← Dan Snow's History Hit
Dan Snow's History Hit
The Rise, Fall and Rise of the Taliban
01:03:25
From the chaos of the Soviet invasion to their return to Kabul in 2021.
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A
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High on a hill overlooking the city of Kabul sits a hotel that once hosted Afghanistan's beautiful people. The rich, the brightest. The models, the actors, the politicians. They lounged by the pool. The diplomats and the journalists sipped cocktails, swapping intel in the gilded bar under the chandeliers. You can book a room to stay there now, but just before you do, you should know one or two things. Those chandeliers are now laden with dust. No power lights up the bulbs. The figures that now sit beneath them are rather different. They're not movie stars. They are Taliban fighters turned government officials. When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021, they took control of of the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul. 2 It's now where they meet, they make plans. They relax on the patio. They do not drink alcoholic beverage or listen to music. Of course, many of the bedrooms are in a state of decay. Broken glass, collapsed ceilings, spent rounds, shells on the floor. For a couple of generations, it's been true that whoever's the custodian of the country is custodian of that hotel. And the story of that once grand establishment mirrors that country's recent history from a sort of golden age of stability, of prosperity, of entertainment in the 1970s to the communism of the 80s, the Taliban of the 90s, the Western supported governments of the noughties. Under all those changing rulers the last four decades, the hotel has reflected all of those different regimes. Now, during all those different regimes over the past four decades, the hotel has also welcomed one very important returning guest, the BBC's chief correspondent, Lyse Doucet, global legend, the journalist the organization calls on to cover all the major events in global history, from the Arab Spring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She first went to Afghanistan in 1988. She watched Soviet troops withdraw and she's gone back again and again to report on the ever changing situation there. She's just written an incredible book which is just so clever, called the Finest Hotel in Kabul, a building in which she has stayed, in which she's lived for periods of her life and through that building, she charts the recent history of Afghanistan from the seventies to the present day, all through the lens of the intercontinental, its occupants, the staff, the ordinary Afghans who've worked there, through it all. It's a beautiful concept. It's beautifully executed. Today she's joining me on Dan Snow's history, and we're gonna try and explain the complicated and shocking recent history of Afghanistan. We're gonna go through it all, but I'm lucky to have her because she does it with her trademark empathy and effervescent, knowledgeable storytelling. It is my enormous pleasure to welcome you to this episode of the podcast with my guest, Lis Doucet. T minus 10 atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king.
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C
No black white unity till there is first and black unity never to go.
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B
To war with one another again.
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C
And lift off. And the shuttle has cleared the tower.
- [03:48]
B
Lyse Doucet, what an honor to have you on this podcast. Broadcast royalty has landed.
- [03:54]
C
Oh, you're my favorite Canadian, at least at this moment, so it's really lovely. Huge, huge respect for all that you do in your world of history and far beyond.
- [04:04]
B
Oh, thank you so much. Okay, so there's a lot of history here, but let's try and just briefly go back. I mean, it can appear if people are only familiar with it from sort of watching reports on the news and listening to your reports, like a sort of Asian mountainous backwater. But actually, Afghanistan's been at the heart of things. It's a crossroads. It's the middle of something, isn't it?
- [04:25]
C
Yes. And some would say, in fact, Afghans often say that they're cursed by their geography. They sit at this crossroads, as you said, of Central Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. So for centuries, it was this vital road for trade, migration, military campaigns. Of course, it's a history of invasions as well, but especially, of course, the ancient Silk Road that Afghanistan was very much a part of. And it's landlocked, but it's got these majestic mountain ranges, the mighty Hindu Kush, which is both a natural defense, but also means that it makes Afghans think more locally local communities, because they are so difficult to get to the other side. So its geography has worked against it and worked for it.
- [05:16]
B
And you've traveled all over that country for decades, if you don't mind me saying. And when you are traveling around, are you very aware, is this still a place where sort of passes matter? You've got to cross over from a certain place, certain other place. For example, the Khyber Pass, one of the most famous in the world, which is the entrance to South Asia. Really what we might call the Indian subcontinent, Pakistan, India and beyond. Do those places, does the geography still really define how and where you move in that landscape?
- [05:45]
C
It's interesting. You know, I should say as a Canadian, I remember when I saw the mighty Rocky Mountains in Canada and Western Canada, I cried because they were so awesome. You felt humbled by just how glorious they were. And similarly in Afghanistan, whether as you say, it's the Hyber Pass that was the gateway into Afghanistan, and of course it was a gate that the British went through, the Russians wanted to go. It was a buffer zone between the British Empire in India, the Russian Empire in Central Asia. There was this race to get to the so called warm water of the Indian Ocean. For those who have traveled to Afghanistan, and I'm sure there are many on your podcast who listen to your podcast who have. There's the cobble gorge which leads into Afghanistan that has killed many travers these sheer cliffs and this rippling gray and red and black and white, and the Kabul river rushing along its sides. And of course, on top of that, you have, when modern travel comes into it with the aircraft that no one who goes into Kabul forgets. The descent of all descents when you make was particular during the wars where you would make these steep corkscrew descent in between the mountains of the Kush into the Kabul Valley with your airplane throwing out these flares to try to divert the heat seeking missiles of the Western back to Mujahideen. It literally takes your breath away as you worry whether it will take your life away. But there is so much about Afghanistan which inspires awe.
- [07:21]
B
And why is it because it's at those crossroads that people have fought over it. You mentioned the Russians and the British competing over it in the 19th century because it would have blocked or enabled the Russians to reach the Indian Ocean. It's the same, I suppose, Alexander the Great marching east towards India. Is it fought over because it's there? Or are there rich mineral resources? Are there rich pickings a reward for owning that bit of land as well, that terrain?
