A New York Times reporter kidnapped by the Taleban in 2008 and held for seven months in Pakistan said late Saturday he had underestimated Taleban's extremism and the strength of its supporters in Pakistan. “Over those months, I came to a simple realization,” the reporter, David Rohde, wrote about his ordeal. “After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taleban had become.” He said that before the kidnapping, he viewed the organization as a form of “Al-Qaeda lite,” a religiously motivated movement primarily focused on controlling Afghanistan. But after spending time in captivity, he said he had realized that the goal of the hard-line Taleban was far more ambitious. “They wanted to create a fundamentalist ... emirate with Al-Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world,” the writer noted. “But I was astonished by what I encountered firsthand: a Taleban mini-state that flourished openly and with impunity,” Rohde pointed out. He said all along the main roads in North and South Waziristan, outposts had been abandoned and replaced by Taleban checkpoints where young militants detained anyone lacking a Kalashnikov rifle and the right Taleban password. “We heard explosions echo across North Waziristan as my guards and other Taleban fighters learned how to make roadside bombs that killed American and NATO troops,” the reporter wrote. “And I found the tribal areas – widely perceived as impoverished and isolated – to have superior roads, electricity and infrastructure compared with what exists in much of Afghanistan.”
