Blogs and Stories
How Danny Pearl Helped Save David Rohde
David’s kidnapping gave me flashbacks. I had first spoken to him in the summer of 2002. Ironically, he called Mariane and me to see if it would be safe for him to take a posting in Pakistan. Over the years, after taking the job, he graciously helped me as I continued to investigate Danny’s murder. Ironically, in my last email to him, I asked him about the security situation in Pakistan, for a reporting trip I planned there. I didn’t get an answer.
Instead, I got the news of David’s kidnapping via text message in November 2008, when a friend wrote: “Did you hear about David Rohde?” Oh, no, I thought. “What?” I got the shocking answer: He had been kidnapped, possibly by the network of Sirajuddin Haqqani, son of the notorious Taliban-affiliated leader Jalaluddin Haqqani.
I was praying the strategy that worked for Jill Carroll and Roxana Saberi would work in David’s case, too. Over the months, I got a few updates: signs that David was alive, negotiations, the possibility that he was being used as a human shield against drone attacks, and hope.
A little over a week ago at the Baltimore Marriott, I thought about David as I spoke at the annual conference of Investigative Reporters and Editors. Our session title: “Fighting Back After Journalists Are Killed.”
I was glad, I told the attendees, that that session’s theme was fighting back. Our weapons aren’t guns, but pens and the pursuit of truth. If we are to send a clear message that assailants can’t get away with murdering journalists, it’s critical that we pursue the truth of every attack.
Beside me sat Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. And beside him sat Robert Rosenthal, executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting and a leader in the Chauncey Bailey Project, an investigation into the murder of Oakland reporter Chauncey Bailey in 2007.
In the audience were only eight people. It could have been disheartening, but it only takes three people, feminist leader Eleanor Smeal once said, to launch a revolution: one to staple, one to fold, one to email. For us, it only takes a band of folks committed to standing up for the right of journalists to do their work without targets on their backs. We don’t have to have masses. We need people with heart.
And in this small crowd, I knew there was heart of the kind embodied by Danny and David—and the kind we need to fight back against attacks on journalists. Among the attendees were three tireless Georgetown University student members of the Pearl Project, a Center for Public Integrity investigation that we started two years ago at Georgetown to investigate Danny’s murder.
Another was a professional journalist who has helped students in the Pearl Project. Yet another was a member of the Chauncey Bailey Project. Two were there to figure out how to fight back. And the final attendee was Jill Abramson—Danny’s friend and editor at The Wall Street Journal and David’s erstwhile boss at The New York Times. In the summer of 2002, she had said to me, “We need an Arizona Project for Danny,” referring to the project run in the 1970s to investigate the murder of a journalist, Don Bolles, in Arizona.
I looked at Jill and remembered Danny, as well as David, who selflessly reported in Pakistan for the Pearl Project in the years after Danny’s death, without need for glory or credit. I sent a prayer to the heavens for David’s safe return: “Danny, please look after him.”
Now that David is free, let’s commit ourselves to standing strong for journalists, investigating deaths, and protesting intimidation, kidnappings, and assault.
Meanwhile, David: Welcome home. Hallelujah. I just wish Danny were around to write about it.
Asra Q. Nomani is the author of Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam. She is co-director of the Pearl Project, an investigation into the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Her activism for women’s rights at her mosque in West Virginia is the subject of a PBS documentary, The Mosque in Morgantown.
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Asra Q. Nomani is the author of Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam. She is co-director of the Pearl Project, an investigation into the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Her activism for women’s rights at her mosque in West Virginia is the subject of a PBS documentary, The Mosque in Morgantown. She can be found on Facebook, and reached at asra@asranomani.com
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Asra Q. Nomani is the author of Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam. She is co-director of the Pearl Project, an investigation into the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Her activism for women’s rights at her mosque in West Virginia is the subject of a PBS documentary, The Mosque in Morgantown. She can be found on Facebook, and reached at asra@asranomani.com
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Asra Q. Nomani is the author of Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam. She is co-director of the Pearl Project, an investigation into the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Her activism for women’s rights at her mosque in West Virginia is the subject of a PBS documentary, The Mosque in Morgantown. She can be found on Facebook, and reached at asra@asranomani.com
Asra,
Thanks for this important story. A question: what was the conclusion of the IRE panel? What can we do about these terrible cases?
Betty Medsger
Please subscribe to the alerts sent out by Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders. Sign onto their petitions, their protests. Donate, even, to their organizations. They are all that we have institutionally to protect journalists just doing their jobs--along with brave local groups with which they work. Please subscribe to our newsletter at www.scs.georgetown.edu/pearlproject, and we will update you on our advances in the Pearl Project.
A worthy analysis, maybe. But why all the self-reference? Who cares about your private email correpondence with Mr. Rohde? Doubtless hundreds of people did the same. It doesn't lend you more credibility. It just makes this article seem like yet another unsavory bit of media self-aggrandizement--appropriating somebody else's tragedy for a crumb of 'insider' cachet. Ick.
I understand your criticism. I thought it myself. Alas, the personal narrative is often now the vehicle with which to bring to life the often impersonal and foreign. It has its merits. It has its demerits.
i read about the times requests that stories not be published about their reporter to protect him, and ask how many times has the NYT been asked by the US govt to refrain from publishing secrets that might cost intelligence agents or military men or women their lives ..........we all know the answer to that one......fortunately for Rohde, those others who refrained from publishing have more integrity then the NYT.
Excellent point.
Oh give me a break, it's sad the guy was killed but wht does everyone have to become some kind of martyr?
I completely agree. We so often create heroes to make sense of tragedy. That's not my point. I think it'd actually offend Danny to be considered some kind of martyr. My argument is just that some important lessons were learned from Danny's kidnapping. Danny is the personification of those lessons.
I don't think it's about martyrdome. Rhodes was trying to get a story he would have tried to get before Daniel Pearl's murder. It's his job, and he knew that it was dangerous. Journalists seem to spend their careers and risk their lives to bring people and stories closer to home, and through that publicity, the violence becomes commonplace. I hope that the publicity surrounding Daniel Pearl's death has not anesthetized us against the crime committed against him.
This is a compelling and fascinating first eprson read. A deepneed insight into the dilemma and the human tragedy.
Thanks, Asra.
Thank you for your kind words.
and would journalists refrain from reporting if it were a non-journalist captured? a resounding NO-- cuz that's news, right?
Nomani is making her whole career about "knowing" danny pearl...yet she has done nothing herself. Stop writing this same story. He is not a martyr. He had bad luck. It's a risk of being a foriegn correspondent. This article is poorly written as well.
I understand this criticism and this perception. Trust me, I wish that knowing Danny wasn't a reference point for me, but the truth is that it was life defining. For that reason, Danny's life and death will continue to influence my work. But thank you for the feedback.
Write on, Asra! I think your work is amazing and you are an excellent journalist and activist on your own right.
Your chosen user name, Loserino, is perfectly appropriate.
You criticize an article as "poorly written" but your spelling indicates a lack of thought or perhaps an understanding of spell check?
No matter, I seldom respond to the diatribes I see posted, but your air of judgmental dismissal on an article of a particularly sensitive subject written by someone who seems very gracious in her responses to your drivel, warranted a response.
Thank you.
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