- [07:47]
C
Oh, that's a very, very good question. A lot of it was just simply to fly the flag in Afghanistan, to claim it as its own. I arrived in Afghanistan on Christmas Day of 1988, when Kabul was in the grip of the harshest winter in more than a decade. And it was in the clutches of the Cold War, where Kabul was really in the crosshairs. You had the Soviet backed government in Kabul and Remember this was still the Soviet empire turned out to be the last years of the Soviet EMP battling against the Western backed Mujahideen and they were tearing the countryside apart. That really, Dan, was the, I would say the most grievous war of the time, the Ukraine war of that time and the biggest migration crisis. And when I went back to, you know, looking over the history of Afghanistan with this book, I was really, you know, back to the geography, the threads of woven together of geography and history and politics that when the US and the Soviet empire were battling for control over this landlocked country, it literally was built into the geography of the roads. The Americans mainly built the roads running east, west. The Soviets built the roads running north, south. Well the first, the Soviets built an international airport in Kabul. So the Americans built an airport, international airport in Kandahar. They really were in lockstep and literally putting not just their boots on the ground but a huge, big footprint on the ground.
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B
Tell me a little bit about that Soviet invasion in the 70s. What was Afghanistan like before that? There was a shah, was it a monarchical state? Was he really in charge?
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C
I've always been struck by how Afghanistan has possibly more than any other country it has lived through every possible political system the world has tried. And that is, it started off as you just were saying, in a peaceable kingdom. It wasn't a perfect kingdom by any measure and it's remembered as the time before war, the halcyon years, the golden years of Afghanistan. For many centuries it was a kingdom. Then of course it was Soviet backed communism. Then it was warlordism which also tore Kabul and part of the Intercontinental Hotel, the focus of my book apart. Then it was Islamism under the Taliban. Then it was a would be democracy bankrolled and backed by the West. Then again it's run by the Taliban again. So Islamism again. So in and out the rulers have come and gone. And the reason why the hotel was interesting, the first luxury hotel was whoever ruled in Afghanistan set the rules at the intercon. So politics was checking in and out of the hotel just like guests. But if I go back to that time, I remember when I was doing some of the research and a young Afghan woman was translating an interview with a 70 some, you know, they never remember their ages or their birthday. 70 some year old Hazrat who was trained by the proper intercontinental chain and he was remembering when there was bikinis by the swimming pool and cocktails on the roof. And Zuhal turned to me and she said, lise, what are cocktails And I said, zuhal, that was time before you were born in Afghanistan. And it was this extraordinary time because that was when in those rarefied circles, it was a part of. Kabul was very much a bubble floating above the city's cares for the royals, the elite, the foreigners who came in and out. But the Intercontinental had the Palmier supper club where people danced into the early hours. There were cocktails served there, and by the pool there were the bikinis, mostly worn by foreigners, but also by some Afghans too. And they served delicacies like escargot and aubergine. And even Americans who were there at the time said, oh, Lise, I never tasted aubergine or escargot in America. I tasted it the first time in Afghanistan at the Intercontinental Kabul.
- [11:53]
B
And so that's right for people that don't know, I'm sure there are very few of them out there. You've taken this luxury hotel, the Intercontinental, and used it as a barometer because it just reflects so remarkably. It's a mirror to makes my mess fools of Afghanistan's politics and literal trauma, the trauma sustained on the battlefield. And so the start of this story is in the 70s in it. When does the Intercontinental open?
- [12:15]
C
This is another part of history that I find fascinating. This was the time of one trip. The pioneering American entrepreneur who set up Pan American Airways fly the World, who bought the first commercial airliner to buy a full bodied 747 jet. And he would say that he thought then that the era of mass travel would be more powerful than the atomic bomb. And of course, again, this was the Cold War. So in asking Americans to fly the world and then setting up a chain of Intercontinental hotels where they could stay when they flew the world, he wasn't just sending travelers on their way, he was also trying to spread American clout and American power in the Cold War. And so because Afghanistan was on that trail, it was also the hippie trail, not the people that could afford the Intercontinental Hotel. But there were the three Ks, then Kabul, Kathmandu and Calcutta. It wasn't really K but K or C. But for the wealthy travelers, it was decided the king of Afghanistan, the mild mannered, French educated Zaire Shah and his courtiers, decided that Afghanistan needed a luxury hotel in Kabul to attract these wealthy tourists. So Kabul became the part of this chain of Intercontinental hotels which were being built in regions right across the world. And there you had the city of Kabul, known for its majestic palaces, the ancient royal palaces with their scalloped walls and curved windows and towers. There was this Modern palace of glass and steel, which went up on a hill on the western edge of Kabul in 1969. And it had this facade of balconies and I saw them, these windows, like 200 eyes watching over the city. And in 1969, it really was elevated in every way. It was elevated at its social status. Only the wealthiest of the richest good get past that doorman with his cherry red coat and the gold buttons. But geographically, back again, it was physically above the city's cares. But then over the decades, as Afghanistan lurched from one chapter to the next, it became drawn into the city until it too was on the front line of the war.
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B
This radical political experimentation that you laid out, which is so fascinating, it begins, would you say, in 73, when there is a sort of palace coup. It's always when the rot sets in, when you get a royal relative declares a republic because he was a convinced reformer and republican, or because he thought that was a sort of reasonably good way of disguising his power grab.
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C
Well, he was Daud, Daud Khan, who was a soldier, a general, loyal lieutenant of the king, cousin and son in law of the king. He was a can do man. He liked to make things happen and much more quickly than the slower, more laconic king. But he was also very ambitious and he didn't like how the king had decided that members of the royal family couldn't have a role in the government. And he was plotting when he was removed as prime minister and he would spend his time, you know, his house became a bit of a salon where people were passing the time of day. There's this delicious word called gupshop, which is this most salacious high level gossip and scheming. And the communists, at least one faction of the underground Communist party would scheme with him and he used them to overthrow the monarchy. When the king just happened to be having a royal rest in Italy at a spa, resting after he got medical treatment in London and he took over. And so that was the end of the rest of the royal family. But then he doubtcon being so ambitious, he then discarded the communists who then came roaring back with their own coup of their own in 1978. And so let's go back to the 60s where student campuses across the west were rising up very, very politicized. And you had the same on the campus of Kabul University where you had the Maoists, you had the Leninists, you had the Islamists of different stripes. There were all kinds of clashes at the university. So all these different factions, left wing factions, Muslim Islamist factions, At a student level, they were all scheming. And then that coalesced into the underground People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, and they began to play a much more important role. And there you had the, the Soviet Union hovering, and not so much hovering in the cities, in the political lifeblood of the city and the Americans too. So what a cauldron it was. And occasionally it would explode. 73 Coup 78 Coup 79 Another assassination invasion by the Soviet Union to try to put an end to this bloody backstabbing of the Kabul Communists.
