Hostage Negotiation: What Really Happens Behind Closed Doors | Daniel Levin, Author of Proof of Life

What happens when a foreigner is abducted in the Middle East — and who do you turn to when there's no one official to call?  In this episode, we talk with Daniel Levin, a lawyer turned armed-conflict negotiator who works in some of the world's most dangerous places. He's the author of Proof of Life: Twenty Days on the Hunt for a Missing Person in the Middle East, and he shares firsthand insights into how negotiations actually work, what drives the war economy, and what he's learned navigating conflict zones.  A rare, ground-level look at a world most people only see from a distance.

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Transcript

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HOST (Jennifer Weissmann) (00:02):

Hello, welcome to this podcast called FINDING INSPIRATION. It's a 20 or so minute weekly podcast where we interview someone with an amazing story. After the show, I know you're gonna feel energized, invigorated, and inspired. I'm Jennifer Weissmann. Welcome to FINDING INSPIRATION.

HOST (Jennifer Weissmann) (00:29):

Daniel Levin. Thank you for joining us. You're the son of a diplomat, and you spent your early years in the Middle East and in Africa.  You’re a lawyer turned arm conflict negotiator.  In 2021, you published a book, your first one in the USA, called “Proof of Life: Twenty Days on the Hunt for a Missing Person in the Middle East.” I finished the book and wow – it was unbelievably suspenseful. It broke my heart. Wall Street Journal gave it a wonderful review.  The book is the story of how you traveled to the Middle East to find an American man named Paul. Can you first start by telling us what exactly an armed conflict negotiator does?

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (01:15):

Well, there are many ways to do it. I run a European foundation that works in conflict zones and in failed states. And the purpose of the foundation's a non-for-profit foundation, its purpose is to develop next-generation leaders, to identify young people in their twenties, if possible, and take them out of the conflict zone and prepare them for future leadership.  It includes political leadership, social, economic, financial, and train them, give them rules, whether they're gonna be members of a government or an administration or members in parliament or journalists or doctors, lawyers, and provide them the training, vocational training sometimes, and network them with like-minded individuals in other parts of the world to empower them essentially to then return when the conflict ends to play a leadership position. And so that's the core activity of the foundation.  We are active in many conflict zones. It requires us to network with the various power centers in the country, whether it's the regime or opposition or many parties to a civil war, we are often approached, first of all, to help mediate the conflict. When there is a ubiquitous will to end the conflict, when that's not the case is how much we can do. And also we then get asked to help with missing people and missing Westerners.

HOST (Jennifer Weissmann) (02:33):

I understand what your foundation does.  You pre-seed future government leaders in conflict zones, correct?  

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (02:42):

Yes, Governments, but not just.  Also members of civil society and religious leaders. It's really just people who are gonna be responsible for rebuilding these countries.

HOST (Jennifer Weissmann) (02:50):

What drives you to do this work? How did you get involved more specifically?

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (02:55):

I wish I could tell you. I had some great strategies when I grew up, and it all out, but that would be a bold-faced lie.  It was a random sequence of events. I was born in Israel and grew up in Africa. Then in Europe, then in the USA, then back in Switzerland, then in Israel, then in the USA.  I was all over the place.  And by the time I came to the USA last time 30 years ago, I worked as a postdoc.  I had expertise actually in conflicts of law and conflicts between religious and secular law. And that led to a number of requests to help write new constitutions first in Eastern Europe when the countries were emerging after the collapses.  We worked in Africa with the law firm that I'd started.  I began to receive requests to help countries rebuild.  They were rebuilding for whatever reason, a shattered economically, politically, and so on.

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (03:46):

And we developed in the mid-nineties, this is the predecessor to this foundation. We developed essentially a knowledge platform. So, our approach was the nonworld bank approach. We didn't just fly experts. We essentially developed this knowledge platform, which we would license to these countries and say, here are the tools that your people need. We're happy to train them in the tools, but then we're gonna disappear. And you do your own development. You don't really need outsiders to tell you what to do. And that was at the core that was in the nineties.  “We ended up getting involved in the mediation and the civil war in Angola.   This was between the government and the  UNITA rebels of Jonas Savimbi.  That kind of intersection between development and conflict mediation started in the mid to late nineties.”

