A doctor kidnapped by the Taliban in 2012 recalled Wednesday on "America's Forum" on
Newsmax TV how one of his captors, a 19-year-old man, imparted to him that he was a jihadist because it's the only life he knew.
"One of the 19-year-olds started asking a lot of questions about why I do the type of work that I do and a lot of questions about my upbringing, which led to him to sort of connecting the dots," said Dr. Dilip Joseph, who was taken hostage with two colleagues while driving back to Kabul, Afghanistan, after serving villagers at a rural clinic on Dec. 5, 2012.
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"You do what you do because you have had a different upbringing. I do what I do because this is all I've seen my father do and I'm just following his footsteps. Those were a very telling few hours of conversation with this 19-year-old."
The young man expressed an interest in America and the opportunities it might offer someone like him.
"He said, 'What do you think I can do?'" Joseph recounted. "He was very much a leader even within that gang, I could tell he was a born leader. It's unfortunate that this was the only option that he felt was available to him.
"So, some of the questions he asked was, 'Tell me, can you take me to the States? And if I come to the States, what could I do with my life? Can I start my life all over again? Could I study something?' Very telling of where he was in his mindset and what he really was hoping for or wanted to do with life."
Joseph has written about the experience in a book titled
"Kidnapped by the Taliban: A Story of Terror, Hope, and Rescue by SEAL Team Six."
Dilip was rescued by Navy SEALs on his fourth night of captivity. Despite the haunting experience, it left him with a sense that even terrorists may be capable of change.
"What gives me hope is that even within the Taliban, in spite of all the indoctrination they are used to, there's something within them saying also, 'Wait, this can't be all there is to life,'" he said. "That gives me a lot of hope.
"Now, with ISIS, it seems like a completely different kind of animal altogether. It's ironic in many ways that al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, was kicked out of the Taliban back in 2002 for being a bit too extreme. Certainly we see the irony in that, but it's a scary thought that just last decade, Taliban was the worst thing that we ever saw, now it's ISIS.
"The question we need to ask ourselves and as a larger public is, what are the things — we seem to know all the wrong things that's going on, but what are the right things we could be doing to set up the right opportunities for many of these young insurgents who would think otherwise if they had other options."
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