I’ve Been a Hostage Negotiator for Kidnapped Journalists Like Daniel Pearl. Here’s What I Wish Everyone Knew.

From Daniel Levin, writing in The Forward…

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Daniel Pearl, the American journalist who was kidnapped and then brutally murdered by terrorists in Pakistan on Feb. 1, 2002.

Danny’s death affected me deeply — his abduction on the way to an arranged interview at a Karachi restaurant, the kidnappers’ note that read more like a death sentence than a demand letter, his gruesome execution and the gut-wrenching video released three weeks after his death, in which he is forced to condemn American foreign policy and “confess” his Jewish heritage — shook my world.

We had met a few years earlier and discovered surprising things we had in common beyond our age: fewer than six degrees of separation. Only many years later did I learn that we shared yet another connection through our parents. Meeting Danny shaped my own life choices in ways I couldn’t yet fully appreciate at the time. Years later, when I found myself involved in cases of missing people around the world, my mind would always race back to Danny — his commitment to reporting the truth, his great promise, his intelligence and sense of humor, his effortless charisma, his impending fatherhood of a son he would never get to meet. He had, to borrow from the French author Romain Gary, la vie devant soi — a full life still awaiting him.

I have spent the past 25 years working in failed states through initiatives that usually involve mediation efforts in war zones and informal, track-3 diplomacy. Over the past decade, primarily as a result of the civil wars in the wake of the Arab Spring, I have acted repeatedly as a hostage negotiator when journalists and aid workers went missing in these war zones, in particular in Syria, Libya and Yemen.

This work has been heartbreaking not just because of the preponderance of terrible outcomes to these disappearances, but also because of the misguided and tragically uninformed actions of the missing persons’ families and governments.

The stories of kidnapped journalists in war zones often have eerily similar beginnings. Take, as an example, a case in Syria I worked on for six months. An American student studied Arabic for a few semesters in college, then moved to Damascus for a couple of years. He befriended Syrians from all over the country and improved his Arabic proficiency to the point where he could detect and mimic local accents and dialects.

He felt an urge to write about his experiences in the Middle East, wrote a few feature pieces and pitched them to various American magazines and newspapers. Unfortunately, none showed any interest, and he was beginning to have second thoughts about his career aspirations.

Just as he was about to give up on the whole journalism thing, violent protests erupted in Damascus, which quickly exploded into a full-fledged civil war. The aspiring journalist sensed an opportunity to launch his career as a war correspondent. After all, he was fluent in Arabic, had many Syrian friends and a nuanced sense of the country’s politics, history, culinary delicacies and behavioral mannerisms.

Once again, he approached American newspapers and magazines, eager to supply them with dispatches from the war front. Once again, his pitches were ignored. Eventually, he ran out of money and stamina and returned to the United States.

Back home, the young man couldn’t find his footing. His heart was still back in Syria. He wanted to write about the country, the war, the people, the suffering and also some rare moments of hope amid all the despair. He was sure that his reports would be too compelling to be ignored by the major newspapers. Desperate to try once again, he returned to Syria despite his family’s pleas.

He flew to Istanbul and traveled by bus to a small town near the Syrian border. He checked into a cheap hotel and started to look for drivers willing to take him to Syria, perhaps all the way to Aleppo, where he hoped to make contact with members of the Free Syrian Army and some aid workers. All the Turkish drivers shook their heads; even though they could use the money, none of them was crazy enough to make the trip.

On day three, two young Syrians who looked no older than sixteen approached the journalist. They told him that they had heard about his plans to go to Aleppo and offered to take him there for a modest sum. He ignored that little voice trying to warn him that perhaps this trip might not be such a good idea, and one hour later he found himself in the back seat of a Toyota, crossing from Turkey into Syria.

The two young men drove him straight to a house on the outskirts of a city called Azaz, and he was pulled out of the car by five masked men with automatic weapons. One hour after entering Syria, he was a prisoner of Jabhat Al-Nusra, the Syrian Al-Qaeda affiliate.

Thus began his nightmare, and the nightmare of his family back home in the United States.

For the rest, click here.