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B
And so you get this communist takeover in 78. But as you say, you get another sort of coincidence. So the communists prove unable to establish a kind of lasting and legitimate government and the USSR comes in. Did the USSR hope that it would just be a quick sort of stabilization job? It wouldn't be a matter of actually trying to conquer outlying provinces of Afghanistan? I mean, they kind of imagined it would involve that initially.
- [17:38]
C
I think they imagined and I think now you read the accounts from the Russian meetings. The Communist Central Committee of the Communist Party is they didn't really want to go in. There was this idea at the time that it was the age old ambition, as we mentioned before, of reaching the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. It was an expansion of empire. But all of the records show that they were reluctant, but they were seeing that their allies in Kabul were literally stabbing each other in the back.
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B
And it's not a great advert for.
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C
Communism, exactly right to the point. But also the unrest in the countryside was growing and that many of those Islamist leaders who were at Kabul University, they were either expelled or they fled to neighboring Pakistan. They formed in groups and then the Americans got interested. So there was this conspiring in Kabul and there was this growing conflict in the countryside. And the Soviets thought, well, we'll just come in. It won't take very long. We'll just come in to bolster our allies on the ground. And I also found it interesting, Dan, and going back to the tissue, because the language that was used at the time is not, not that different from the language which was used in the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. A special military operation in 2022, limited contingent. In 1979, it was a limited contingent of Soviet troops. They came in by air, by land, over the northern border of Afghanistan. And they grew and grew week on week until there was a full scale Russian occupation. And then the war, the war just intensified and accelerated, ending in the kind of bloodshed and destruction right across Afghanistan.
- [19:24]
B
Let's check in on the hotel.
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C
Yes.
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B
Did the communists love very upscale American inspired luxury hotels?
- [19:32]
C
In 79, when the Russians were plotting to come in and they were plotting to assassinate Amin, the president of the time, to replace him with their own person, they had a vodka soaked reception at the Intercontinental Hotel where they invited senior members of the room ruling political party, got them so drunk and then detained all of them so they wouldn't be in the know. But friends of mine who were communists at the time later told me that they wouldn't go to the Intercontinental Hotel. It was just too bourgeois. And eventually, of course, in 1980, the real Intercontinental Hotel, the luxury chain which had had the long lease, they pulled out. It was by mutual agreement. They realized that the ruling party wanted to have more control over everything, especially the alcohol and the in the bar and the food and the plat and all the fanciness of it. They wanted to be in charge of everything, not just in charge of the standards. And the Intercontinental, the western luxury chain, believed that it was time was losing money because of course the western tourists stopped coming, the Western business people stopped coming. So it was time for it to pull out. So the communists took over the hotel. But some of my communist friends, although they did go there, they liked the high level plotting in the fifth floor, the Palmier supper club with this majestic views of the city. So it wasn't their favorite watering hole. They preferred the Cobble Hotel, really kind of dark and seedy place down in the city center, close to the presidential palace. That was their place of choice. It was high on the hill with this spectacular view of the city below and the majestic Hindu Kush mountains with their cape of white snow glistening on its peaks. By the time the Soviets came in, the Intercontinental Kabul became the best watch post in the city for the Soviet sound and light show with the tracer fire, the warplanes rumbling through the night, the white explosions. So Western diplomats who were still in the city, and there weren't as many as before, they would still keep going up the hill because they could add this color to those cables that they'd be sending back and forth to between Washington or Paris and London to say what was really happening in Kabul. And they could see it with their own eyes from the intercontinental cobble, from the balconies and from the roof.
- [21:50]
B
I'm sure they could still find someone to rustle up a gin and tonic as well.
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C
Yes, exactly.
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B
And those Soviet assets, those Soviet aircraft and artillery pieces, they were striking what we now might call the Mujahideen. These are people resisting that communist Afghan, Soviet central government and importantly funded in large part by the Americans. Because it's the old my enemy's enemy is my friend. The Americans and the Soviets go around the world trying to find people who have fallen out with the other side and then given lots of cash.
- [22:20]
C
You know, it's interesting because we talk now in our day about how is our world order organized now? And there's often the sense that's organized around big men, the authoritarian rulers, the strong men, Trump, Putin, xi, et cetera. But Cold War, as you remember, the world was really in black and white. It was either you are for us or against us. And aside from some countries which remained adamantly non aligned, the world divided in terms of who were part of the Soviet empire and who were part of the American empire. You're for us or against us. So yes, when the Soviets had rowing hold over Afghanistan, then the Americans and the British and other countries piled in and they really looked the other way. Mujahideen means Islamic warriors. The American presidents one after another, Ronald Reagan in particular and Margaret Thatcher at the time in Britain, called them the freedom fighters. And they didn't really care that much that all of these Arab so called freedom fighters or Islamists were coming from across the Arab world, from Palestinian territories, from Algeria, from Morocco, you name it. They were also coming to fight, including from Saudi Arabia, billionaire known as Osama bin Laden. Nobody really cared too much because they were fighting against the, to bring the Soviet empire down. So that was the world we lived in then. And as I said, Kabul was very much at the heart of it all.
- [23:49]
B
So Reagan, Thatcher, but then we shouldn't be surprised because history is full of these bizarre unholy alliances like the second World War. But you got Reagan, Thatcher and militant Islamists all going after the Soviet Union and eventually it works, the Soviets withdraw. I mean, you mentioned it was the worst spasm of war in that benighted region. But I mean something like half a million people killed in Afghanistan. I mean, astonishing numbers of people.
