FOREIGN PRESS AWARDEE 2022
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 late 2007, on a contract with Times Books, he hiked 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 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 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, and 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. The Trade was positively reviewed in The Sunday New York Times Book Review and was an Editors’ Choice in the 12/24/17 issue.
Jere Van Dyk has appeared on a multitude of broadcast networks, including: BBC, CBS, CNN, WABC, WNBC, al-Jazeera, C-Span, FOX Radio, NPR, 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 around the country, and overseas.
In 2014 and 2015 Jere Van Dyk worked with the Obama White House and the National Counterterrorism Center on a new U.S. hostage policy. Since then, he has worked with the National Security Council, the FBI, the State Department, and families, to help U.S. hostages return home.
Jere Van Dyk is currently working on a book on the Haqqani Network, with which he lived as a reporter for The New York Times in 1981 and which today is the oldest, most effective and most lethal anti-Western Islamist organization in the world.