The Trade by Jere Van Dyk

Author:Jere Van Dyk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2017-10-10T04:00:00+00:00

AMRULLAH SALEH, FORTY-THREE, a Tajik, former director of the NDS, clean-shaven, in khakis and blue sport coat, was in his sitting room. I had come to ask for his help. First, I needed to give him some background. I told him about my time in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and about my kidnapping in 2008. He listened. He would make this simple. Did I know the movie Twelve Years a Slave? I said no. I had been traveling for a year in the Middle East. “Go see it,” he said. “It is about a good man, a violinist, captured by his friends and sold into slavery.” According to Saleh, I was that man.

He began by telling me that Feridoun Mohmand, who picked me up after my release, was from the Mohmand tribe, as was Yasini, the MP who had introduced me to Mullah Malang. Then he added: “Feridoun Mohmand is an agent of the ISI.”

My stomach tightened. The man who took me to the US Army base in Jalalabad after I was released worked for Pakistani military intelligence? “He was in touch with the US Army the whole time,” said Fazul years later. So that was why he knew where to go.

“Feridoun Mohmand and Mullah Malang are best friends with Michael Semple,” said Saleh. “Semple, the former deputy chief of mission of the EU in Afghanistan, is a subcontractor to MI6 and works with the ISI. What is an EU diplomat doing in Helmand Province trying to promote a reconciliation program with the Taliban? This was why Karzai kicked him out of the country. Michael Semple’s wife is the daughter of a Pakistani army general.”

I knew some of this, but not that Semple may work in some capacity for the ISI, or that Malang and Feridoun were friends, or that Feridoun was an ISI agent.

“Didn’t you ask yourself: Why would he help me? What does he get out of this?” Saleh was exasperated at my naïveté.

I was embarrassed, but Semple had explained to me on the phone the night I was released why he got involved. I had believed him, and still did. He helped me “as one old Afghan hand to another.” I loved that. It was the warmth of Afghanistan, surely?

David McCraw, the assistant legal counsel at the New York Times, had asked me the same question about Semple as Saleh did. I was told that Bryn Padrig had brought Semple in and I just assumed that CBS paid him a fee.

“In 2004, about October, this time of year, four UN employees were kidnapped,” Saleh continued. “We could not get to them. It became a huge issue. Then comes Michael Semple and tells us, ‘I know Mullah Malang, who knows how to get to the kidnappers.’” Saleh then said the NDS delivered five million dollars to Michael Semple and to Mullah Malang. The UN employees were released. Semple had not told me any of this; I would have to talk to Michael about this but first I had to hear Saleh out.

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