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Lyse Doucet first looked at Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel on Christmas Day 1988, as Soviet troops were withdrawing. Afghanistan at the end of a ten-year career. He expected to stay for a short time. Instead, he stayed for almost a year, and the hotel became his first home in Afghanistan.
More than thirty years later, it became the subject of his first book, The Best Hotel in Kabulwhich has been done won the Women’s award for non-fiction. But while the award recognizes extraordinary work in reporting and history, the BBC’s chief international correspondent is keen on what he can do for the country he inspired.
“Afghanistan went off the rails,” Doucet said. “Perhaps this success will bring attention to the world. None of us should be ready to accept the way we live in a country where girls cannot study after 16, where women cannot go to university, where women are denied many jobs. This is something we should all be angry about.”
Afghanistan has never been like that. After nearly four decades of reporting from the country, mostly for the BBC, Doucet, 67, has seen him go through almost every modern political experiment: Soviet-backed communism, civil war, Taliban regime, a democracy supported by the west, and now the Taliban again.
“I knew Afghanistan had a difficult and violent history,” Doucet said. “I needed to find something that would draw people in instead of push them away.” I didn’t want people to close the book and say: ‘It’s too dark, there’s too much blood. So the hotel was a tool to tell a story in a way that people could relate to. “
The Intercontinental Hotel – known as the Intercon – provided the perfect lens to tell the history of the country’s people. Built by the British in the late 1960s, it was once a symbol of another Afghanistan. In the 1960s and 70s, Kabul was known as the “Paris of the East”, a popular center for fashion, jazz, miniskirts and apres-ski clubs. Afghan pop star Ahmad Zahir – known as “the Elvis of Afghanistan” – performed at the hotel; Gloria Gaynor was a guest. Foreigners went through the hippy route.
The following decades saw political upheaval, Intercon remained open. “Politics, like hotel guests, came in and out,” writes Doucet. “When Afghanistan faced trials and insurgencies over the years, first bright but short-lived, Intercon was unmoved.”
The hotel workers who stayed behind during this transition are at the heart of the story: Hazrat, the housekeeper who had been working there since the hotel’s opening; Abida, the hotel’s first female chef; Amanullah, an engineer; and Malalai, one of the first maids.
“I have to pay tribute to the people of Afghanistan who helped me and told me this book, because in Afghanistan even sharing stories can be dangerous,” said Doucet.
Doucet began his journalism career as a freelance West Africa correspondent for the BBC. He continued to cover international conflicts, then became chief international correspondent in 2012. His book begins with the fall of Kabul in August 2021, and the disastrous withdrawal of America, which remains one of the most famous moments of Doucet’s career. He remembers watching the people coming out of the airport: military planes, helicopters and Afghans carrying one bag as they fled.
“There was this fear at the end.” “People continued to talk about Vietnam – the image of people clinging to the last helicopter rising from the roof of the embassy in Saigon,” he says. It’s been very sad.”
Since coming to power, the Taliban have eradicated women from public life using a number of harsh measures. Girls are completely banned from secondary and university education, women are forced out of many workplaces and banned from public places, and strict adherence to the burqa is required. Last month, a government order was passed legal recognition child marriage. And this week, a protests often protests that began in the western city of Herat against the arrest of women accused of violating the hijab law ended with the killing of two people, including a child.
“It’s almost five years and it’s getting worse,” Doucet said, “but the resilience of Afghan women is amazing.”
Doucet is also frustrated that the barriers facing Afghan women extend beyond those within the country. “There are Afghan women receiving education, but there are no licenses now to allow Afghan women to come and study in Britain and many other places,” she says. “They are facing obstacles everywhere.
“People who were in Afghanistan – freedom fighters, world-class journalists – find themselves having to start over,” he continues. “It’s something none of us want to do.”
However, Doucet believes that the world should be careful not to deny what happened after 2001. “Often people say: what did 20 years of international cooperation achieve? Was it all for nothing? I always say that it was not for nothing. There were many mistakes, but that time helped create the most educated, most united generation in the history of Afghanistan,” he says. “When you see girls saying: ‘I want to use the Internet, can you help me get an education, can you help me get an education? … They know their rights now.”
This month, for the first time, a The EU is planning talks with Taliban representatives in Brusselsalthough there is concern that the engagement could lead to a murderous and repressive regime. Doucet is careful to offer an answer.
“I’m a BBC journalist,” says Doucet. “My job is to explain, not to encourage. But (some) mediators would say that it is better to talk than to isolate. The only change will come from the Taliban.”
At present, there is little sign of change in the country. But Mr. Doucet does not want to reward the best of the Afghans alone.
“Afghans used to say: the last to die is hope,” he says. “Afghanistan has probably lived in all the political systems the world has tried – the history of Afghanistan is that nothing lasts forever.”
