{"id":36,"date":"2012-06-19T21:57:50","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T01:57:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/?p=36"},"modified":"2012-06-19T22:05:14","modified_gmt":"2012-06-20T02:05:14","slug":"the-history-of-the-north-face-four-terrorism-and-kidnapping-in-kyrgyzstan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/19\/the-history-of-the-north-face-four-terrorism-and-kidnapping-in-kyrgyzstan\/","title":{"rendered":"The History of \u2026 The North Face Four (Terrorism and Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Tommy Caldwell<\/p><\/div>\n

As I last blogged about two months ago, we traveled to the Kyrgyz Republic (a Central Asian country more widely known as Kyrgyzstan) during the last part of March and the beginning part of April 2012.\u00a0 While we were there we heard a tale about several American mountain climbers who had been kidnapped by Islamic militants in the south of Kyrgyzstan.\u00a0 Apparently they escaped by killing one of their captors.\u00a0 I was fascinated by this story of abduction and daring escape and had to research the tale further.<\/p>\n

The Kyrgyz people adopted Islam as a result of conquest and because of persuasion from merchants who came through their country on the Silk Road.\u00a0 They personalized Islam to their culture.\u00a0 To this day the Kyrgyz follow some of the traditions of Islam but do not always pray five times a day or go to a mosque on Fridays.\u00a0 Some in the south are more observant, but on the whole it is not a ripe recruiting ground for Islamic terrorists.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Beth Rodden<\/p><\/div>\n

However, there are groups in Uzbekistan who are extreme and occasionally this affects the Kyrgyz Republic.\u00a0 This is what occurred in the 2000 case of four rock climbers from the United States who were kidnapped by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in the southwest part of the country.<\/p>\n

The four American alpinistas (as mountain climbers are called in Central Asia), three men and a woman, all in their early twenties decided to travel to the Kyrgyz Republic in the summer of 2000.\u00a0 Jason Smith, John Dickey, Beth Rodden, and Tommy Caldwell were all expert climbers.\u00a0 Three of them lived in California and Caldwell resided in Colorado.\u00a0 The company The North Face sponsored their trip in order to get pictures they could use in advertising.\u00a0 John Dickey was an up and coming rock climbing photographer.\u00a0 The group was going to hike in the Karavshin region of southwest Kyrgyzstan, an area that is world renowned for its big-wall climbing.\u00a0 Since the fall of the Soviet Union, a steady stream of international climbers had been to this region.<\/p>\n

During the 1990s The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which had links to Al Qaeda, rose up with a desire to overthrow the Uzbek government and create an Islamist state.\u00a0 The IMU declared war on Kyrgyzstan in the late 1990s because they said Kyrgyzstan was helping the Uzbek government stay in power.\u00a0 There were State Department warnings about travel to southwest Kyrgyzstan as a result.\u00a0 These warnings included notice that four Japanese geologists had been kidnapped and released a year before The North Face trip during an offensive by the IMU against the Kyrgyz army.\u00a0 The probable motivation for their capture was ransom.\u00a0 The four American climbers skimmed the warnings before their trip and were not told by their travel agency about any potential danger.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Jason Smith<\/p><\/div>\n

The North Face Four arrived in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan on July 27th<\/sup>, 2000 and traveled by helicopter to the Kara Su valley where they made their base camp.\u00a0 On August 12, while sleeping 1000 feet off the ground in portaledges (portable cliff tents) on the Yellow Wall, the alpinistas were awakened by gun fire directed around them.\u00a0 They were forced to climb down by IMU terrorists and were taken prisoner.<\/p>\n

For six days the four Americans were forced to lie hidden under brush and rocks in bivouacs for up to 17 hours a day as the terrorists tried to elude the Kyrgyz army.\u00a0 A Kyrgyz soldier who had been taken captive before the hikers was executed soon after the capture of the climbers.\u00a0 They ate half a power bar a day.\u00a0 At night they would be forced to move to a new hiding spot for the next day.\u00a0 During their time in captivity they had several chances to escape.\u00a0 The terrorists even gave them their guns a couple of times, but the climbers did not seize upon these chances.\u00a0 Fear and complacency kept them captive.<\/p>\n

Finally, with food running out and a possible life threatening storm approaching, the Americans decided they had to act.\u00a0 They were divided as to what to do.\u00a0 Smith and Dickey wanted to kill their captors but Rodden and Caldwell did not want to commit to killing anyone.<\/p>\n

When one of their two remaining captors left and the other captor directed them to climb a steep cliff Smith and Dickey decided they would push their captor, who seemed to trust that they would do him no harm, off the mountain to escape.\u00a0 Rodden and Caldwell stayed back a bit to let them act.\u00a0 However, Smith and Dickey were unable to follow through on their plan.\u00a0 It was left to Tommy Caldwell who finally seized an opportunity and pushed their last captor off a ledge.\u00a0 He tumbled 30 feet down to another ledge and then slipped off that ledge beyond where they could see.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

John Dickey<\/p><\/div>\n

The climbers were sure he was dead but feared the return of the other captor, the one who scared them the most.\u00a0 Therefore, they moved quickly through the night, covering 18 miles over difficult terrain until they came upon Kyrgyz soldiers who fired upon them at first and then helped the climbers once the soldiers figured out who they were.<\/p>\n

In the end the American rock climbers made it to safety and out of Kyrgyzstan.\u00a0 The captor who left was killed by the Kyrgyz army and the one Caldwell pushed unbelievably survived the fall and was eventually taken into custody.\u00a0 Since the climbers returned home there has been some controversy about their story.\u00a0 Some have questioned its truthfulness or whether they embellished it to sell books and a movie.\u00a0 However, the preponderance of evidence suggests its accuracy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I last blogged about two months ago, we traveled to the Kyrgyz Republic (a Central Asian country more widely known as Kyrgyzstan) during the last part of March and the beginning part of April 2012.\u00a0 While we were there … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[26,56,25,27,14],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-central-asia","tag-abduction","tag-kyrgyzstan","tag-rock-climbing","tag-terrorisam","tag-the-kyrgyz-republic-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p29EPY-A","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/51"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}