Jere Van Dyk has reported on Afghanistan since the 1970s and has written extensively about the nation's evolution from a hippie haven to a battleground for the war on terror. His most recent book is The Trade: My Journey into the Labyrinth of Political Kidnapping, which details his search for answers after being kidnapped by the Taliban in 2008. Van Dyk talks about his years in a surprisingly progressive Afghanistan in the early 1970s and the United States’ funding of the mujahideen in the 1970s and 1980s with the hopes of turning Afghanistan into the Soviet Union's Vietnam. He also discusses harrowing experience of being held captive by the Taliban and explains why he returned to the country years later in spite of great personal risk.
KCRW
