Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s chief international correspondent, is one of the world’s most distinguished journalists and broadcasters. Across her 30-year career, she has reported on conflicts around the globe, from West Africa to Central Asia. Her latest book, The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan, tells the troubled tale of Afghanistan’s modern history through the eyes of Afghan men and women. It has been longlisted for the prestigious Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction.

Jack Dickens (JD) – I’ll start by taking you back to Kabul in December 1988, where you open your book. How did your interest in Afghanistan first emerge, and what led you there at that precise moment in time?

Lyse Doucet (LD) –  A very long time ago, I began working for the BBC in West Africa. I spent five years out there, but, as a Canadian, I then had to get a work permit to go and work in Britain. Thankfully, I managed to get one through the kindness of strangers. But I soon wanted to go out into the field again, because my true love was being on the ground, in the heat and the dust, as a foreign correspondent. I had friends who said that I had to go to Pakistan, and, even though there wasn’t a BBC job for me there, I decided to take the leap. That’s where I first met Afghans. That was 1988; it was in the depths of the Cold War, when Western-backed fighters, known as the mujahideen, were battling against the Soviet-backed communist government in Kabul.

At that point in 1988, the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev, who had come to power a few years earlier, was pulling troops out of Afghanistan after a disastrous, decade-long invasion. I was sort of nudged out of Pakistan by a competitive BBC colleague, who didn’t really want me on their patch finding all these stories about Pakistan and Afghanistan. So again, through the kindness of strangers, I was able to get a visa, a very rare visa, to go to Kabul. I was very lucky because, due to the politics and propaganda of the Cold War, the BBC wasn’t getting many visas to go to what was then Soviet-backed Afghanistan. So when I got my visa in the winter of 1988, I simply had to go.

I landed in Kabul on Christmas Day 1988, the day after my 30th birthday, during the coldest winter in a decade. Before arriving, I had been told there were only two places to stay: the Kabul Hotel in the city centre or the Inter-Continental on the hill. And, in a split second decision as we left the airport in a fog of diesel fuel, I said, ‘let’s go to the hill.’ That’s how I arrived in the gloam of the so-called Inter-Continental. The hotel had retained its name even though the luxury chain running it had pulled out when Soviet troops invaded in 1979. I still remember being in that dark and gloomy lobby, with the receptionist standing behind a marble-topped front desk, asking me, as any hotel receptionist would say, ‘How long will you be staying, madam?’ And I still remember thinking, ‘Oh, my goodness, how long am I going to stay? Is it going to be six days, six weeks, or six months?’ Ultimately, I ended up staying nearly a year: it became my first Afghan home. That’s why, in the book, I tell the stories of the people who were part of my life in the hotel, and who then served in this hotel for decades, come what may, in times of war and peace, but mainly deepening war.

JD – That is one of the really unique and fascinating things about the book. You weave together the stories of Afghans who have worked at the Inter-Continental, from the 1960s to the present day, with the seismic geopolitical events that have unfolded around them. Could you explain why you chose to write the book in that way? Why did you feel that it was so important for you to capture Afghanistan’s history from this very personal perspective?

LD – When I began to travel after I finished graduate school in Canada, I found that I always turned to novels or to narrative history in order to try to better understand a new place or a new people. In that kind of writing, characters and history come alive on the page. For me, that kind of living history was one that helped to draw me into a society. And so, when I pondered how I wanted to write a story about Afghanistan, I sought to draw people into the history in a similar way. It wasn’t just that I was thinking of the conventions of fiction to tell a non-fiction story; it was also that, as journalists, we have all been confronted by this term called ‘news avoidance’. It was that people, including ourselves, were saying that the news is so grim, it’s so depressing; there are so many wars. And I found even myself turning the dial on the radio to listen to a classical music station rather than a news station. But of course, as journalists, as citizens, we have to know what is happening in the world. So I thought I would try a different kind of storytelling.

I still remember finishing graduate school in Canada and sitting in a café on Queen Street in Toronto, on a grey and drizzly day, and finishing Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. And I just sat there amazed and absorbed by the enormity of this book, thinking ‘wow, to write a novel that is also true’. And at that moment, I was really overwhelmed by the idea that you could do this. Now, I’m certainly not putting myself into Capote’s category! But his book resonated with me. Around about the same time, I was also inspired by the ‘New Journalism’ movement. You had people like Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, some of the greats of writing, finding different ways to tell real stories. And, as they say, the best stories are true ones.

