A new book sheds light on the miraculous escape of aid workers captured by the infamous regime.

Picture this: You are an Australian aid worker based in Afghanistan, helping to build shelter for refugees. One morning in late summer you are arrested by the country’s Taliban regime from your home in Kabul. They accuse you of trying to tell the gospel to your Afghan neighbours. You are thrown into jail and cut off from the rest of the world. There is no trial, no chance of obtaining a lawyer.
Then one morning you hear that a member of the Taliban has killed 2000 people in a terrorist attack in New York. You are told the US is seeking retaliation. You are told that fighter jets will soon begin bombing the city you cannot escape from.
When the bombs started raining down on Kabul just 26 days after two planes were flown into the World Trade Centre, Perth nurse Diana Thomas did the most practical of things. Thomas and her fellow inmates had retreated to the corridor of their Taliban-run jail, terrified that the glass would shatter in the night. However, they soon discovered they shared their makeshift beds with mice. So Thomas taped up her grimy prison cell window with sticky tape, snuck in from a sympathetic prison guard.
“The night the bombing started we all slept in the hallway. But the mice were too bad. I got the idea of putting sticky tape all over our glass window so that the glass wouldn’t shatter. When we heard a plane overhead we would quickly open the window so the glass wouldn’t break,” she recounts in the account of their time as captives, Escape from Kabul.
The story of the arrest, imprisonment and dramatic rescue of Thomas and seven colleagues – two Australians, two Americans and four Germans, staff of the German aid organisation Shelter Now – made headlines around the world. Arrested on 3 August 2001, they were accused by the Taliban of evaneglising, an offence punishable by death under the Islamic Sharia law. One of the aid workers had been caught showing the Jesus video to a local Afghani family after repeated requests from the children in the household. Later the aid workers realised they has been set up – the family had been forced by the Taliban’s ‘Vice and Virtue’ Police to insist the foreigners show them Christian material. They were held captive for 105 days.
Thomas had worked for Shelter Now for eight years, seven of those in Pakistan. She recalls the day of the arrest: “They took us about 9.30 in the evening – they always did things at night. We were bundled into two cars packed with Taliban … heavily tinted so no one could see in. It was pathetic – all those men with Kalashnikovs [Soviet machine-guns] to guard six vulnerable women. They had broken into our homes and people were already living there. In one house, family photos had been ripped up (photos were banned by the Taliban).”
In the days following their capture, the world’s media went into a frenzy. But the prisoners knew nothing of their newfound fame. Their work had been destroyed; they had no contact with family. But the outrage at their arrest was awash across the world. “It was only since coming out and since I’ve been speaking all around Australia and America and Canada that people have come up to me and said, ‘I had such a burden to pray for you’ – people who didn’t know us, and I realised that millions of people were praying,” Thomas told Southern Cross.

Then came the events of September 11. When Westerners started to flee the stricken nation, the glimmer of hope they held out for their release seemed lost. The eight were the only foreigners left in the country when the US started bombing. Their hard-won legal representation would flee to neighbouring Pakistan two weeks later, defeated in court and forbidden to have contact with his clients. The foreign diplomats who fought for their release had long since gone. Suddenly they found themselves the convenient targets to be held hostage in the war on terror.
Their story is one of hope despite all the odds – the friendships formed with their Afghan inmates, brutally treated at the hands of the guards. There were the Bible readings every day, the gospel songs they composed in the long hours in the dusty courtyards; the moves from prison to prison; their 11th-hour rescue by US forces.
For Thomas, there are no regrets. “It was the most wonderful experience of my life,” she says. “Because I felt God was very close and very real to me, I can remember thinking, ‘I could stay here indefinitely in the prison’ because it was such a wonderful time with God; it was never traumatic.”
Thomas had fasted for 25 days from the day she was imprisoned to concentrate on prayer. “We were doing everything we could. We were praying, we were meeting twice a day to pray and we would have a time of worship and prayer. I really believe God allowed us to go into the prisons so we could see the suffering of the people, so we could pray. We watched the other prisoners around us getting beaten by the wardens and the cruelty there.
“We really prayed when President Bush declared war on Afghanistan; we knew he’d made the right decision. Even the prisoners were rejoicing, especially in Georg and Peter’s [two male colleagues] dungeon. They were six feet underground, and there were men there that, when they heard the news that America was bombing, they had nothing to lose; many of them were waiting for public execution, or they were getting their hands chopped off, so they were rejoicing. At the same time we thought, ‘are we going to get destroyed in the bombing?’
“And it was a thing that was born out of the heart of God to get people praying. Not just because he wanted to rescue eight people, but because he wanted to change a nation. And I believe God used that awful tragedy of 9/11 – they say it was the day that changed the world – but it certainly was the day that changed Afghanistan.”
And the memory of the liberation of Afghanistan will stay with them forever.
“When we got out, it was amazing to go through the streets. There [was] jubilation and celebration. Seeing women coming to the gates without their burka and waving to us, it was just exciting. It was like God saying to us that this was the fruit of our labour, of your prayers, to see this city liberated.”
Three of the prisoners have returned to Afghanistan to rebuild the organisation. Thomas now fundraises on the board of Shelter Now and is in demand for speaking engagements about her ordeal. She is a member of North City Christian Centre in Perth.
“I’ve been able to really encourage people that God is real and the Bible is relevant. I have been able to encourage people to just continue to trust in God as they’re going through hard times. Whatever we’re going through he’s right there. And he cares.”