- [24:16]
C
But also, don't forget, back to the individuals. I love this Marxist phrase, men do not make their own history. But Gorbachev came in with his perestroika glasnost. He was the first one to really say out loud, as we say now, say the silent part out loud, we gotta bring all of our troops home. And he tried to negotiate, to find a negotiated way out so that both of them would stop funding their men on the ground, but it never worked. So Gorbachev said, well, I'm going to Pull up my forces. Anyway, he called it a bleeding wound. It was a monumental speech in Afghanistan. This was really a moment for Afghans. I have to say, again, Afghan Communists that I know, they said they were dazzled when President Gorbachev talked about reform and restructuring, glasnost and perestroika because they, too, wanted the Afghan Communist Party. They said, oh, no, no, it's not commun. But then when Gorbachev came in and then he started saying, well, I'm going to bring the troops out, then they were a little bit worried, thinking, okay, can we stand on our own? And we're kind of racing through history, and I hope all of your listeners are catching up. I know they're history buffs, so they probably are immersed in all of this. But it was when Gorbachev came and then tried to negotiate with Reagan and others after, to try to have a peaceful transition. And that was when I arrived in Kabul just weeks before this momentous event where the eyes of the world were on Afghanistan, on Kabul, with Western governments using, again, words as propaganda, as we still do to this day. Kabul will fall. Kabul will fall. As soon as the Soviets leave. Kabul will fall. The president there, Najibullah, he will fall as soon as the Soviets pull their troops and their tanks and their warplanes out of Afghanistan in February 1989. Because it didn't work out that way. Way. Not quite that way.
- [25:57]
B
You were there for that?
- [25:58]
C
Yes, I was there for that, yes. It's one of those privileges, Dan. You know, I always say, as a journalist, one of our greatest privileges, but also responsibility, is that we have this gift, that we are not just walking on the sidelines of history. We are marching smack in the middle of history, happening all around us. And for me to be there in Kabul, working for the BBC, when it was said at the time that 95% of Afghans were listening to the BBC, the BBC World Service in either Dari or Pashtu. That meant everything that a person like me was reporting was being consumed by the people who were running the hotel that I was living in. But all of the people all around us, I don't think it's apocryphal, but legend has it that at night when darkness descended, the guns would fall silent on front lines across Afghanistan as the warring sides would listen to the BBC, some to the Voice of America, too, to find out which side was winning the war that day.
- [26:55]
B
Astonishing. So what you saw there, as the Russians pull out, the country has just got enormous challenges because that sort of cosmopolitan Commercial Kabul in Afghanistan has been utterly destroyed physically. People have left overseas, the infrastructure smashed. This lovely hotel is broken.
- [27:15]
C
The hotel itself, the Utrecht, is still standing. Then the wine is going off. The steaks are not as good, but they still had the best food in the city.
- [27:22]
B
And the windows have been rattled from what you've written. Yeah, but it was a bit bruised. And also there are these warlords in charge of these local areas, because that's the nature of sort of resistance, isn't it?
- [27:31]
C
Kabul didn't fall as the west widely predicted and hoped in February 1989, with the last of the Soviet soldiers pulled out. But it did fall a few years later when. Well, then when Yeltsin came in, not to again to gallop through history. When Gorbachev was removed and Yeltsin came in, he was no friend of the communists in Kabul. And he then removed all of the really essential, the essentials that were keeping Kabul afloat, which was the financial aid, the food, the fuel, the bread that kept the soldiers fed. And once that was pulled out, that was the beginning of the end. Then the plotting again began within the. The ruling party, which didn't call itself communist, now called itself nationalist. And they started that great Afghan tradition of conspiring with different mujahideen groups, which led then to the fall of Kabul in the spring of 1992. And that is when the mujahideen came to power. And that is where you really had the clash of cultures, that the people, the educated people who were running the hotel at the manager's level, they left. The mujahideen commanders took over Kabul and took over bits of Kabul and took over the Intercontinental Hotel. And very soon it turned into a bloody turf war, fighting from street to street, corner to corner, and sometimes room to room in the strategic buildings. And then Kabul, which had largely escaped much of the war in the countryside during the years of the Soviet presence, suddenly became the biggest war zone. Tens of thousands of people killed, whole neighborhoods laid to ruin, people starving there, because the financial activity basically came to a halt. And that's when the hotel itself became drawn into the civil war, where it became a front line where there were rocket launchers by the pool, there were helicopter gunships around, there were soldiers, there were fighters all around the grounds and using rooms as bunker, such that in those years, half of the hotel's rooms were ravaged, with the ceilings collapsed, the windows just plastic, toilets not working. But it still stayed standing. And that's why I use it as a metaphor for Afghanistan. It didn't shut its doors. It still kept carrying on. A lot of the staff couldn't get to work because it was simply too risky even to go down the roads. But some of them still did. And they were still people going to spend the night, spend many nights, and to eat whatever food was available. And there wasn't that much available, but it was still, in a manner of speaking, the finest hotel in Kabul.
- [30:15]
B
More on the recent history of Afghanistan coming up after this. The Taliban take Kabul in 96. The Taliban obviously emerged from this mujahideen milieu.
- [30:40]
C
From the ranks, yes.
- [30:42]
B
What made them so different? What made them so effective? Why were they able to conquer Afghanistan where others had failed?
