A Rope and a Prayer by David Rohde, Kristen Mulvihill Page B

investigations unit, is monitoring David’s biography on Wikipedia. He edits out any reference to his recent abduction. He also adds a section about David’s coverage of Guantánamo Bay prisoners and stories on injustices in the Muslim world, in the hope that it will prove to the Taliban that David is a fair and impartial journalist, motivated to tell all sides of the story. Much to our dismay, someone in cyberspace keeps trying to reedit the page to inform readers of David’s kidnapping.
    David’s editors and I begin reaching out to international advocacy groups to get their advice on whether to take the case public or keep it quiet. People from the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters without Borders, and Human Rights Watch brief us on situations with other journalists who were recently detained around the world. In most cases where the journalist has been held by a government or entity that is concerned with saving face, a public campaign has expedited the process of release. This was true for Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent who was captured by a small militant group known as the Army of Islam in Gaza in 2007. In his case, Hamas put pressure on the Army of Islam to release him. His family and the BBC waged a global campaign for his release. He was freed four months later. But it appears that in cases where captives are being held by extremists with no direct link to a specific government, remaining private has proven more successful over time. This was true in the recent case of the Canadian journalist Melissa Fung, who was kidnapped in Afghanistan earlier this year. Her employer, CBC, requested a press blackout while negotiations were being conducted for fear that media attention would complicate matters or endanger her life. She was released on November 8—two days before David’s abduction—after Afghan intelligence officials detained the kidnapper’s mother.
    One of David’s colleagues, a reporter in Kabul, expresses a strong desire to go public. We speak nightly on Skype. This, the reporter says, is what they would want if they were in David’s position. I have tremendous respect for this journalist, who is well versed in the nuances of Afghan culture. The reporter feels making the case public will pressure the Taliban to release David. The reporter tells me that most Afghans trust journalists and that recently Mullah Omar has declared that the Taliban should refrain from kidnapping journalists. The reporter thinks making a public campaign would speed David’s release. That said, the FBI and government officials believe it is difficult to gauge if, or how, the Taliban will react to public pressure. Even though we disagree, David’s colleague and I remain in close touch over the next few weeks because the bureau remains the point of contact for any initial communication from David’s captors.
    The day-to-day tasks and sense of responsibility inherent in managing the kidnapping are overwhelming, and despite many opinions offered, isolating as well. I am desperate to find someone who has navigated this emotional terrain. I immediately think of Mariane Pearl, the wife of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was abducted and killed by militants in Pakistan after 9/11. No one around me will actually say it, but everyone fears a repeat of the Daniel Pearl murder.
    A copy of Mariane’s book about her husband, A Mighty Heart , stares back at me from a bookshelf in my apartment. After days of resisting, I finally pick up the book and flip through the pages. The very last line is a quote from a story my husband wrote after visiting the site of Daniel Pearl’s imprisonment and execution in Pakistan. It is taken from his news account of the July 4, 2003, attack on a Shiite mosque in Quetta, led by the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, in which forty-eight worshippers were killed or mortally wounded. “Saying nothing, looking ‘very relaxed’ walking ‘here and there’ in the words of