by Terry Anderson

About the author: Terry Anderson is a journalist and former chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press (AP). In 1985 he was taken hostage by terrorists in Lebanon and held in captivity for nearly seven years. In 1992 and 1993 he served as a fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University in New York City.

When Israel invaded south Lebanon on 6 June 1982, I had been covering southern Africa out of Johannesburg for nearly a year and was eager to get out. Southern Africa was quiet and I was restless. Lebanon was a war—the world’s biggest story—and I was a journalist. The Middle East was the natural place to go.

Lebanon was exciting. The country fascinated me with its religious diversity, its endless complications, its small feuds and larger...