- [30:46]
C
I'll go back to 92 and I'll remember what I felt in the hotel because I was there at the time, is that Afghans, they had these big dreams. They said, wow, they thought, oh, the war is over, the Russians are gone. This is a whole new era. The people that know the front desk staff, they were ordering new cutlery and crockery, they were planning the dinners that they were going to, had. And then when everything, including the cutlery came and the crockery came crashing down, then year on year, where people were literally running for their lives and they were desperate, desperate to be able to get through the day. So when this puritanical movement rose from within the ranks of these so called mujahideen, many of them were educated in the madrasas, the Islamic schools of Pakistan, or they had fought in the countryside as well against the Soviet troops. They suddenly started coming back with their moral crusade, fighting against the corruption, against the treatment of women. There was a story about the rape of women. And then suddenly, district by district, a lot of the districts falling even without a fight. This is often the pattern of Afghan wars. Until they found themselves in power in Kabul and so they take over the country. There's another huge sigh of relief. Afghans daring to hold hope that the worst is over, only to find themselves confronted with, I'm told, not to describe medieval historians. Tell me, Dan, don't call it medieval. You're giving medieval history a bad, a bad name. It wasn't that bad in medieval times, but very, very harsh, puritanical rule. A moral crusade where people might remember in the 1990s, the ribbons of cassettes hanging from trees, televisions smashed, photographs punched through because it didn't have any graven images. So they took over the hotel and of course the hotel again is. It's a microcosm where you have the village coming to the city and I'm sure you've looked at this, Dan. Some people say often the divides, if you look at human history, is not between countries, it's between the urban areas and the rural areas. And this has been very much a lead motive of Afghan history even to this day. And when, initially, when you had the mujahideen coming to Kabul in 1992, the first collision, the clash of cultures, was in the revolving door. Because they had never seen a door in their life, never seen a hotel, never seen a door. So they all go rushing in. 12 years of them stuck in there with rocket launchers and Kalashnikov rifles banging against the glass. And they can only get through laughing, of course, with that great Afghan Hoover smashing through the revolving door. And then they come across the shimmering lifts which, with the press of a button, and they'd never been to a second floor except with a rickety ladder. But with the mujahideen and then the Taliban, the music went, the pianos went, the alcohol went, the dancing went. Everything which had made the Intercontinental Hotel very much an international hotel hotel. That, of course, was taken all away because it became again, whoever rules Afghanistan sets the rules in the Intercontinental Hotel. And each time the guests are different. So by the time the Taliban come, we're not talking wealthy Western tourists anymore, like the 60s. We're talking Arab fighters, Pakistani military and ex military, the friends of the Taliban. And among those Arab fighters, I remember the staff telling me, there was this tall guy and you were this white robe and he had this long beard, and he always came in the back door, not the front door. And he had his own cleaners, he had his own servers, he had his own cooks. And his people, they had these gadgets, they used to go up to the roof with these telescopes and everything. And his name was Osama. And then only when the events of September 11, 2001 happened, the attacks on the Twin towers in the United States and what happened with the Pentagon, then suddenly they heard on the BBC, see, Osama bin Laden is being blamed. They go, oh, Osama bin Laden was in our hotel. Now we understand the secrecy, Lis, you're.
- [34:44]
B
Really making it clear to me. The first time, the idea of a country that swings between aristocratic, monarchical state to a republic, to a sort of radical communist, atheist state, now to an Islamist sort of theocracy, it is a wild ride. And we're not even finished with, well, there's still a few more swings to go, roller coaster.
- [35:04]
C
But it's our history, too, as you've been saying, Dan, it's our history Too, the history of interventions and the history of the Cold War.
- [35:11]
B
Well, exactly, and there's about to be a lot more of that. So following 9 11, the Americans and a coalition decide that they are going to punish bin Laden in particular, but also the Taliban for allowing him safe haven and train and equip al Qaeda. Remind me, how quickly after 911 do the Americans, the American led coalition, do they attack Afghanistan? And from the beginning, is the idea regime change, or is it just to decapitate Al Qaeda, but possibly also the.
- [35:39]
C
Taliban initially and those who follow that closely, and those were such a defining moment, not just for the United States, but for the entire world. I think the world stood up and took notice, and it had repercussions that we live with to this day. Initially, they just kept demanding that the Taliban had to hand over Osama bin Laden. And the Taliban said, well, we can't. He's our guest. And the clerics, the thousand clerics met again in the Intercontinental Hotel where the room where it happened, it often was the room where it happened in the Intercontinental Hotel, where they kind of politely said, well, we think it's time to ask our respectable guests to leave. And you know, there is an Afghan, they call it Pashtun wali, which is the Pashtun tribal code, which is that you have to always honor your guests and to protect your guests against their enemies. But there's also another part of it which is your guests also have to behave too. And when the presence of your guest. And bear in mind that by then Osama bin Laden had been based in Afghanistan for several years, back to the mujahideen days, they thought that the guest house, so to speak, was about to be destroyed. But the Taliban refused to give him in. And they maybe kept thinking, oh, it's not going to happen. It's not going to be. And then it was in October where then the military activity started with the bombing of bases in Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad and others. And that became night after night after night, the bombing that Afghans live with. The Taliban had ordered all the foreigners to leave. Some journalists, including Kathy Gannon, about very legendary Canadian journalist work for Associated Press, she managed to get back in with her colleague, Afghan colleague Amir Shah. But that was the beginning of weeks and weeks of bombing. And then until the middle of November, where the Taliban were largely on the run, at least from Kabul, but the fighting continued in the countryside.
- [37:35]
B
Were you in Afghanistan at this time?
- [37:37]
C
Like many, I flew out first to Pakistan. So like broadcasters from the world over, we broadcast from Islamabad, from the roof of a hotel, as always is the case. Other journalists went in from the north with the Northern Alliance. They moved from the Soviet border down with the advancing. Then the mujahideen were working with the Americans and the British then to try to recapture the land that they had lost to the Taliban. So they were moving south. They were coming ever closer to Kabul. So some of us were waiting in neighboring Pakistan. And then as soon as we could, once the Taliban beat a retreat from Kabul in mid November, then we flew into the Afghan capital. And then, literally, that was the next invasion, the invasion of journalists. Of course, we all headed straight for the Intercontinental Hotel, which, for better or worse, was the finest hotel, with hardly any toilets working, hardly any ceilings in the rooms, hardly any windows. But we managed. We managed. And that case, five women from the BBC in the same room without a working toilet. A bit of a window, a bit of a ceiling. But you know what it's like, Dan. We were there. It was the biggest story in the world. The date, the history that happened, and things were really happening. And it was then it took a few more weeks before the fighting in the countryside subsided because Osama bin Laden's and others retreated. They went and hid in the caves of southern eastern Afghanistan. And so the fighting went on. The nation wasn't calmed. The Taliban weren't fully defeated until December. And then they decided in a faraway castle in the German city of Bonn that there would be an interim leadership. And so Hamid Karzai, the new leadership, came to the capital. And I'll never forget that moment, Dan. It was like as if Afghanistan had been pushed into a century past. Remember, that was the time of landlines. You remember those? No landlines were working in Afghanistan. There were no mobile telephones because maybe a few foreigners had some. And the word spread mouth to mouth in the bazaars. Karzai is coming. Karzai is coming. Karzai is coming. And the bazaar, which is the lifeblood of the society, of course, everyone was waiting that the new leader was coming. And we were all standing outside the main palace, this beautiful palace that managed to escape the worst of the fighting. And then the first snow started falling. In Afghanistan, the first snow is always really symbolic. Afghans have these jokes, you know, great sense of humor that they play on their neighbors and friends whenever the first snow falls. And snow has played such a really important part. So on this day of all days of history, when the Taliban have been routed, Hamid Karzai has come to town backed by the international community, the world is again at Afghanistan's door. The first snowfall is there and you just felt that sense, it was palpable, that this would be the best chance that Afghans had known to find peace.
