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Freed Soldier Faces Long Struggle Back to Normalcy Mentally, G.I. Has Long Path Back to Idaho
(about 4 hours later)
WASHINGTON — For Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the journey home to Idaho began with a brief, dramatic helicopter ride from the rugged landscape of eastern Afghanistan to the Bagram Air Base north of Kabul. His return to anything close to a normal life will take much longer, the sergeant’s father said on Sunday at an emotional news conference in Boise, the capital of the family’s home state. WASHINGTON — For Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the road home to Idaho began with a brief helicopter ride from the rugged frontier of eastern Afghanistan to Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul. His return to anything close to a normal life will take much longer.
“Bowe’s been gone so long that it’s going to take him a long time to come back,” the father, Robert Bergdahl, said, his voice breaking occasionally. He likened the process to a deep-sea diver’s decompressing before rising to the surface. “If you come up too quickly,” he added, “you die.” After nearly five years in captivity — the lone American prisoner of war in Afghanistan, held by Taliban fighters in utter isolation and deprivation — Sergeant Bergdahl is physically weakened, military officials said, and will need to undergo a thorough psychological examination.
Experts on long-term captivity agreed, saying in interviews that after nearly five years in captivity, the sergeant, the lone American prisoner of war in Afghanistan, who was held by Taliban fighters in utter isolation and unrelenting deprivation, was not only physically weakened, but also probably suffering deep psychological wounds from his ordeal. His recovery, they said, will be a multistep process, beginning with medical treatment and initial counseling at an American military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, then by longer-term therapy at a military medical center in San Antonio before culminating in a carefully managed homecoming in Hailey, Idaho.
His recovery, they said, will be a multi-step process, beginning with medical treatment and a psychological evaluation at an American military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, and continuing at a military medical center in Texas before he finally goes home to Hailey, Idaho. Even then, Sergeant Bergdahl, 28, will probably need lengthy counseling to help him deal with the trauma of his years as a prisoner of war and to adjust to his new life, according to experts in long-term captivity. How fast or fully he recovers, they said, is impossible to predict.
Even then, Sergeant Bergdahl, 28, will most likely receive psychological counseling for months, if not years, to help him deal with the trauma of his years in captivity and the disorientation of sudden freedom. How fast or fully he recovers, experts said, is difficult to predict. “Bowe’s been gone so long that it’s going to be so difficult to come back,” said his father, Robert Bergdahl, at a news conference in Idaho. He likened it to a deep-sea diver decompressing before returning to the surface. “If he comes up too fast,” he said, “it could kill him.”
His mother, Jani Bergdahl, also acknowledged the challenges ahead when she spoke at the news conference, on a National Guard base in the desert about eight miles from downtown Boise. Reading a letter to her son thousands of miles away, she said: “I know so many people are placed to assist you in all the aspects of your recovery to full health. Trust them. It’s ok and give yourself all of the time you need to recover and decompress. There is no hurry. You have your life ahead of you.” For now, Mr. Bergdahl can speak to his son only indirectly and from a distance, as he did via television cameras at the news conference. Sergeant Bergdahl is cloistered at the Landstuhl hospital, which sits on a pine-scented hilltop in southwestern Germany — away from television, the Internet and other outside intrusions. Even reuniting with his family will wait until his doctors decide he is ready.
The Obama administration cited Sergeant Bergdahl’s deteriorating health as the reason it moved so quickly over the past several days to obtain his release, trading five battle-scarred Taliban fighters being held in the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Interviews with experts on captivity, and with an American who was imprisoned for nearly a year in Iraq, suggest Sergeant Bergdahl could face as much trouble adjusting to the rhythms of ordinary life as getting over what he experienced in Afghanistan.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the United States had intelligence indicating that Sergeant Bergdahl’s “safety and health were both in jeopardy and, in particular, his health was deteriorating.” Speaking in Afghanistan, where he arrived hours after the soldier was flown to Germany, Mr. Hagel said the administration seized an opening to arrange the prisoner exchange “essentially to save his life.” “I tell people it’s like a funnel,” said Roy Hallums, a former contractor who was imprisoned in 2004 in a tiny room under a house in Baghdad for 311 days. “You’re at the small end of the funnel for so long, and then suddenly the world opens up. It takes time to get used to it.”
