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Award-winning British journalist Yvonne Ridley has written for the Sunday Times, the Observer, the Independent, and the Sunday Express. When she was captured by the Taliban in September 2001, however, she herself became headline news. Ridley told her story at a March 5 benefit in Edison, New Jersey for the London-based Muslim Weekly.
Soon after 9/11, the news editor of the Sunday Express sent Ridley to Pakistan, where the next stage of events was expected to unfold. The Taliban did not allow Western journalists into Afghanistan-which, Ridley said, was shortsighted because it allowed U.S., British, and the Northern Alliance to commit atrocities that went unreported. After being turned down three times by the Taliban embassy, she decided to put on a burka and sneak across the border with two Afghan guides. It was surprisingly easy, Ridley recalled. She found the market in Jalalabad bustling despite the fact that Afghanistan was about to be bombed by the richest country on earth. With that in mind, she decided to head back to the border, only to find that Pakistan had sealed it off.
Her guides suggested they take the smuggling route, which Ridley discovered was as busy as the marketplace, with traffic in both directions-traders and women in burkas seeking safe haven in Pakistan and young men crossing into Afghanistan to fight the "great Satan." When her feet became sore, she was offered a donkey to ride. The donkey must have sensed an infidel aboard, Ridley said, because it immediately tore off. Blinded by the burka, Ridley dropped her camera, fell off the donkey-and found herself looking into the eyes of a Taliban soldier. Having bought into the propaganda that the Taliban were the most evil, brutal regime in the world who hate women, Ridley handed over her camera and shut her eyes, expecting to be shot on the spot. Instead she was taken to Taliban headquarters in Jalalabad.
The Taliban placed Ridley in a room to which they gave her the key. They offered food three times...