- [40:38]
B
And Hamid Karzai won an election. There was a democratic election. Millions of Afghans voted and he got a majority of the votes cast as it.
- [40:46]
C
The people went. You know, I'll admit I cried, my colleagues cried, Afghans cried. Finally, they were electing. It was the first time in their history they were electing their leader. And then a year later they went and elected a parliament. And again they were daring to hope that this would be the start of a new time. And it seemed to confirm their hope that Afghanistan was taking a step into a different kind of future, a different kind of country. Okay, never mind that there was immediately a crisis, that the indelible ink at the voting stations wasn't really indelible ink and it was being washed off. You know, there's never a pure and perfect moment in Afghanistan, but it was one of those moments that are seared in Afghan memory. Hamid Karzai was still hugely popular. The whole accusations of corruption hadn't started, the fighting hadn't restarted in the Taliban. With the revival of the Taliban. It was just that moment where things seemed to slowly be going in the right direction in terms of the international engagement. There were more and more foreign troops on the ground helping to protect Afghans, Afghan cities and also Kabul. More and more aid money was coming to to Afghanistan and Afghans dared to hope that there was something to hope for.
- [42:07]
B
But you've touched on it there lis the sort of the Taliban revival. There was a real genuine moment when there was peace in Afghanistan. Was there, I mean, again, the remnant of the Taliban, Osama bin Laden in eastern Afghanistan, in parts of Pakistan, those border regions, they were never fully policed and brought under control, as it were. But for much of Afghanistan, was there a moment of peace? And if there was, why does fighting reason restart? Why did the Taliban reemerge? How does it gain that foothold?
- [42:33]
C
The UN envoy, Lakhtar Brahimi, who chaired the talks in Bonn in 2001, which cobbled together not a perfect interim arrangement. It's very tribal society. Remember, there was accusations that the Tajiks, unlike the Pashtuns, which dominated in the Taliban, had the lion's share of the seats. But nevermind. But there was a suggestion that the Taliban should also come to the table and that because they were defeated and then, and Lakhtar Brahimi said that that was the original sin, that they should have brought the Taliban. Then when the Taliban were weakened, but of course, many of the Afghan leaders said, no, no, no, we can't have them at the table. And the Americans said, no, no, no, no, the Taliban cannot be at the table. Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary, they have to be destroyed. We are destroying the Taliban. And so the Taliban were banished away. They even asked, there was even, even famously a letter which was sent to Hamid Karzai, which he then said, well, I dealt with it, but people said, you should have actually responded to that. Where they said, we will give up our arms, we will not fight again. Just let us allow us to live in our villages in Afghanistan. And that offer was never taken up. And so therefore they went to Pakistan and from there they started reorganizing Pakistan. Either the military or the ex military or the intelligence services, the isi, they always denied that were they, they were in cahoots with the Taliban. But as things started to turn a little bit, they started conspiring, they started reorganizing, they licked their wounds, then they stood up again. Then they realized that there were opportunities and there was the rocket attacks. And you know, even in the first years, 2002, the first Loya Jirga, where they then went on to a new stage. Hamid Karzai was confirmed by this traditional assembly. There were rockets launched by the Taliban Even then in 2002. So year on year, where corruption deepened when the warlords consolidated their power, where the Taliban reorganized outside the country, then started moving back in, and where the American raids on villages and the air raids, the night raids which angered local communities, all of that had of turning people away from the leaders that they had looked to and hoped would lead Afghanistan into a different kind of time. There was a lot of bitterness when people thought, well, it's not, they've insulted my women folk, they've destroyed my home, they put me in prison. And don't forget, there was a huge number who were sent without really any basis to Guantanamo May. So there were a lot, a lot of abuses and it laid the ground. You know, if you look all over that sweep of two decades, mistakes were made by the Afghan leadership and mistakes were made by the international community as well.
- [45:29]
B
More on the recent history of Afghanistan coming up after this. In the end, there were 5,000 troops, US troops in Afghanistan by the time Obama left office. So with 5,000 troops, you can't really take the fight into Helmand, can you? I mean, you're not going to pacify sways of the country what was the ambition there, really? To keep the organs of the Afghan state alive? Is it to protect the cities? Bit like the Norman conquest of England following 1066. You. You build these great castles and you can be relaxed for a generation or two about the fact you don't really run the countryside outside these castles, especially not at night. But as long as you protect those great big arteries, the roads, the main settlements, the crossing places, you just can outlast the opposition. Is that the sort of strategy at that point?
- [46:28]
C
Don't forget that during Obama, there was the famous surge of troops into Afghanistan. At a certain point, there were more than 100,000 troops on the ground in Afghanistan from dozens of foreign armies. But President Obama was persuaded by his commanders on the ground that the only way they could defeat the Taliban, and again, the emphasis was on defeating them. There were many who were saying, the Taliban are still weak. We should be negotiating with them. And one general after another kept saying, no, no, no, no, we've got to bring the Taliban to their knees. We have to defeat them militarily. We have to knock at their commanders. And so President Obama approved a huge surge of troops into Afghanistan. And so the military activity accelerated. And I remember speaking to Hamid Karzai about this, and he was very bitter. He said, the American Embassy is spending more money than I have. They're going around, they're splashing millions of dollars everywhere. They've got more troops on the ground than I have. They don't even inform me when they're going to be carrying out military operations. And Hamid Karzai, of course, was himself accused of corruption. And he always said, I don't want to be the commander in chief. But of course, he was the commander, commander in chief. So, no, no, no. There was far, far more than 5,000 troops. And you had these provincial reconstruction teams. Every army had them. The Italians had one. The Germans had one in the north, Turks had one. The Canadians had one down in Kandahar. The British had them in Helmand. So Afghanistan was divided up with different NATO armies fighting in different parts of the country. And often there was not enough coordination between them, either in terms of their aid policy or their military equipment fighting battles on different front lines. And, of course, the Canadians found themselves, they didn't expect it to be in the most bloodiest, hardest place of all, which was in Kandahar and Britain, where you had a British minister saying that they go to Afghanistan without a single shot being fired, and suffered huge losses and fought and lost and fought again, inch by inch, for territory across Helmont in southern Afghanistan, only to lose all of it again. It was really, really a very, very ch. And in the end, very catastrophic military history.