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (04:27):

And when the foundation launched in 2008, it was launched on the basis of that knowledge platform that we had. So the idea that you're centering development around that next generation was always core to it. So I can't tell you, I always wanted to do this kind of work. I was simply a lawyer.   At first, I thought I'd stay in academia when I lived in Israel. And then, it was very random or serendipitous that I got involved in this kind of work.  For the last almost 30 years now,  some form of this development and conflict mediation has been part of my life.

HOST (Jennifer Weissmann) (04:59):

Changing gears – let’s take about your book “Proof of Life."   An American named Paul disappeared in Syria.  How did you get involved with this abduction? 

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (05:14):

So just quickly background, our foundation was asked to help in mediation in Syria, at the beginning of the civil war, both by the regime and by the opposition. This is pre-ISIS and Islamist involvement, pre-Russian involvement that only started in September 2015. This was in 2012 and  2013. The war was raging.  President Asad didn't look like he was gonna hold on. And it was a pre-Islamist invasion in late  2014  out of Iraq and Jordan also. And so we were asked whether we could help mediate.   Our answer was we would gladly do that, but under the condition at the same time, the various sides would give us young people to help prepare for post-conflict.  And we did that for a couple of years, but it became increasingly clear that the regime, in particular, wasn't interested in supporting this process, especially when they started to gain the upper hand with Iranian initial and then Russian involvement.

GUEST (Daniel Levin)  (06:05):

So by 2014, we aborted our project, but what had happened by then, because we had strong contacts,  straight into Damascus and into the regime strongholds in the north of Aleppo and in the Northeast, we were then asked by Western governments and also families of missing people to see if we could help locate your Americans, British French people, Japanese journalists, aid workers, and journalists in particular. And so it led to a number of those requests. And this book is about one such request. It actually came on the heels of a very disappointing experience, a very tragic one wherein in 2014 in the summer, I was asked to locate a missing Westerner. And 10 days before I was supposed to meet the hostage-takers, he was executed --  decapitated actually. And so this book takes place in the fall of 2014, which I remind you was a particularly brutal time when James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and others were caught and executed.

GUEST (Daniel Levin)  (07:01):

And some of those executions were put on social media and circulated. So it was particularly hard. And I did not really wanna get involved. I got a pretty desperate call to go meet someone in Paris. I didn't know for what when my travel schedule could be worked out. I met him in Paris for dinner, and he broke down on a walk and told me that a son of a very dear friend, who I later found out was actually a child who was very dear to him too, had gone missing in Syria and asked me to help.  I was very reluctant about it because I just had this pretty traumatic experience.   I was suffering from PTSD and didn't wanna do it. But I placed a call to a friend of mine, Khalid Al Marri, a Saudi who was very well networked in the region, and asked whether he happened to know anything about this missing person.

GUEST (Daniel Levin)  (07:40):

And he then sent me off on a trail. It turned out that the young man -- without giving away spoilers, it turned out that the young man was captured by a gang that was primarily gang trading, manufacturing, and trading Captagon, an amphetamine. So it set me off on a trail from Instanbul to Beirut and Amman, and then Dubai.  I actually had to go twice to Syria, but I couldn't write that in the book because the Syrian officer who helped me and kept me safe in Syria, asked me not to do it because otherwise his support would've basically been public and he would've faced repercussions. Over these 20 days, essentially that I'm on the trail of this drug gang that had captured this young man. And I have to chase the gang leader all the way through the Middle East and into the Gulf. And I finally catch up with him in Dubai when I find out what actually happened to Paul.

HOST (Jennifer Weissmann) (08:31):

No spoiler here but in those 20 days,  when you were searching for Paul on the heels of what had happened in 2014 with James Foley and others, what were you most afraid of for yourself emotionally and physically?

GUEST (Daniel Levin)  (08:48):

I don't know if I was physically afraid. There was one night in Beirut in particular where I am with someone who identifies as the Sheikh in the book. But if someone reads the footnotes carefully, they will find out who he is.   He is a very powerful leader of a very hostile group to Israel, but I was under the protection of my friend Khalid Al Marri at the time. So I trusted him completely.  But I had to fly blind, which is, I landed in Beirut with one of this militia man's deputies. And I had to surrender my passport and all my electronics.  I was cut off in those hours when I was to meet this person who would then provide me the information I needed for my next stop to catch up with information on Paul, the missing man. And that was a weird sensation.

