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Kabul diary: Afghanistan after the Soviets

Will anyone care about Afghanistan after the Soviets leave? In February 1989, the last Western missions have already departed, along with the Russian military and the security it had provided to foreigners. Only the journalists are left, jockeying for phone lines and Telex machines to file stories on the country's food shortages, tribal tensions and depressing poverty. In a daily video diary for CBC-TV's The Journal, correspondent Lyse Doucet says many Afghans hope the mujahedeen will take power, but many others - especially the women - hope they won't.
• Born in New Brunswick and educated in Canada, Lyse Doucet was a foreign correspondent for the BBC for 15 years beginning in the mid-1980s. In 1999 she became a presenter for the network, and as of 2009 was working for the BBC World News on TV and the BBC World Service on radio.
  • Doucet's fears, as expressed in this diary, were realized in the mid-1990s when the ultra-conservative Taliban began to exert power in Afghanistan. Under Taliban rule, women could not work or attend school and were compelled to wear the burka, a tent-ike head-to-toe covering with only a screen for the eyes.

• In 2001 the United States, backed by a coalition of other nations including Canada, launched rocket attacks on Afghanistan in retaliation for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Taliban was ousted from power, but as of 2009 the coalition's occupation of Afghanistan continues, with a planned withdrawal date sometime in 2011 for the Canadian forces. 

Medium: Television
Program: The Journal
Broadcast Date: Feb. 15, 1989
Reporter: Lyse Doucet
Duration: 11:11

Last updated: February 4, 2013

Page consulted on March 28, 2013

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