- [48:47]
B
But at the end of this, the American strategies seem to settle into something else, which is, okay, we are not going to absolutely destroy the Taliban, but what we can do is keep the vital functions of the Afghan state alive. Is that right? You could have accept you turn a blind eye to some of the regions, but keep the cities under control of the government. Is that sort of a rough summary of an option that they fall back on?
- [49:09]
C
You know, after a decade on the ground, many of the countries, including the Canadians, Canadians pulled out, pulled up most of their fighting forces, saying, we've done our bit. And I think even though the mantra at the time of 2001, with Tony Blair and George Bush saying, mohamed Karzai, that expression, shoulder to shoulder, we are with you for the long run. And I remember at that time thinking, what is the long run? How long will that run be? But after a decade, many troops felt we've done, and many publics felt that it was time to leave. I went to Ottawa at that time, Dan, and I did not to simplify things, I did what journalists do. I did the Tim Horton and the Starbucks test. I went to two different coffee shops because we're told there are two different kinds of clientele. And in both of them, people said, we stayed 10 years. We lost lives. We spent a lot of money there. We went in with open hearts. We tried to do what we could to help the Afghans. But now it's time to come home. The Americans, of course, stayed on longer, but many of the NATO armies turned to training. They were training and advising the troops. And then more and more, the Americans as well pulled back. Except for Special Forces, the Special Forces stayed along again, carrying out those very controversial secret service raids in the countryside targeting what they call high value commanders that so angered the countryside and alienated people such that they did start turning towards the Taliban, such that when you got to 2020, 2021, except for the advisors, the trainers, the Special Forces, the Afghans were the ones who fighting on front lines against the Taliban and the Taliban were advancing. But don't forget, you had one American president after another, Republicans and Democrats, four in all, starting their reign saying, we want to pull our troops out of Afghanistan. Until you got to Joe Biden, who never liked sending troops to Afghanistan, never supported President Obama when he said he wanted to have that surge of troops into Afghanistan. And so he very much wanted to end America's longest war. It was President Trump in his first term, which said, right now is the time we're going to negotiate with the Taliban. We're going to not adhere to this idea that we will only talk to the Taliban once the Taliban agree to talk to the Afghan government. We're going to go ahead on our own and talk to the Afghan government because I have promised in my election campaign to bring every last American soldier home, and I plan to keep that promise. So it started in President Trump's time, and then when President Biden came in, he basically kept the Trump policy and finished that policy, which led to the disastrous pullout in August of 2021, which saw the return of the Taliban.
- [51:55]
B
Did the Americans think the regime, I mean, it's just so extraordinary. It's not history repeating, of course, but there are profound echoes of the fall of the communists. After the Soviets. Did the Americans think they'd left behind something more durable, really, or did they just. They didn't really care by that stage.
- [52:09]
C
They had real doubts about President Ashraf Ghani, about President Biden, President Trump. They had to have very stern discussions with Ashraf Ghani. Smart, very smart. Western trained economist and policymaker, high level official with the World bank, has written books about how to build a state. Very, very learned. But he wasn't a politician. He wasn't as shrewd as, say, for example, as Hamid Karzai. But he also lived in a bubble. It sounds very harsh, but delusional. You know, the story was that on the day that the Taliban came in, he was sitting on his lawn reading a book and oblivious to the fact that all around him, literally, his kingdom was crumbling and that he allowed himself to believe. When President Biden came power, they said, oh, no, no, the President Biden's never going to give us up. He said, there's no way he's going to pull out all the troops. No, no, no. We have really good contacts in the Americans. They know how important we are. And so he never really confronted people go to him and say, you know, you are losing support. The Taliban are advancing. And to the end, the criticism was that he just didn't get it until he himself had to flee that day. And so the Americans got to the point point where President Biden, again, because he wasn't a warrior, he wanted to get out almost at any cost. And in fact, there was a request that was made to the Americans. As the Taliban came closer and closer to Kabul, President Biden, the top commanders would ask, could you just keep your troops on the ground a little bit longer just to ensure Kabul is safe so it doesn't collapse. And they said, no. And they didn't even inform their Western allies. They said, no, no, no, we're leaving, we're leaving. And President Biden, for whatever reason, he even announced the date of all dates that he was going to pull every last soldier out by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the attacks of 9, 11, which was basically saying to the Taliban, okay, we're leaving. We won't close the door, but we won't lock it. Just come in, because we're leaving anyway. And this is the day that we're leaving. So what Afghans were saying at the time, Dan, was, was, listen, we know that the foreign troops, in particular the Americans, they're not going to stay forever. We know that their longest war has to end, but could they just do it in a more organized way? Could they just give us a bit more time? And there was all this again, the echo of history. You talked about remembering the Soviet intervention. Of course, the Russians were watching, kind of, what do you say, the British just say, barely suppressed glee that the Americans were going to fall on their face. But what the Americans were also remembering was Vietnam and that image of the helicopters rising from the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon and people clinging to the sides. Well, what happened on August 15, 2021, and the days afterwards was a hundred times worse than Saigon. You had those aircraft taking off in commercial airliners with Afghans clinging to the belly of the plane and crowds surging across the tarmac, desperate to leave however they could. It was a debacle, a disastrous debacle. And of course, as they say, the rest is history.
- [55:38]
B
And that destroyed Biden's presidency. His numbers went through the floor and never returned. Let's finish up on the hotel. What's it looking like now the Taliban are back? What's the hotel looking like these days?