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (09:33):

It's also weird because obviously don't travel with my Israeli identity. I travel with a Swiss passport, which doesn't show my place of birth. So, I don't hide my Jewish identity. And it's my name that makes it fairly obvious. Some say my looks make it obvious too. I leave it to others to judge that. But that was a weird situation. I felt safe, but nonetheless, it was definitely, you know, anxiety-provoking. And then of course, once I catch up with the leader of the drug group in Dubai, who was an extremely violent person, I had to be careful how I did it and only meet him in public spots where I knew that I could get away if I needed to. I never would've met him alone. So I never really felt afraid, but that doesn't mean you don't feel some pressure obviously along the way.

HOST (Jennifer Weissmann)  (10:17):

When you're negotiating for the release of someone, you have a personal credo that you don't pay the ransom.  Instead, you offer favors.  What kind of favors can you offer? What kind of power can you wield if it's not ransom money?

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (10:34):

Yeah. I don't pay any ransom. As a matter of principle. I really do believe that if you pay ransom for kidnapping, you guarantee the next 10 people are gonna get kidnapped. I know that in the real world, many people, even those who say in governments will say they don't pay, they do pay. Sometimes they allow others to pay for them. But I personally don't get involved in those cases. The types of favors or chips, if you wanna call 'em that, that you can collect and cut at the right moment are often indirect.  This means that you can do something for a third party, which in turn can do something for the person holding the kid person. To give you examples, which has happened quite frequently, actually, is that a family member of a hostage-taker needs treatment. And either because the whole family's blacklisted or because the logistics don't work out if I can arrange for that medical treatment, whether it's in Cypress or in Germany.  As an example, the mother of a hostage-taker had breast cancer and needs some treatment.

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (11:33):

So arranging that kind of treatment, doing it on a favorable basis rather than cash exchange or money exchanging hands. That's the type of favor that we talk about once in a while you get asked, whether you can get a person off an OFAC list. The office before the control of an asset, meaning the US embargoed list that's managed by the treasury department.  Those kinds of favors. It's much harder to accomplish. It's easier to do it indirectly, where you do something for another person and that person, in turn, can do it for the person or the group controlling the hostage.

HOST (Jennifer Weissmann) (12:07):

So in the past, you've made these kinds of arrangements?

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (12:13):

That's correct. Virtually every kidnapping has something of this nature and it's not just in the Middle East. There might be situations in other parts of the world where Chinese intelligence might help in a hostage situation, not always with terrorist groups, sometimes it's governments holding people illegally and detaining them. So you may interact with other intelligence agencies, and intelligence groups and they in turn may want something from you in return, some favor or some kind of advice. It can be anything of that nature. So there's always something of that, but obviously, you're very careful not to cross any lines. You can't provide any financial other stuff to any group that is declared a hostile group or terrorist group to the United States. So there's a very clear line.  It's not just a fine line. It's a pretty bright line that you can't cross.  And I'm very careful not to cross it, but in many cases, don't forget that the hardest part is not so much providing ransom for the release.

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (13:12):

The hardest part is obtaining reliable information. Also, the name of the book is "Proof of Life" because in many cases -- that is often more valuable.   Even in economic and financial terms, the cost of the release of the kidnapped person and getting reliable information is extremely hard because the moment a person is taken hostage, the rumors start.  In every single case, many people swear to me that they actually saw the person who looked really thin and had grown a beard and was begging for his life.  There are rumors and it's the same patterns. I hear them every single time. And there are very few people who actually have reliable information. Once you identify who those people are in a country, whether it's in the Middle East or Southeast Asia, you need to know if you can rely on that information and keep it flowing. That's based on relationships that require nurturing and nurturing. Those relationships are through reliable advice, not betraying someone's confidence or doing favors that are of value to those people.

HOST (Jennifer Weissmann) (14:12):

In this war economy.  In Syria now with Asad and Russia's influence on Iran,  and the Iran deal that's on the table with the USA -- what do you think Syria and the Middle East look like in a few years? Can you make any guesses?

