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In Sri Lanka on a brief visit, journalist Yvonne Ridley who famously spent ten days in captivity in Afghanistan during the Taliban regime talks to Smriti Daniel

When they caught her on the wrong side of the Pakistan-Afghan border, the Taliban thought Yvonne Ridley was a US spy. The Twin Towers had just come down and war was brewing… this was not the best time to be arrested for hanging around with a camera sans a visa.

As the journalist for the British newspaper, Sunday Express, looked execution in the face, it was all but impossible to imagine walking out with life and limb intact. But she did, and her account of her imprisonment was to forever change the world's perception of the 'most evil, brutal regime' on the planet.

Ten days in the hands of the Taliban

Yvonne's tale begins on September 11, 2001, when she watched in horror as the first plane slammed into the World Trade Centre in New York. "The United States was a country at war with an unseen enemy," she remembers, describing the chaos that reigned in the aftermath of the attack. Within hours Yvonne not only had an assignment, she had a destination. The journalist knew Afghanistan was a war waiting to happen.

Having arrived in neighbouring Pakistan, she applied to the Taliban embassy for a visa and was refused. That left only one option - the burka. In disguise, Yvonne and her guides slipped over the border and into Afghanistan. Having slipped in, slipping out proved to be near impossible. When her guides suggested they use an old smugglers' route, Yvonne imagining herself "darting from tree to tree", said yes. They had only a short way to left to go when exhausted, she accepted a ride on a donkey.

She had barely mounted the donkey, when it bolted -- with a shrieking Yvonne clinging for dear life on its back. As fate would have it, "the one piece of equipment I had with me, my camera which I had hidden in the folds of my burka slipped out right into the full view of a passing Taliban soldier." Needless to say, Yvonne was in very deep trouble. She spent the next six days as a prisoner in the intelligence headquarters in Jalalabad, before she was taken to a Kabul prison. Every day she would wake, expecting this day to be the one where they tortured then executed the American spy. Despite her fear, Yvonne seemed unable to cower in a corner. Instead she describes herself as "the prisoner from hell".

"I spat at them and was rude and refused to eat…they treated me with kindness and I treated them with contempt."

Towards the end of her stay, Yvonne found herself neck deep in a diplomatic rumpus involving no less a personage than the Deputy Foreign Minister of Afghanistan. When one of the male jailers told her to take her washed, wet undergarments off the drying line, Yvonne flatly refused. The result: The Taliban's Deputy Foreign Minister was called in to mediate. The problem, it turned out was that her underwear was in full view of soldiers’ quarters. "The minister said, 'Look, if they see those things they will have impure thoughts'."
Struck by the absurdity, Yvonne remembers thinking, "Afghanistan was about to be bombed by the most powerful country in the world and all they were concerned about was my big, flappy, black knickers."

She adds, "I realised that the US doesn't have to bomb the Taliban — just fly in a regiment of women waving their underwear and they will all run off."

Then one day, Yvonne was told, "tomorrow you will go home, Insha Allah." Hardly daring to believe, Yvonne huddled in bed. Suddenly, outside with the sight and sound of the apocalypse the war began. "America dropped more than 30 cruise missiles on Kabul alone that night." As the building shuddered and the land was rent by fire, Yvonne thought of all who would die that night. "Bombs don't discriminate - civilians will always be the victims."

Convinced that her captors would never let her go after the massacre, Yvonne was stunned to find herself being driven back to the border and handed over to the proper authorities. "It was only once they let me go, that I realised they were decent, honourable people."

Predictably, a storm of controversy immediately came to life. "They [the media] wanted stories of burns, whips and rape…in fact everything the Americans did in Abu Ghraib. All I can say is, 'Thank God I was captured by the most evil, brutal regime in the world and not by the Americans!' "

Activist, journalist, and Islamic feminist

After her release, Yvonne decided to read the Qur'an. "The more I read, the more I was convinced that Islam was for me." In 2003 she converted to Islam. "It (the Qur'an) was crystal clear," she emphasises, "that women are equal in spirituality, worth and education." She cautions, "don't confuse cultural practices with Islam; if our Muslim brothers followed their faith to the letter, then Muslim women would have no problem with their men."

Yvonne is today a vocal, prolific journalist and anti-war activist. She refers to US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair as the "evil twins" and lays the blame for thousands of innocent lives at their doorsteps. However, some thought she was going too far when she described the Taliban as the victims of "bad press".

"I am not saying that they were an ideal government," she says, "but the (Afghani) people crave their return because under the Taliban they had security." As evidence, she points out that not only did poppy production fall dramatically under Taliban rule, but so did incidents of rape and the sale of child brides. Today, under the current administration, all those numbers are back and rising.

Notorious for her dislike of Zionists, Israel and Tony Blair in particular, Yvonne herself has got a lot of bad press.

But she's not backing down, and she's not giving up; and as the current Political Editor for the Islamic Channel she can make her views heard.

A source of inspiration for an increasingly beleaguered Muslim community, Yvonne says she herself draws comfort from an unconquerable sense of humour. "The ability to laugh is a great way to balance out the adversity."

Here at the invitation of the Centre For Islamic Studies, Yvonne Ridley will deliver a lecture on ‘Who controls world terrorism’ at the BMICH today at 4 p.m. The lecture is open to the public, free of charge.