Decades later, I decided to take a risk and write my own book. It was a gamble, and now the real judge will be the readers. I hope that it achieves at least some of what I set out to achieve. It’s about Afghanistan, but it’s also about very universal human experiences: it’s about people who live in times of huge flux, violence and change, and how their lives are disrupted as a result. It’s also about how people still get up in the morning and find an everyday courage to carry on.

JD – Your admiration for, and your gratitude to, Afghan friends and contacts really shines through in the narrative. Of course, another thread that runs through the book right from the beginning is the experience – and the extraordinary courage and resilience – of Afghan women. We live in rather dark times for Afghan women now, of course, but do you think that some of this historic resilience and courage provides a sense of hope for women under Taliban rule?

LD – From the very first times when I started meeting Afghans, as well as writing and reporting about Afghanistan, I was struck by their sense of self, their character. I’ve often found in my travels that people who have a strong sense of who they are also have a strong sense of humour. And of course, over the course of such a turbulent history, Afghans have developed a very, very black humour, which means that they find lightness in humour in the darkest of times. As for the women of Afghanistan, of course, the image of them that we have in our minds is that they are living in a society that, especially in the rural areas, is controlled by men. Yet there’s a great strength in Afghan women, and it really came out into the open during the two decades of international engagement with Afghanistan between 2001-21, when women were allowed to dream bigger than ever before.

Of course, there were also earlier periods when women were able to dream as well. During the Communist era, when I first lived in Afghanistan, there were also opportunities for women then. At that time, the Soviet-backed government’s revolutionary ideals meant that women were employed in the army and in other places. And even before that, in the Kingdom of Afghanistan before 1973, women were educated; women did work at the Inter-Continental hotel; women were in public wearing smart Western clothes. The hotel was a small corner of Kabul, but it was an important corner.

So when the Taliban tell Afghan women that Afghanistan is a very, very conservative society, Afghan women want to say, ‘look at our history’. Afghan society is very conservative, but it is also a society where women have flourished, have been educated, and have held senior roles in different generations. What is happening now is that women are being pushed out of public spaces: out of the parks, even out of the gyms. Girls are being pushed out of school, and women out of university, out of the main jobs. In response, many Afghans are saying, ‘yes, we are a conservative Muslim society, but, in Islam, women have the right to be educated, and they have the right to shine in whatever profession that they choose’. On top of all this, a succession of Islamic scholars from around the world have gone to Afghanistan and said to the very, very ultra conservative Taliban leaders who are coming up with these edicts against women that this is not the essence of Islam or Islamic values.

JD – You paint a very evocative portrait of the world of the Inter-Continental Hotel. Yet there is always a sense in the narrative of another world beyond Kabul – a more rural, conservative world that is in tension with the city. I just wonder, does that rural-urban clash of values help to explain the course of Afghanistan’s recent history?

LD – If you go back through Afghanistan’s recent history, this is an important theme. And, in the book, I explore more than half a century, beginning with the end of a period of peace under the Kingdom of Afghanistan in the early 1970s. Throughout this half century, there were often collisions at each turn between society in Kabul and the people who grew up in the more traditional villages. It is important to note that these villages were often overlooked in the development of Afghanistan. And in the decades of war, it was Afghanistan’s rural provinces that suffered the most, either from Soviet carpet-bombing during the Soviet invasion after 1979, or from US-led raids during the international intervention after 2001. I’m very conscious that in choosing Kabul, and in choosing an international hotel, I am selecting a very specific prism – a small place to tell a bigger story. But even within that hotel, there are moments when city and village come together. One such moment occurred after Soviet troops pulled out and the mujahideen battled on and eventually took power in Kabul 1992. The Inter-Continental was state-owned, so it was their hotel now.