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (14:30):

Gosh, we're such bad prognosticators.  If you told me that 30 years ago, we'd be having a conversation now about the Middle East with the political reality as it is right now? I would've told you you're nuts. You know, had you told me that Ariel Sharon would evacuate Gaza in 2005.  I would've said you have got to be kidding. So we are such bad prognosticators. I'm not going to even venture a guess. Some of the answers to your question are in your question. You started out by saying this war economy. I think that Syria will remain a devastated, failed state as long as the war economies are alive and well.  There are parties in the regime and around the regime who are becoming just dependently wealthy in this war economy.

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (15:20):

And it's not just trading drugs, such as Captagon, it's trading anything. It's human trafficking. I wrote in the book about two young girls who have been taken from a village in Syria and traded, and sold into sex slavery in the Gulf.  There's a game with vaccines, with medicine, with clean water, with diesel, with everything. And those who control the war economy become wealthy, in ways that they can't even dream of in peacetime.  So I think as long as the war economy is alive and well -- this is going to stay the same. Now, there is a calculation of the other powers throughout the Middle East such as Israel and others for whom the status quo in Syria is fairly welcome, right? Israel obviously does a calculation where having Asad beats the alternative, which might be an Islamist state. The Iranians need Asad there because the Iranians fantasize about having actual physical access to the border with Israel, just like they're paranoid about Israel, having access to the border with Iran through Abraham Accords, right?

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (16:15):

Where during the United Arab Emirates,  Ras Al-Khaimah is one of the small Emirates there. You can actually see the Iranian land across the straits there. So that's the Iranian paranoia. Israel feels the same way about the Iranian presence and the Syrian border plus Hezbollah of course, in Lebanon. So I think that for too many parties, the status quo in Syria can last, of course, the ones for whom it can last because it's devastating, are the ones, no one asks, which are the Syrian people. It's a country that's been devastated. People have lost anything.  I personally don't think that in our lifetime, we're gonna see anything, any semblance of a functional state in Syria. And we haven't even begun to address how destabilizing it's been on Jordan with the number of Syrian refugees there in the north. You have refugee camps in the north of Jordan that look like actual cities that look so permanent. You have obviously a huge amount of  Syrian refugees in Lebanon, which in itself is turning into a failed state. So it's so destabilizing. But if you ask me whether, you know, some kind of religious or faith-based hope that the Middle East is gonna look different 10 years from now -- I don't.

HOST (Jennifer Weissmann) (17:21):

You mentioned the Abraham Accords, which is important to talk about in 2022. What does that look like? If the USA signs a deal with Iran, what happens with Saudi Arabia? What happens with the UAE? How does that work in your mind?

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (17:35):

I think it's a mistake to look at all the Gulf states as a monolith. I know the states pretty well. I know the crown princes, both in the UAE and in Saudi Arabia, MBS and  MBZ. I think that the UAE has immediate proximity to Iran and needs to manage that relationship. So while it pushes the US into a more hostile position with Iran behind the scenes, it has its own relationships that it entertains one of the crown Prince's brothers.   He has gone to Teran many, many, many times now. So one of the senior intelligence Ali Al Shamsi, who's also responsible for the relationship with Syria has gone turned on many times. So I think that there is an understanding that they live in a dangerous part of the world, and they're gonna have to manage that relationship.   And the US today is very different from the US of 30 years ago.

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (18:30):

Now Saudi Arabia is slightly different and has been a little more reluctant to join the Abraham Accords in a full-throated way. One of the reasons is that Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud does feel more of an affinity for the Palestinian people than his son, the crown prince Mohammed bin Salman does.  The other part is I think that these Saudis still are sort of betting on Donald Trump coming back to power, or at least the Trump family exerting a lot of influence.  This is why you saw that the Saudi Sovereign WealthFund is the single largest investor in Jared Kushner's new fund.  Even though the advisors were saying Kushner's clueless and doesn't know how to run a fund and neither does his team and that their management fee is excessive. The Saudis are going long on Trump and the Trump orbit still.  I think The Saudis have a slightly different approach. So you combine it with the current US administration's slight hostility to Saudi Arabia and high oil prices. Now notwithstanding the Ukraine conflict, I think the Saudis are hedging it a little bit more than the UAE.   The UAE has been very clever in recognizing that the best insurance policy for future US administrations and Congress is actually a good relationship with Israel.

HOST (Jennifer Weissmann) (19:45):

I'm glad you brought up Israel. What does Israel look like in the world with its faltering, or softening relationship with the US?  Do you see that relationship going back to a place of shoulder-to-shoulder strength between Israel and the US?

