Caitlan Coleman was one of the first hostages to be freed during the Trump administration’s first term. But her ordeal began years earlier, in 2012, on a trip to Afghanistan.
She had been traveling with her then-husband when they were abducted by militants. Caitlan was pregnant and one of her captors later said, with chilling pragmatism, that if she had more babies, they would simply have more hostages.
What followed were five years of uncertainty, coercion, and fear. It took time for Caitlan to realize that the men who had taken her belonged to the Haqqani network, considered to be Afghanistan’s most sophisticated insurgent group. Closely aligned with al-Qaeda, its leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is now a senior official in the Taliban’s ruling government.
Caitlan shared her observations of the Haqqani network and discussed her time as a hostage — which included sexual assault, giving birth in unimaginable conditions, and relocating 28 times. She said that raising three children in captivity was heartbreaking, but it also gave her a reason to survive.
Eventually, the whole family was rescued in a high stakes operation. But freedom, when it came, was not a simple return to Caitlan’s old life.
This is the second part of a three-part series on women who have been wrongly imprisoned. Watch the first part here.
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