Yet when the mujahideen first arrived at the hotel, they got stuck in the revolving door at the front with their Kalashnikovs. It was because they’d never seen a revolving door before; they’d never even set foot in a hotel. Many of them had never been in any building other than a one-story building of mud and timber. So, this episode was a source of hilarity, and they didn’t know how to get out of the revolving door. When they did, the next source of surprise was the hotel elevator. You can imagine it, in their eyes: wow, you’ve pressed this button on a shimmering glass wall; next, you go into this mirrored cavity, and you suddenly, magically rise to the higher floors. It must have been a mind-blowing experience.

Then you have the staff who had grown up in Kabul, had served in this hotel for many years, and had never seen anything like the mujahideen, with their traditional apparel, worn and wrinkled by war, full of dust, parading through the lobby.

So, in that moment, you saw the two faces of Afghanistan, two peoples of Afghanistan, coming together in this hotel. And the beauty of the Inter-Continental hotel is that they ended up working together and finding ways to cooperate and move forward.

Nonetheless, that moment is also a damning indictment of the distorted development of the country, and of a terrible war that robbed Afghan villagers of a chance to educate their children, to have a life where you can turn a tap and water comes out, where you flick a switch and electricity suddenly goes on. So, there are these transitions, these junctures in the book that are played out in many places, including the hotel, which is, in itself, a microcosm of broader changes taking place.

JD – Moving forward to the period between 2001 and 2021, and the experiment of Western-backed democratic government. How should we think about this period in the longue durée of Afghanistan’s history? Where did that Western intervention succeed and where did it go wrong for the people of Afghanistan? 


LD – These are fundamental questions, and they haven’t really been answered properly yet, because it’s painful. It’s painful for Afghans who dared to dream that in 2001, when the Taliban were toppled by the US-led intervention, this was their chance for peace after decades of war. It’s also painful for the international community, for the soldiers, diplomats, aid workers, and journalists who went to Afghanistan hoping that they could make a difference; and mistakes were made on all sides.

I’ve always been struck by how Afghans have lived, and survived, under almost every political system that the world has known. They’ve had a peaceful kingdom – not perfect by any means, but largely peaceful. They’ve had Soviet-backed communism, warlordism, and Islamism under the Taliban. Then they had 20 years of wannabe democracy, bankrolled and backed by the West, and now they’re back under Taliban rule again.

When the US-led intervention started, there were many, most of all the Russians, saying that the Americans should have learned from history, that no one could or should invade Afghanistan, and that the Americans would fail like the Soviets before them. But I think that if there’s one lesson that has been learned, it is that when you go into a culture and a society with deeply rooted traditions that are not your own, you cannot assume that you know what’s best for that country and its people. Even knowing the questions to ask is hard. I remember going to a dinner party in Kabul about 10 years into the US-led intervention, and sitting around a table with people who were living and working in Kabul – heads of Western aid agencies, military people, people from different walks of life. There was a discussion around the table reflecting on what had happened in the previous ten years. After about an hour of an animated debate, the conclusion was: we didn’t ask Afghans. We didn’t ask Afghans enough about what they wanted. And I was absolutely stunned. I remember saying to the table, ‘Really?’.

It sounds deceptively simple, but it’s actually very complex. At the start of the military intervention in 2001, it was difficult for aid agencies and NGOs, let alone the US and NATO countries, to find out who to work with, because there were also Afghans who exploited the confusion for their own purposes. At the same time, there was so much money washing through Kabul, which fuelled a lot of corruption. So I think that Western countries will have to act far more cautiously and carefully the next time they decide to intervene in other parts of the world. Of course, there may not be a next time. These massive international interventions have been proven time and time again to fail. They can do some good, but they are fraught with dangers.

JD – Do you think that the ‘wannabe democracy’ of 2001-21 was just a passing blip between two periods of Taliban rule? Or do some of the legacies from this period live on?

LD – In the aftermath of the 2021 withdrawal, many are now asking: was it all for nothing? I would say that it wasn’t all for nothing, because that period of international engagement helped to create the space in which the most educated, and most connected, Afghan generation in history came of age. And this was not just in Kabul. I saw it in the provincial capitals. I saw it in the villages, where more and more fathers began to understand that they needed their young daughters to be educated as well as their sons. That generation was able to dream bigger than ever before.

