The Legion Lost : 4 Years As Taliban Hostages
Update : Josh and Caitlan were rescued a year after this story was published.
For my original article on Josh & Caitlan, click here : The Sad, Strange Story of the Taliban’s Canadian Hostage
It’s been four years since my friend Joshua Boyle and his wife Caitlan Coleman were kidnapped by the Taliban. It’s been a year since I first wrote about them. I was trying to raise awareness about their situation and help bring them home. I failed. I thought it would be easy to get the word out — surely people would be outraged that no one was doing anything to help an American woman and her Canadian husband who were being held hostage by the Taliban. At the very least, I thought that fans of Star Wars and Firefly would help spread the news — Josh was a huge fan of both, and they’re well-known as tight-knit communities. No such luck.
Since then, we’ve learned more about their situation. To start with, Josh and Caitlan weren’t exactly kidnapped by the Taliban. They were kidnapped by the Haqqani network, a terrorist/insurgent group that fought the Soviets and had very close ties to Al-Qaeda. The Haqqanis joined forces with the Taliban in 1996. Depending on who you ask, the Haqqanis are either closely allied to the Taliban, a semi-independent division of the Taliban, or an integral part of the Taliban.
That’s a very important distinction. The Haqqani network funds itself, at least in part, by kidnapping people and holding them for ransom. In general, they have no interest in killing their hostages — that would be bad for business. In fact, when I looked into it last year, I found out that of the 110 foreigners who were taken captive in Afghanistan (in total, not just by the Haqqani), 87 were released, mostly after some kind of negotiation. That’s a good sign — it means that not only are negotiations possible, they often succeed.
Now, some people will inevitably say that we shouldn’t negotiate with terrorists. Maybe that’s true, but it’s also a pipe dream. Do you really think that those 87 released hostages were set free without any government intervention? Hell, the US government traded 5 Taliban prisoners for Bowe Bergdahl. Negotiating with terrorists for the release of hostages is practically par for the course. To decide that we should stop negotiating with terrorists right now isn’t just arbitrary, it’s murder.
Yeah, murder. I said that the Haqqani generally doesn’t kill their hostages, but things have changed. Afghanistan has captured Anas Haqqani and sentenced him to death. Anas is the son of Jalaluddin Haqqani, who founded the Haqqani network, and the brother of its current leader, Sirajuddin. The government is under significant pressure to carry out the execution. Naturally, the Haqqani network wants to prevent this. They have threatened to kill Joshua, Caitlan, and both of their children if Anas is executed.
That’s the other new piece of information that has come out. Caitlan was pregnant with her first child when she and Josh were captured, but we’ve learned that she and Josh have had another child. It’s certainly an unusual situation, and I’m not going to speculate about how this happened. All I know is that my friend, his wife, and their two children are in terrible danger.
Josh and Caitlan never should have gone to Afghanistan. It was an incredibly stupid decision made by some very naive people. But the penalty for well-intentioned foolishness shouldn’t be death. It certainly shouldn’t mean the death of your entire family. No one deserves to be butchered by terrorists.
The Haqqani network has passed on a few letters written by Josh to his family. In one of them, he quotes “The Men That Don’t Fit In,” by Robert Service. It’s a quotation that’s also on his Wikipedia user page :
There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.
It’s a romantic image, and it fits Josh perfectly. The poem, however, has three more verses that Josh didn’t quote :
If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they’re always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: “Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!”
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.
And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.
He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone;
He’s a man who won’t fit in.
Joshua, Caitlan, and their two children whose names are unknown will be murdered if we don’t do anything. Our governments have abandoned them. The government of Afghanistan seems willing to write them off. We are their only hope. But we can bring them home safely. We just have to convince our elected officials that it’s worth doing. If we fail, then the Boyle-Coleman family really will join the Legion Lost.
Canadians can contact Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at —
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2
Twitter : @JustinTrudeau
Facebook : facebook.com/JustinPJTrudeau
You can also find the contact information for your Member of Parliament here : http://www.parl.gc.ca/parliamentarians/en/members
Americans can contact President Barack Obama at —
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Telephone : 202–456–1414
Twitter : @Potus
Facebook : facebook.com/WhiteHouse
You can find contact information for your Senators & Congressional Representatives here : https://www.congress.gov/members