- [55:48]
C
Well, if your loyal listeners are looking for a holiday with a difference, if they go onto their booking site, they will find the Intercontinental Cobble, and they will see photographs of this landmark hotel on the hill. They'll see the swimming pool, they'll see the gorgeous buffet groaning with food in the main restaurant. They'll see the coffee shop with the luscious cakes with their slabs of icing. The booking site won't tell you that there's no music, don't bring your bikinis, you won't be allowed to dance, and that the Taliban are running the hotel. But the Intercontinental Kabul is open for business, and they talk about the hotel where history and hospitality meet. And, of course, it is a hotel of history. So much history. The history is literally in the walls of. And if you do go, you can look close enough, you'll see the bullet holes in the marble floor of the restaurant where Taliban suicide bombers attacked the hotel in 2011, 2018. And if you take the lift, if there's electricity, and there may not be electricity, you'd have to take the stairs. You'll also see the bullet holes there on the fifth floor, where, again, the hotel was assaulted. But Afghanistan is safer now because, of course, the Taliban, there's. There's no more Taliban suicide bombings. There's no more Western air raids. There was a little bit of a skirmish recently, actually, a lot of bombing of Kabul by the Pakistanis. It's a country where the women have been pushed out of public life, where, tragically, Dan, you know, again, history repeating itself. The Taliban told us, the journalists covering Those talks in 2020 and 2021 in the Gulf state of Qatar, they told the women negotiators, Afghan women negotiators, no, no, no, we're not going to rule again like we did in the 1990s. We learned our lesson. We understand that Islam gives girls the right to be educated, gives women the right to pursue their potential. They can have any job they want, except maybe not judges, maybe not president. And many Afghans say. And the reality is such that in many ways it's worse, it's more harsh than it was in the 1990s. Girls not going to school past grade six, women not going to university, women shut out of many of the job, not all of the jobs. If you go again, if you go to Kabul, you'll see women at the airport, they're working at the security searches for women. There'll be women in the restaurants, if they can afford to go to restaurants, because there's a huge financial and economic crisis as well. Women do run their factories as long as they're kept separate from the men. But Afghanistan, again, seems as though it's being pushed back into another century outside the rules and principles and the values of the world, and including the Islamic world.
- [58:32]
B
You have been to so many places in the world. You have witnessed so much horror and sadness. Are you like a pediatrics doctor who's just able to completely cut that off from the emotional side of your brain? I mean, when you see those Afghans falling from the fuselages of planes, desperate to escape the country as Taliban's coming, or if you see your friends in Afghanistan who were prominent women who are now restricted to the home or have been exactly on. Is that heartbreaking for you, or are you just hardened professionally?
- [59:03]
C
No. What I'm feeling doesn't matter. What matters most of all is what the Afghans were feeling. But I will never forget the moment of coming out of the mouth of a Qatari military transport plane, because that's the only way we could get to Kabul. When the Taliban took over, and the door opening up and looking across the tarmac, the gray tarmac of Kabul International Airport and the long rows of gray military transporters, their rotor blades whirring, it was a kind of this dystopian world. And then the queues of Afghans in a single row only allowed to carry one suitcase each. And even the children seemed to understand that they had to be on their best behavior. There was in the middle of this, the roar of the military transporters, the silence of the people, and it was overwhelming because then it became so clear what it meant for people to leave their country. Because it wasn't just a question of all these Afghans fleeing for their lives and getting on a plane. They were leaving their homes, their streets, the places where all of their memories had been formed, all of their dreams had been pursued, the ambitions that they still had. They were leaving so much, much of themselves behind. And many feared, and fear to this day, that they left their country behind. That is what it meant. It was literally an emptying of themselves. For years, I couldn't read anything about August 15, but, of course, as a correspondent, I really believe, Dan, that our job. Well, I work for the BBC, so I work for a public broadcaster. There are media who like their correspondence to show emotion, and their audiences, viewers. Listeners like to show emotion. But the kind of journalism I do, my generation of journalism, is when you're emotional, it means you're losing control of your storytelling. We become the story and we're not the story. But it is our job to try to narrow the differences between us and them and you and I to convey the enormity and the intensity of what was happening in Afghanistan. And sometimes people say, oh, Lise, I could hear from it in your voice. But we have to try to convey the news of what is happening and what it really means to the people whose stories that we're telling. So, no, no, I'm not hardened. I think if you do, if your heart has hardened, then I think it's time to hang up your journalist hat. Because you have done so much military history, of all the different kinds of history You've done. And you know that some, aside from, I think, the Ukraine war, where the war. It's that strange paradox of that war is being fought in the trenches, in the same way of the first and the Second World War. You have the trenches of Ukraine, but also the ultra modern, the fighting of the drones in the sky, that the wars of our time, the front lines are no longer in the trenches. They run through streets and houses and neighborhoods. And I often say that, to use that expression, the women and children, they're. They're not close to the front line, they are the front line and they're targeted and traumatized. And so the human side of the war was considered in the coverage of the first and Second World War, when women weren't allowed. It was illegal for women like Martha Gellhorn and Lee Miller to go to the front lines. But, my God, they managed to get there. We said, oh, you do the hospitals, you do the women, you do the. And I think you'd agree with me, Dan, from the wars of our time, what happens to people? People, of course, the ballistics and the. That all matters too. And the strategies of war, all that matters, but the human consequences and the enormous human consequences of wars of our time is front and center and should be front and center of what we really care about when we follow the news.
- [62:57]
B
Well, Lis, you gave me a little panic, a little flutter of panic when you talked about hanging up your hat, and I hope you never will, because we need you, the world's population needs you. We need good journalism, proper commitment to finding out what's going on and telling the stories more than ever. So thank you very much for doing this. Thank you very much for writing a wonderful book. What's it called?
- [63:14]
C
The Finest Hotel in Kabul.
- [63:17]
B
Thank you very much. Lise Doucet. That's amazing. God, what a privilege to talk to you. Thank you, Dan.
- [63:22]
C
A real honour. Thank you.
- [63:24]
B
Well, that's pretty astonishing from Lise Doucet, I think you'll agree, one of the greatest journalists of our time. If everybody in the world listen to journalists like her, the world be a better place. Her book is called the Finest Hotel In Kabul. Now, I hope you've enjoyed this episode. Don't forget to hit follow for more deep dives and incredible stories from history on Dan Snow's History. We release two new episodes every week, so you get plenty to enjoy, to edify, to educate, all the rest of it. See you next time.