That generation is still fighting. Some of them have been forced to leave, some of them are fortunate now to be able to be educated outside the country, but they still carry their country in their hearts. And they still want to believe that they haven’t lost their country forever, that they can go back. When you hear the stories of young women and men going to secret schools, being educated online, sometimes even bravely taking to the streets, they are fighting for what they now understand is their right to be part of a modern world, on their own terms, as Muslims, as Afghans. They know that they’re part of a broader international community.

JD – How do you think Western governments should approach Afghanistan’s current rulers? Is some form of diplomatic engagement with the Taliban possible or necessary?

LD – As someone who spends a lot of time in countries at war, and seeing the ugliness, the brutality, the impunity of war, I also spend a lot of time with mediators, with the envoys, trouble-shooters and diplomats who try to end wars. These are the people who think long and hard about how to get warring sides to put down their arms, how to get people around the table, and how to reconcile their interests. So I do believe in the power of dialogue. But the question of how to deal with the Taliban is one that electrifies and angers Afghans, both in Afghanistan and in the diaspora, as well as governments around the world. It’s obviously a very pressing issue for Afghans who are still in the country, as well as the diaspora, especially as we’ve just passed the four-year anniversary of the Taliban’s return to power.

As things stand, the Taliban has still not budged an inch when it comes to allowing girls to go to school past grade six or allowing women to go to university. On the contrary, the rules seem to be getting stricter and stricter. Many will remember, and I myself heard it from Taliban leaders directly when there were the talks in Qatar during 2020-21, that the Taliban vowed that things would be different this time. They said they would not rule in the same way, that they now understand that they are part of the international community, and pledged that women would be educated and allowed to work. Instead, what Afghans have found – what even some Taliban leaders have found – is that they’re in a system that, some argue, is even worse and more restrictive than the previous period of Taliban rule.

At the same time, there are prominent women’s activists and others in the diaspora. Some say that there has to be military intervention. That’s not going to wash: no country, at least not as far as we know, is going to back another military intervention. Others say you should completely cut the Taliban off, while others are saying that we have to talk to them. And some discussions are going on: the United Nations talks to the Taliban, for example.

In my view, change will have to come from within. That means that it will have to come from within the Taliban itself, and those Taliban leaders – and there are many – who are saying: ‘This is not Afghanistan. Yes, we are part of the Taliban, but we don’t agree with the harshest of edicts restricting women to the home.’ It is worth noting that these edicts are being handed down by the Taliban leadership, which is based in the southern province of Kandahar. Yet, I have to say, a founding member of the Taliban said to me that 95 per cent of the Taliban don’t agree with these harshest of edicts. At the same time, those who are critical in private are also anxious to maintain the unity of the Taliban after so many decades of wars, which have torn their country apart. Still, at some point, something is going to give, the status quo is going to be shattered, because if there is one thread running through Afghan history, it is that nothing ever lasts forever.

JD – Should I understand from what you’re saying that there is a ‘softliner’ group within the Taliban, one that might, in time and with the right opportunity, moderate the policies of the Afghan government?

LD – All the internal critics are doing so far is speaking out. Of those who have spoken out, at least one or two have had to leave the country because they came under pressure from the leadership. In response, you have the leadership at the top of the Taliban – including their Emir, Hibatullah Akhundzada – digging in. They are adamant that their strict control of women is Afghan, that this is Afghan culture, and that the Taliban has the best form of Islam in the world.

Yet, at the same time, a succession of Islamic scholars from the most respected Islamic institutions and places of learning from around the world, have gone to Kabul to tell them otherwise; you’ve also had major Islamic countries – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Turkey, you name it – that have done the same. They have all spoken to the Taliban and told them: ‘This is not Islam. Islam allows for the education of women, and you are not giving them their rights.’ Hitting back at them, the Taliban use a word in Pashto, urf, which means ‘custom’. They argue that what they are doing is part of their Afghan ‘traditions’, that their traditions are the best, and that, under Islam, women must be protected. Therefore, they argue that they should stay in the home while men care for them. They assert that if women don’t have to leave the home, they should just stay inside unless they have good reason to venture out.

