The Trade: My Journey Into The Labyrinth of Political Kidnapping
Channel: New America
Date: 12/10/2017

In 2008, Jere Van Dyk traveled to Afghanistan to research and write a book on the Taliban. While doing so, he was taken hostage and held for 45 days by people he believed at the time to be the Taliban. Van Dyk was told little about his kidnapping by his employer, the FBI, and various private contractors. Haunted by the secrecy, he chose to return to Afghanistan in 2014 to find the truth of who took him and why. 

In his new book The Trade: My Journey into the Labyrinth of Political Kidnapping, Van Dyk explores not only the story of his kidnapping and release, but the larger story of the “Trade,” the business that has emerged around kidnapping in which terrorists and governments negotiate with no formal lines of communication. 

Jere Van Dyk is a journalist and the author of The Trade: My Journey Into the Labyrinth of Political Kidnapping, Captive, in which he tells the story of his capture and imprisonment by the Taliban in 2008, and In Afghanistan: An American Odyssey. Van Dyk has written for many publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and National Geographic and has traveled in Afghanistan since the 1970s. 

Follow the discussion online using #TheTrade and following @NewAmericaISP. 

Copies of the book will be available for sale by credit or check. 

Lunch will be provided.

Participant: 

Jere Van Dyk 
Author, The Trade: My Journey Into the Labyrinth of Political Kidnapping 

Moderator: 

Peter Bergen, @PeterBergenCNN
Vice President, New America

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