Jere Van Dyk

Jere Van Dyk is a journalist and author who has focused much of his writing on far-away, mostly dangerous places, particularly Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In college, he was on the U.S. Pan American Track and Field Team, in the 800 meters. In 1970, while in the U.S. Army, he won the world military track and field championships in the 1500 meters, and later was on the U.S. National Team and carried the American flag in the closing ceremonies of the U.S. vs. Russia Track and Field Meet in Leningrad, today St. Petersburg, during the Cold War. In 1972, he was a finalist in the 1500 meters in the U.S. Olympic Trials.

In the early 1980s, he lived, as a correspondent for The New York Times, with the Mujahideen (holy warriors) in Afghanistan as they fought against the Soviet Red Army, an experience that was recapped in his Pulitzer Prize-nominated articles. In 1987, National Geographic Magazine asked him to travel the length of the Brahmaputra River and to find its source. He began at the mouth in the Bay of Bengal, followed the river up through India and west across Tibet, finally with nomad guides, to the source in a glacier behind Mt. Kailas. In 1991, National Geographic asked him to travel the length of the Amazon River and to find its source. He began at the mouth in the Atlantic Ocean and traveled upstream on a series of boats and on horseback, with guides, into the Andes and hiked alone, as in Tibet, to the source.

After 9/11, he returned to Afghanistan for CBS News to report on the U.S.-led war. In 2006 and in 2007, he became the only journalist to go up into the mountains near the Pakistani border to the site where Pat Tillman, U.S. Army Ranger and former Arizona Cardinals football star, was killed in 2004. In September 2007, on a contract with Times Books, he hiked from Afghanistan into the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, off-limits to foreigners, considered a blank space on the map, the headquarters of al-Qaida and the Taliban. In 2008, he was captured in Bajaur Agency, in the Tribal Areas, by the Taliban, and taken up into the mountains and held for 45 days. This harrowing experience is detailed in his book “Captive: My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban,” which Foreign Affairs selected in 2010 as one of its “Must-Read Books for the World Ahead.”

From 2013 – 2015, Jere Van Dyk traveled through the greater Middle East and South Asia as an adjunct senior at the Council on Foreign Relations on a contract researching the Haqqani Network, ISIS, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, their links to governments and to one another. During this time, he returned to Afghanistan and Pakistan to find out who really kidnapped him and why. He became the only journalist to meet with the leadership of the Haqqani Network since before 9/11, after which he wrote “The Trade—My Journey into the Labyrinth of Political Kidnapping,” which was published in October 2017. It was reviewed in The Sunday New York Times Book Review on 12/24/17 and picked as an Editors’ Choice.

Jere Van Dyk has appeared on a multitude of broadcast networks, including: BBC, CBS, CNN, Christiane Amanpour, National Public Radio (Fresh Air) WABC, WNBC, al-Jazeera, C-Span, FOX Radio, RT, VOA, Jon Stewart, Morning Joe, and Charlie Rose. He has given talks around the country and overseas, including at the U.S. State Department, the Carnegie Council, the Carnegie Corporation, New America Foundation, Google, Microsoft, World Affairs Councils, public schools, universities, security companies, and private organizations.

In 2014 and 2015, following the murder of American hostages, Jim Foley, Stephen Sotloff, Peter Kassig and Kaila Mueller, by the Islamic State, Van Dyk, with other former hostages, worked with the White House and the National Counterterrorism Center on a new U.S. hostage policy. Since then, he, independently, drawing on his ties to the Mujahideen and to the Taliban, and especially to the Haqqani Network, and to, as a result of his work in Afghanistan, to Arab jihadists,, has advised the National Security Council, the FBI, the State Department, and families, to help U.S. hostages return home.

Van Dyk’s most recent book, “Without Borders: The Haqqani Network and the Road to Kabul,” about the jihadist world in the Middle East, and its history and ties to Afghanistan, and how the Haqqani Mujahideen went from being an American ally to its enemy, was published in 2022 by Academica Press, of London and Washington. He was interviewed in 2023 by Peter Bergen at the New America Foundation, by Christiane Amanpour on CNN/PBS and by Dave Davies on Fresh Air on NPR. The most interesting review was that by Vanni Cappelli which ran in Global Geneva in November 2022.

He is working currently, drawing on his contacts in Afghanistan, on a book on the death of Corporal Pat Tillman, the former Arizona Cardinals football star, and U.S. Army Ranger, killed in 2004, according to the U.S. Army, by friendly fire in eastern Afghanistan.