Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Van Dyk's gripping follow-up to Captive-a memoir about his 2008 abduction in Afghanistan-probes the machinations of the criminals, terrorists, and governments behind his ordeal. The book's tense, sinister first part covers his pre-kidnapping travels to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to interview Taliban figures and terrorists, a journey that required shadowy Afghan fixers to negotiate safe passage from tribal leaders and militants and ended in betrayal and his six-week captivity. Subsequent chapters follow his post-release struggle to learn who kidnapped him and why. It's a hard slog to pry loose information, taking Van Dyk to the White House, the FBI, and the security consultants and Afghan power brokers who negotiated his release (some of whom may have orchestrated his kidnapping). The answers he gets are often enigmatic, but they paint a portrait of a burgeoning trade in hostages compounded from gangsterism, ideology, clan vendettas, and the subterfuges of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which supports the Taliban while Washington pretends ignorance. Like a Le Carré novel, Van Dyk's narrative conjures disorientation, danger, and paranoia as he ponders the hidden motives of the smiling, solicitous men he encounters, all the while conveying his deep-seated anguish. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A former hostage of the Taliban continues the story begun with Captive (2010), digging deeper into the circumstances of his kidnapping.Van Dyk, a longtime student of Afghan history who had reported on the war against the Soviet invaders 35-plus years ago, returned in 2008 to report on the Taliban and their links with al-Qaida. He was taken captive in the mountainous country beyond the border with Pakistan and threatened with death unless certain prisoners at Guantnamo were freed or, failing that, the delivery of a large cash ransom. None of these things materialized, it seems, but he was freed. In this book, Van Dyk probes how it was that he was let go and who the actors were, players in what he calls "the Trade, the growing international business of political kidnappings, according to the US Treasury the most lucrative source of income, outside of state sponsorship, for illegal groups." Inevitably, all paths point back to Pakistani military intelligence, without whose sanction, Van Dyk charges, the kidnapping would not have happened. The author can be winningly rueful, as when he recounts the exuberance that led him to Afghanistan in the first place. "I wanted to be with the Taliban, not just because I was curious about their faith," he writes, "but because they represented a chance to do something worthwhile, and because they were an echo of the warmth of the mujahideen and that earlier, exciting time when I lived with them. It was the lure of the wild." Van Dyk also examines the cases of others who were kidnapped at about the same time, such as a New York Times journalist whom the Taliban called "the Red Rooster," just as they had called Van Dyk "Golden Goose"meaning, in both instances, a source of ready cash; they were certainly luckier than those who, like Daniel Pearl, were murdered. Anyone with an interest in the geopolitics of the global war on terrorism will find value in this account. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
IN THE OLD DAYS-before Al Qaeda, before the Islamic State - the worst thing that could happen to a foreign correspondent was getting shot by a sniper or blown up by a land mine or mortar. But since 9/11, there has been a rise in the targeting of journalists for ransom or propaganda by violent nonstate actors. The Committee to Protect Journalists estimates that in the Middle East/North Africa region alone there have been more than 100 kidnappings since 2013. And that figure does not take into account non-press abductions - of businessmen, locals, engineers working for oil companies. In some parts of Latin America, for instance, kidnapping and ransom negotiation is so common that one former C.I.A. agent once said there is "effectively a functioning market with transparent prices, like a stock exchange." By the time he was kidnapped in 2008, Jere Van Dyk was already an Afghan expert - having made his first trip with his younger brother in 1973, returning in 1981 to report on the Soviet- Afghan war for The New York Times, and covering the region for CBS News after 9/11. He was held in captivity for 45 days by the Taliban before being released. "The Trade" is not about his imprisonment, but about his tenacious attempt to unravel precisely who ensnared him "like a fish onto a hook." Van Dyk writes about his voyage into the depths of this opaque world from a well of sorrow, shame and regret. Never has a man been so burdened since Christian, the narrator of John Bunyan's allegory "The Pilgrim's Progress," began his own arduous journey. Van Dyk is a methodical and sensitive reporter, and his emotions are made vivid. Like many released hostages, he feels guilt for those who did not make it out alive. There is further remorse for those individuals - some he did not know - who worked hard to release him. He is wounded by the pain he caused his elderly father, sister, brother and other loved ones. He feels ashamed that CBS, which worked tirelessly to get his release, found him, only a few years later, to be a "remnant from the past," and fired him. "The Trade" is about what happens in the "second life" you live after you have been released (here he quotes another American hostage, Steven Sotloff, who was captured and killed in Aleppo a few years ago). Unlike other hostages, Van Dyk does not return a wounded hero. CBS orders Van Dyk not to write or talk about his ordeal, supposedly to protect other correspondents in the field, but perhaps also to hide its own involvement in procuring the ransom money. The F.B.I. hovers menacingly. Given the extensive Rolodex of Taliban contacts Van Dyk has gathered over the years, thanks to the "essential" Afghan tenet that "the only way forward was for one man to introduce me to another," it's inevitable that the F.B.I. tries to use him to glean information about them. Van Dyk is vulnerable and weakened, and clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Initially, he trusts the agency to do the right thing. It's a mistake. A creepy "therapist" tries to unravel his trauma, but she ends up being needier than her patient, as well as manipulative and controlling. He is troubled by the knowledge of those who worked hard to save him to "prevent a second Daniel Pearl," the Wall Street Journal reporter captured and killed by Pakistani terrorists in 2002. So he travels to Los Angeles to meet Pearl's parents, and the journey proves yet another test of his bravery - "it was easier to cross the mountains into Pakistan than to come here." Van Dyk repeatedly mentions his childhood - he was brought up in the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church in the American West - and there ensues an affecting scene in which the Pearls absolve him of his bad conscience for living while their son did not. Along his quest to piece together what happened to him, Van Dyk meets with other families of former captives. He feels ruthlessly betrayed - by colleagues, and also, in a sense, by himself. (As an expert in Pashtun culture, he felt he knew the Taliban well enough to understand their ways and motives. How and why did this happen to him?) He feels "like Daniel in the Lion's Den, to stand alone, for God, against the world, and to not be afraid," he writes. "It would take me a lifetime to learn about physical courage, in that cell in the mountains, longer still to learn about moral courage." At the heart of this frustrating yet poignant book is the dangerous reality that there exists no solid, consistent global policy regarding ransom payments. We believe that the French, the Italians and the Japanese pay for the release of their hostages (though they all deny it), but even that is debatable. Before I leftfor Chechnya in 2000 for The Times of London, I was told by British government officials that if I were taken, they would not negotiate for me for fear of incentivizing further kidnapping. Privately, however, I was told that a wealthy Russian friend of my newspaper's owner would "bail me out" if necessary. Under United States law, it is also illegal for anyone to pay a ransom to groups the State Department deems terrorist organizations, like the Islamic State. The same held true for those of us working in Syria. As Frank Smyth, a security expert for the Committee to Protect Journalists, sums it up: "The U.S. and U.K. have policies of not paying ransoms to kidnappers," whereas "many continental European governments have no such policy." Although many authorities denied it, after the release of several European journalists who were held captive with James Foley, the American hostage murdered in 2014 by the Islamic State along with Sotloff, different news sources reported that their governments apparently paid ransoms. Van Dyk chronicles this phenomenon of underground hostage negotiations, which he calls "the work of ghosts," and each of his successive trips back to the region to retrace his footsteps gets murkier, more convoluted. Reading "The Trade," I was often stymied by the lengthy and ultimately baffling "cast of characters" to which he constantly refers. The list of Afghan and Pakistani individuals he encounters - drivers, "fixers," office managers, friends of friends - grows so extended that the reader becomes increasingly confused. Chapters are devoted to interviews with various men who provide different versions of his story. It begins to make "Rashomon" seem lucid. This, of course, is in many ways the point of the book: to demonstrate the lack of clear information, the false starts, the blinding confusion, the ill treatment of hostages and their families by officials. A bungled White House attempt to discover how to help families is a disaster. "We got no help from the government," says Paula Somers, whose freelance-photographer son, Luke, was murdered in 2014 by Al Qaeda in Yemen. "In fact, it told us to be silent. I asked why and they told us not to tell other family members or close friends that Luke had been taken hostage." One begins to fear for Van Dyk's sanity as he finds no balm for his pain. On his repeated trips to Afghanistan post-release, he is told countless times, "You've come back here? You're insane." Others urge him to end his quest. "My advice is that you leave immediately," one contact warns him. There is much to admire in Van Dyk's character: his perseverance, the stark pioneer spirit honed in his youth, his desire to seek the truth. But, unlike the stricken Christian, Van Dyk does not reach his Celestial City. There is no redemption, no deliverance. He is courageous, but his book lacks any conclusion; we are leftwith no recommendations for a more cohesive policy toward governments and kidnappers. There is no happy ending to Van Dyk's tale. Perhaps, in the grim world of "The Trade," there never will be. You begin to fear for a former hostage's sanity as he finds no balm for his pain. JANINE DI GIOVANNI is the author, most recently, of "The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches From Syria," and an Edward R. Murrow fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Library Journal Review
Journalist Van Dyk was abducted and held for ransom by the Taliban in 2008. He was released after 45 days. This book is a follow-up to his previous work Captive, which chronicled his kidnapping. Van Dyk uses this volume as a way to heal old wounds and try to find the reasons why he was abducted but then survived. In 2014, Van Dyk returned to Afghanistan to investigate the circumstances that led to his capture. He began to unravel the interconnectedness of how the Taliban operates vis-à-vis Pakistan. He hit road blocks and dead ends to finding who ultimately betrayed him to the Taliban. The narrative is suspenseful and not a light read but reveals a world where problems continue to persist for the United States 16 years after 9/11. This volume can be nicely tied to Aaron B. O'Connell's Our Latest Longest War. VERDICT Recommended for readers who want to understand better current affairs in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for fans of real-life mysteries.-Jacob -Sherman, John Peace Lib., Univ. of Texas at San Antonio © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.