains, into these different areas no one else was going. I felt I was the only person who could do it, based on my background, contacts, experience and ability to blend in and knowing how to dress and act.
“The more time passed, the more paranoid, the more frightened, the more blinded by ambition I became. I forgot this old adage from Kipling, ‘Here lies a fool who tried to hustle the East.’ It takes weeks and weeks to set these things up. The Taliban doesn’t trust anybody; I don’t trust the Taliban. It takes time.”
But, he realized later, “I was consumed by my deadline. I made many attempts over a period of months. Each time, I was scared to death.”
After being told that everything finally was in place, Van Dyk set out with three Afghans on Feb. 16, 2008. The group was captured that night, after crossing into Pakistan.
45 days in cell
In his book, Van Dyk writes about his 45 days inside the dirt-floored cell. His captors told him to convert to Islam. They had Van Dyk tape a message on his recorder with their demands. They had Van Dyk go through his notebook and give them contact numbers so they could call and send faxes to his friends and employer.
They also got his phone number. When he returned home to New York, three messages from the Taliban were on his recorder.
“The first three were almost friendly, calling me Mr. Jere. Letting me know, perhaps, that they knew where I was.”
They were wondering if he had converted to Islam, and if he’d talked with the government.
“The 40 or so that I have received since then seem to have come, most of them, from my interpreter. One, a few weeks ago, was a direct threat. In others, he seemed to be asking for money, complaining that his life was in danger. I can see the number on my cell phone and know where it comes from. The last call was a week ago. The FBI has advised me not to take the calls, not to call him back. I have followed their advice.”
Van Dyk wrote a 724-page book about the experience — it was cut to 269 pages — but there still is so much he doesn’t know.
He doesn’t know if one of his Afghan companions led him in to a trap.
He’s not sure where he was imprisoned, or why he was released.
“Part of me is happy not to know; part of me wants to know,” Van Dyk said. “But it’s been completely shut down. The FBI said every asset available was brought into play.
“They wouldn’t even tell me whether a Predator hovering above us for hours on end was looking for me or looking for Taliban to kill, because they didn’t have a clue about where I was.
“I have no idea what negotiations were going on. The only thing I know for sure, my brother and sister said they didn’t take out loans” to put together a ransom payment, he said. “And there was no prisoner exchange.”
The FBI and State Department were in touch with Van Dyk’s brother and sister almost daily, he said. But his siblings decided they wouldn’t let their father know.
“He was 94 at the time and they felt it would kill him.”
Still …
“When I came back to Vancouver, I was standing in the kitchen talking to my father.”
Out of the blue, Bill Van Dyk asked his son, “Do you have to go back there?”
“I looked at him, standing across the kitchen, and we both knew what ‘there’ meant. It was so eerie, ” Van Dyk said.
“I said no.
“He said, ‘Can they come and get you here?’
“I said no,” said Van Dyk, who seemed to be fighting back tears as he recalled the conversation.
“I don’t know if it was instinct, or what. A couple of people in Vancouver we went to church with knew. Did someone say something?
“About two days later, I told him what had happened. He died a week later,” Van Dyk said. “I think a part of him was able to die knowing his children were back, safe.”
Tom Vogt: 360-735-4558 or tom.vogt@columbian.com.