On Saturday, speaking to Sergeant Bergdahl’s parents, President Obama told them “he’d been to Landstuhl and seen firsthand that the facilities and personnel were first rate and Bowe would get the best possible care,” a senior administration official said. Little things, like going to a bustling grocery store, were too much for Mr. Hallums for the first few weeks after he returned to the United States. After eight months of physical and psychological therapy, he felt largely recovered, he said, though he noted that throughout the recovery, he underestimated the trauma he had sustained.
The Obama administration cited Sergeant Bergdahl’s deteriorating health as the reason it moved so quickly to obtain his release, even at the price of trading five veteran Taliban fighters being held in the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the United States had intelligence indicating that Sergeant Bergdahl’s “safety and health were both in jeopardy and, in particular, his health was deteriorating.” Speaking in Afghanistan, where he arrived hours after the soldier was flown to Germany, Mr. Hagel said the administration seized the opening to arrange the prisoner exchange “essentially to save his life.”
On Saturday, speaking to Sergeant Bergdahl’s parents at the White House, President Obama told them “he’d been to Landstuhl and seen firsthand that the facilities and personnel were first rate and Bowe would get the best possible care,” a senior administration official said.
The military has established protocols for treating soldiers freed from captivity, many of which date to the Vietnam War, when prisoners of war returned to the United States in significant numbers. Among the issues soldiers in lengthy confinement deal with are fear, guilt, humiliation, isolation, threats and, not least, boredom.
It is not yet clear whether Sergeant Bergdahl was tortured by his captors, as were many prisoners of war in North Vietnam. But given the ruthless reputation of those who held him, experts said it was likely, at a minimum, that he faced unremitting fear.
“The Haqqani network that held him are battle-hardened terrorists, one of the most ruthless in the Taliban network,” said Dan O’Shea, a retired Navy SEAL commander who coordinated the hostage working group in the American Embassy in Baghdad from 2004 to 2006. “He had to wake up every morning with the thought ‘Is today the day I am going to meet my fate?’ ”
Mr. O’Shea, now vice president at GROM Technologies, a security and risk mitigation firm, said the insecurity for Sergeant Bergdahl was even deeper than for Vietnam P.O.W.’s because in that war, North Vietnam was a sovereign state. Sergeant Bergdahl was at a mercy of a militant gang. Mr. O’Shea said it was likely the soldier sought ways to bond with his captors and their culture to survive. On Sunday, Robert Bergdahl questioned whether his son was having trouble speaking English after his isolation.
David Rohde, a former New York Times correspondent who was kidnapped in Afghanistan and held hostage for more than seven months by the same group that is believed to have held Sergeant Bergdahl, said it was plausible that he might be struggling with English.
“You live with these young Pashto men who are your only human contact,” Mr. Rohde said. “I learned some Pashto; I’m sure he learned Pashto, and it’s understandable there might some language issues.”
Mr. Rohde, who escaped his captors in 2009 after being moved across the border to Pakistan, said that in his case, he was given medicine and better food when his health deteriorated.
Among the questions military officials are likely to have for Sergeant Bergdahl when he is ready to talk are the circumstances of his capture on June 30, 2009, when he was separated from his unit in Paktika Province. Many in the military say he chose to wander off his base.
But a senior Defense Department official indicated that the Army most likely would not be punishing the sergeant for any violations of rules. “Whatever he may have done, I think he’s more than paid for it,” the official said. “Five years is a long time.”
When Sergeant Bergdahl leaves Germany, a move that is expected this week, his next stop will be Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. There, he is likely to reunite with his family — initially by phone and later in person — and to receive further counseling from a psychologist who specializes in survival, escape, resistance and evasion issues. Robert Bergdahl described the specialists helping his son as a “handpicked team.”
Col. Hans Bush, the Brooke center’s public affairs officer, said he expected the treatment to take “weeks, not days.”