David Rohde
The New York Times

Citation
In a riveting five-part series in The New York Times, David Rohde described how he and two Afghan colleagues were kidnapped by the Taliban outside Kabul and held for seven months before he and one of his colleagues escaped on foot to a Pakistani military base. Rohde was initially reluctant to write about his experience, telling his editors, "I don't want to make myself look like a hero. I am not a hero." But he bravely used his captivity to illuminate for readers the world and minds of terrorists who repeatedly threatened to behead him and to provide insights into what Rohde termed a "Taliban mini-state" in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Excerpt
I tried to get to know one of the guards, who was preparing to be a suicide bomber. A young man in his 20s with a slim build and brown eyes, he said he had studied engineering in high school. He never attended college but was relatively well educated compared with the other fighters. When I asked him why he wanted to die, he replied that living in this world was a burden for any true Muslim. Heaven was his goal, he said. Earthly relationships with his parents and siblings did not matter.

He spoke a smattering of English, and my own beliefs seemed to interest and amaze him. During our six weeks together, he asked me a series of questions. Was it true, he asked, that a necktie was a secret symbol of Christianity? Was it true that Christians wanted to live 1,000 years?

As the weeks passed, our captivity became increasingly surreal. My Taliban guards slept beneath bedspreads manufactured by a Pakistani textile company and emblazoned with characters from the American television show "Hannah Montana" and the movie "Spider-Man." My blanket was a pink Barbie comforter.

During our months in Miram Shah, patterns emerged. When certain commanders visited, the atmosphere was tense, and discussions centered on what they saw as Western injustices against Muslims. When we were alone with the guards who lived with us, moments of levity emerged.

They searched for ways to break the monotony. After dinner on many winter nights, my guards sang Pashto songs for hours. My voice and Pashto pronunciation were terrible, but our guards urged me to sing along. The ballads varied. On some evenings, I found myself reluctantly singing Taliban songs that declared that "you have atomic bombs, but we have suicide bombers."

On other nights, at my guards' urging, I switched to American tunes. In a halting, off-key voice, I sang Frank Sinatra's version of "New York, New York" and described it as the story of a villager who tries to succeed in the city and support his family. I sang Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" and described it as a portrayal of the struggles of average Americans.

I realized that my guards, too, might have needed a break from our grim existence. But I felt like a performing monkey when they told me to sing for visiting commanders. I knew they were simply laughing at me.

I intentionally avoided American love songs, trying to dispel their belief that all Americans were hedonists. Despite my efforts, romantic songs - whatever their language - were the guards' favorites.

The Beatles song "She Loves You," which popped into my head soon after I received my wife's letter from the Red Cross, was the most popular. For reasons that baffled me, the guards relished singing it with me. I began by singing its first verse. My three Taliban guards, along with Tahir and Asad, then joined me in the chorus. "She loves you - yeah, yeah, yeah," we sang, with Kalashnikovs lying on the floor around us.


Biography
David Rohde has been a reporter in investigative news at The New York Times since August 2005. In addition to working on investigative projects, he also covered breaking stories for the foreign desk during that period in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, the 2007 Musharraf state of emergency and the 2008 Pakistani national elections.

From July 2002 until he joined the investigations group, Mr. Rohde served as the newspaper's South Asia co-bureau chief in New Delhi, covering Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. He also covered the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, the 2002 Israeli incursion into the West Bank, the 2001 American invasion of Afghanistan and the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo for the foreign desk. Mr. Rohde joined The New York Times in October 1996.

From 1994 to 1996, Mr. Rohde was The Christian Science Monitor's Eastern Europe Correspondent and covered the war in Bosnia. From 1993 to 1994, he worked as a suburban correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer. From 1991 to 1992, he covered the failed Soviet coup, elections in Syria and May Day celebrations in Cuba. He began his career as a production secretary at ABC News in 1990.

In 2009, Mr. Rhode was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for coverage of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He won the 2009 Polk Award for foreign reporting and the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) Distinguished Writing Award for Nondeadline Writing for "Held by the Taliban," a five-part, first-person account of his kidnapping ordeal in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2001 he received a Society of the Silurians award for an investigative series he co-wrote on the poor quality of court-appointed lawyers for the poor in New York City.

In 1996, a series of articles that Mr. Rohde wrote for The Christian Science Monitor on the mass execution of 7,000 Bosnian Muslims following the fall of the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for foreign reporting. The series also received George Polk, Livingston, Sigma Delta Chi, Overseas Press Club, Paul Tobenkin and Investigative Reporters and Editors awards.

Mr. Rohde is the author of Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1997).

Born on Aug. 7, 1967, Mr. Rohde grew up in New England and is a graduate of Fryeburg Academy in Fryeburg, Me., and Brown University in Providence, R.I.