Panel discussion: Reporting Afghanistan with Lyse Doucet

Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, has been checking into the Inter-Continental since 1988. And in her book, she uses its story to craft a richly immersive history of modern Afghanistan.

It is the story of Hazrat, the septuagenarian housekeeper who still holds fast to his Inter-Continental training from the hotel’s 1970s glory days—an era of haute cuisine and high fashion, when Afghanistan was a kingdom and Kabul was the ‘Paris of Asia’. It is the story of Abida, who became the first female chef to cook in the Inter-Con’s famous kitchen after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. And it is the story of Malalai and Sadeq, the twenty-something staff who seized every opportunity offered by two decades of fragile democracy—only to witness the Taliban roaring back in 2021.

The result is a remarkably vivid history of how Afghans have survived a half century of destruction and disruption. It is the story of a hotel but also the story of a people.

Lyse Doucet is a Canadian-born journalist and the BBC's Chief International Correspondent. In the course of a career spanning four decades, she has reported from countries including Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, and Syria, leading the BBC's coverage of events including the invasion of Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, and the Syrian Civil War. She received an OBE in the Queen's Honours list in 2014, and was admitted to the Order of Canada in 2019. Her awards include the Columbia School of Journalism Award in 2016 and an Emmy in 2014 for her team's reporting from Syria. In 2021, she was nominated for a Peabody Award for her work as a writer and reporter on the BBC podcast Afghanistan: Documenting A Crucial Year. Doucet has been reporting on Afghanistan since 1988. She visits the Inter-Continental whenever she is in Kabul.

Mahfouz Zubaide is a BBC producer who has worked closely with Lyse Doucet in Afghanistan.