Of course, even during the two decades of international engagement, women in the provinces lived very traditional lives. But there were also the beginnings of women going out and getting educated, going out to work, having a bit more freedom. These questions ultimately have to be decided by Afghans, not by outsiders. And, if you look around the world, there’s often this binary between the traditions of rural areas and those of urban areas. Even in Afghanistan now, women have a bit more freedom in Kabul than elsewhere. If you go to Kabul, you’ll see women in the restaurants, and you’ll see women on the streets; they’re not all dressed in black. But, ultimately, they still can’t go to school past grade six, and there are so many of what we would all regard as the most basic of freedoms that they’re not allowed to have.

The point has not been reached yet where there is a discussion about change taking place. The hardline edicts are not being softened, and those who do speak out are not cutting through. And these figures say in private to the diplomats who go to Afghanistan that they have to find a way to change things, that they’re going to try, and just need time, and that pressure would be counterproductive.

Meanwhile, different governments around the world are taking different approaches. Initially, most countries – whether it was Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Britain, the US – were all united in saying that we cannot engage with the Taliban; or they agreed that the Taliban cannot be recognised formally until they adhere to basic, fundamental human rights. But now Russia has recognised the Taliban; countries like China have, in effect, recognised them by accrediting Taliban ambassadors. And many businesses from many countries are going to Kabul, signing deals to export Afghanistan’s mineral wealth. The United States, as we speak, has been negotiating with the Taliban to obtain the release of American hostages being held in the country. So the Taliban believe that they are engaging with the world, and they just hope that, little by little, they will be accepted by the international community.

But there are red lines, and there have to be red lines. These are the lines of the majority of Afghans. Indeed, in my book, I try to give people a sense of what Afghans themselves feel about this situation, as well as the value they place on their family and on education. We cannot accept that, in the world of 2025, there is a country that doesn’t allow girls to be educated beyond the age of 11-12, and doesn’t allow women to develop their potential or to work in the jobs that they want. No matter how traditional or conservative a society may be, these are basic, fundamental human rights.

JD – What can journalists and governments do to help the protagonists of your book, the ordinary people of Afghanistan? And how can they try, even in the most difficult of circumstances, to alleviate the suffering of those living under Taliban rule?

LD – I’m a big believer in the idea that the smallest of acts can end up creating the biggest of actions. Afghanistan has largely slipped from our headlines and news coverage. A colleague of mine and her team are there now: they were able to get visas and they’re currently reporting on events. Some journalists do get in, but the Taliban don’t give out many visas. Therefore, people are forgetting about Afghanistan, and some people want to forget about Afghanistan because it invokes painful memories, still, of the dramatic reversal of fortunes experienced by the international community there.

That’s why, in writing my book, I wanted people to try to understand that there is a great power in literature. It helps us to visit places and meet people, which takes us out of our own world. Susan Sontag used to talk about how we need literature because it has this power to expand our empathy. It allows us to begin to see others as people who are not so different from you or I. In all my years of being a foreign correspondent, I’ve learned that, no matter how complex and consequential a story is, if you drill down, the stories that you find are ultimately human stories that hold universal truths. They may be stories about human relationships, between mothers and fathers and their children, or they may be about places – about homes, streets, neighbourhoods, cities and countries. Ultimately, it’s important just to care, and just to know about what’s happening in Afghanistan. Nobody can say, ‘well, I don’t know what’s happening there’. It’s a decision not to know what is happening there because there are still a lot of stories being told about Afghanistan. There are Afghan journalists who are writing about Afghanistan. And there are more stories to be told: there are stories that speak to the everyday courage that all of us can find, no matter where we live, no matter what kind of lives we lead, reminding us to carry on with a measure of hope and humour, and also with some kind of humanity.

JD – Throughout all your years of reporting on Afghanistan, what is the most important lesson that you’ve learned from Afghan people and their history?

LD – I’ve learned the importance of their sense of self, their strength, and the way they carry on. They carry on even though it’s now very trying and this is possibly one of the darkest, most difficult periods in their history, because it seems to be one where change will be so slow to come and ease their suffering. The lesson that I have taken from them is about finding strength within. Above all, they have taught me that, even in the worst of times, you must try to find some measure of hope and humour to carry you forward, and you must never, ever lose your deeply ingrained sense of hospitality.