NEW YORK, NY Oct. 31 (DPI) – An American Islamophile who toured Syria to understand it better and was promptly taken hostage by an Al Qaeda-linked militia was freed earlier this year, and his survival experience is the basis for a lengthy essay in this weekend’s NY Times Sunday Magazine.
Theo Padnos’s essay – which described routine torture at the hands of his captors, over 20 months – was published only two months after he was released from captivity. That was about the same time photojournalist James Foley was beheaded by another militia group.
Padnos, who grew up in the U.S., attended Middlebury College and has a PhD in comparative literature, went to Syria two years ago after he was unable to get major publishers to consider his written work, he writes. He was taken hostage in late 2012 and was freed reportedly on the intervention of Qatari diplomats. It wasn’t known if any ransom was paid, and Padnos doesn’t speculate much on how and why he gained his release when others haven’t.
Padnos is apparently fluent in Arabic and converted to Islam years earlier, according to his Wiki page, and while he mentions his knowledge of Quranic verse and Arabic, he never mentions in his essay that he is a Muslim, which may have helped secure his freedom.
Whatever the reason for his release, Padnos’s narrative reinforces the widespread view in the west that 1) the factions in Syria are nothing but undisciplined armed gangs 2) They are split largely because they can’t agree on how to share the region’s black-market oil supplies 3) the line soldiers – at least Padnos’s captors – are senseless zealots who alternately torture their captives and dream of dating Western women; 4) U.S. intervention in the Syrian civil war – on the ground at least – would be a gigantic mistake, a view echoed by many of the 349 reader comments.
Of course reader comments were for the most part sympathetic to Padnos, as most expressed relief and joy that he is free and home. But a few addressed the delicate matter of why Padnos was traipsing around in a super-volatile war zone in the first place. Sixth most recommended post on NYTimes.com:
I feel badly for your treatment while in captivity and am happy that you’ve been reunited with your family. But by your own words this was entirely your fault. You stepped into the middle of a fight between two wild animals and didn’t expect you’d become their prize. It took you two years in a cell to figure out these “warriors for Islam” are nothing but uneducated, uncivilized armed thugs? That they have no plan for governing other than killing anyone who doesn’t agree with their version of truth?
So once captured you expected or hoped America would rescue you, which means someone like a soldier or diplomat or other official had to put themselves at risk for your flight of fancy. A bit selfish since all the information you garnered during your time there only reinforced what most Westerners already knew. This isn’t our fight, it shouldn’t be our fight and these “people” will go on killing one another long after the world stops paying attention.
Many readers were supportive of Padnos – whose real name is Peter Theo Curtis – for his courage in telling his story now, but many also shook their online heads, shocked by the crazy risks writers and photographers take to get published.