Times Reporter Planned Escape for Weeks

David Rohde begins first-person account of capture, escape

(NEWSER) - New York Times reporter David Rohde begins a gripping first-person account of his 7 months as a Taliban prisoner in Afghanistan before he managed to escape. In the first of the five-part series, he writes of his capture ("I waited for the sound of gunfire. I knew I might die but remained strangely calm"), his pleas for release ("I wept, hoping it would created sympathy"), and his revelations about the Taliban ("I came to a simple realization: After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme" and ambitious the group had become). More»

(NEWSER) - A reporter for the New York Times held by the Taliban for 7 months in the tribal regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan has escaped, the paper says. The Times kept David Rohde’s abduction secret out of concern for his safety and had been in sporadic contact with him and his captors. Last night, he and a local reporter climbed over the wall of the compound where they were held and were helped to safety by a Pakistani soldier. More»

White House furious about 92K posted documents

(NEWSER) - Covert operations, hidden civilian victims of the Afghanistan War and US suspicions that Pakistan is aiding the Taliban are among the shocking secrets bared in some 92,000 leaked American military documents posted yesterday on Wikileaks . The New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel were given early access to the documents, and all three publications are running huge front-page stories on the leaked information today. Among major civilian casualties never before reported to the American public were 7 children, killed in 2007 during a raid by a secret special American operations unit called Task Force 373, according to the records. More»

(NEWSER) - It's no great secret that Pakistan's spy agency has long lent a helping hand to the Taliban, but the scale of that aid appears to be larger and more diverse than thought, the New York Times reports. The secretive ISI provides money, supplies, and help with strategic planning to the militants fighting in Afghanistan against US-led troops. ISI agents are even meeting with Taliban commanders to advise them on the scope of attacks ahead of Afghanistan's August elections. More»

Former anti-Soviet allies come back to haunt US

(NEWSER) - Behind Afghanistan’s recent escalation in violence looms three faces familiar to the US intelligence community. Mohammed Omar, founding mullah of the “Big T” Taliban government; Jalaluddin Haqqani, his one-time cabinet minister; and the ruthless Gulbuddin Hekmatyar are most responsible for leading the anti-government charge, the LA Times reports—and all three were armed and trained by the US during the Soviet invasion of the 1980s. More»