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (20:06):

I don't.  I'm just gonna express my personal view. I think that Israelis, and I count myself as Israeli, but Jews worldwide make the mistake of forgetting their history.  And then in the fifties, in the Soviet crisis, Israel was aligned with the UK and France against Nasser and Egypt and thought they could show some aggression towards Egypt, and the US whistled all the sides back and said 'there's no way you're gonna do anything like that without our consent.' Which incidentally was the last time that the UK decided not to be on the same side of the Middle East conflict as the US.   To think that it's inconceivable that the US would ultimately change its affinity for Israel, that something like that is something to last until the days of days, almost in a religious concept --  is simply silly to me. I think that's a relationship that is strong.

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (20:57):

Israel has a lot of allies in Congress and administration it's being taken for granted to some extent. And if you talk to members of the intelligence community in Israel who have been in that relationship for decades, they will voice their concerns to you. That relationship may be squandered. And the US is a changing country.   You know that very well yourself.   The largest growing minority in the US is the Hispanic minority.  Their voting patterns are unclear. They voted much more Republican than they have in the past. Whether that's gonna be this unconditional declaration of love for Israel -- well not so sure. I don't know if you just saw just today, the Harvard Crimson newspaper.

HOST (Jennifer Weissmann) (21:37):

I saw that.

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (21:38):

For the first time endorsed the BDS movement. Well, you can say that's just Harvard and that's a few lefty woke universities, but that would be very dangerous.  Those are things that five or six years ago would have been unthinkable, even at a university, such as Harvard. Maybe at other universities but not Harvard.   You have to pay attention to these signs because those places are shaping the leaders of the future. And there is a certain delay. It may not be next year or two years from now, but 10 years down the road, it's something that can be maintained, but it has to be actively maintained. And I do believe just to answer your question completely.  I think there was a major shift, especially on the Democrat side in US politics when Bibi Netanyahu went and spoke before Congress against the sitting administration.  He railed against the Obama administration on the Iran deal, which by the way, Bibi's own security and this entire intelligence community advised him that wasn't a good deal to sign.

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (22:33):

It wasn't a good deal per se, but it was the only deal available. The alternative was no deal, which now of course we're looking back and saying it would've been good for the US to stay in the deal. So I think having an Israeli Prime Minister have the audacity to go and trash talk as sitting president in the US capital is something that changed a lot. And you may not hear that publicly. You may not hear it officially. You're not gonna hear that kind of talk in elections, but when you talk to people in government and in the military and the US side and national security at the council.  When you talk to them over a couple of drinks and it's an informal conversation and then no recording devices nearby, you hear something very differently expressed and it would behoove Israel to pay really close attention to that.

HOST (Jennifer Weissmann) (23:16):

Daniel, you have given us so much to think about and consider.  I have to tell you that as an American, as an Israeli now, and as a Jew when I go back to America and I talk to reform Jews,  many now are not supportive of Israel. It's pretty painful to hear that.  Unless Israel really courts the Christian right and bringing them here with missions and so forth, I think it's gonna be a pretty tough road ahead for Israel in the West.

GUEST (Daniel Levin) (23:56):

You're not gonna just get it done with Evangelical right.  You have to expand that network much broader and wider. These relationships are like aircraft carriers. They really take a long time to adjust to a new current. And unfortunately, Israel doesn't have that luxury of just taking its time doing that. The Biden Administration was not particularly happy with Israel's stance on Ukraine and trying to balance that and hedge with Russia and so on.  This is something that needs to be fed because you're not gonna hear it officially. But when you talk behind the scenes to people, you do hear how people really think. And eventually the policy shifts, it's not unthinkable that this relationship won't change between the US and Israel.  And anyone who thinks that's unthinkable is simply putting his or her head in the sand.

HOST (Jennifer Weissmann) (24:39):

Daniel, thank you so much for the work that you're doing for your foundation and for writing your book “Proof of Life: 20 Days on the Hunt for a Missing Person in the Middle East." It's an amazing suspenseful, horrible story. Thank you for all your work. And I look forward to speaking with you again on this podcast. Thank you for joining us this week on Finding Inspiration. Please help me by clicking the subscribe button and sharing this podcast with a friend. See you next week. I'm Jennifer Weissmann.