‘We cannot abandon the Afghans’: Lise Doucet on the remarkable ‘people’s history’ that earned her the Women’s Prize | Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction Books

toYessi Doucet first walked into the InterContinental Hotel in Kabul on Christmas Day 1988, as Soviet forces were withdrawing from Afghanistan at the end of a decade-long occupation. She expected to stay for a short time. Instead, she stayed for about a year, and the hotel became her first Afghan home.

More than three decades later, it became the subject of her first book, The Best Hotel in Kabul, which has now won the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction. But while the award recognizes outstanding investigative and historical work, the BBC’s chief international correspondent is more interested in what the award can do for the country that inspired it.

“Afghanistan has largely fallen out of the headlines,” Doucet says. “Maybe this win will bring some attention to the country. None of us should be willing to accept the situation we live in in a world where there is a country where girls cannot be educated after the age of sixteen, where women cannot go to university, and where women are prevented from working in many jobs. This is something we should all be angry about.”

Afghanistan was not like that at all. After nearly four decades reporting from the country, especially for the BBC, Doucet, 67, has watched the country go through almost every political experiment of the modern era: Soviet-backed communism, civil war, Taliban rule, Western-backed democracy, and now the Taliban again.

“I was aware that Afghanistan had a very difficult and violent history,” Doucet says. “I needed to find something that would draw people in rather than push them away. I didn’t want people to close the book and say, ‘It’s too dark.’ It’s very bloody.’” So the hotel was a tool to tell the story in a way that people could identify with.

The InterContinental Hotel – known simply as Intercon – provided the perfect lens to tell the history of the country’s people. Built by the British in the late 1960s, it was once a symbol of a different Afghanistan. In the 1960s and 1970s, Kabul was known as the “Paris of the East,” a vibrant center of fashion, jazz, miniskirts and après-ski resorts. A concert at the hotel was performed by Afghan pop star Ahmed Zahir – known as “Afghan Elvis”. Gloria Gaynor was a guest. Foreign travelers passed through the hippie trail.

While the following decades saw massive political turmoil, Intercon remained open. “Politics, like hotel guests, checks in and out,” Doucet writes. “While Afghanistan went through decades of trial and terror, accompanied by bright but brief beginnings, Intercon was an unbreakable constant.”

The hotel employees who stayed through those changes are at the heart of her story: Hazrat, the housekeeper who has worked there since the hotel opened; Obaida, the hotel’s first female chef; Aman Allah, the engineer; And Malalai, one of the first waitresses.

“I have to pay tribute to the Afghans who helped me and talked to me for the book, because in Afghanistan even sharing stories can have risks,” Doucet says.

Doucet began her career in journalism as a freelance correspondent in West Africa for the BBC. She continued to cover conflicts around the world, eventually becoming chief international correspondent in 2012. Her book begins with the fall of Kabul in August 2021, and the disastrous US withdrawal, which remains one of the defining moments of Doucet’s career. She remembers watching the evacuation from the airport: military transport planes, helicopters, and Afghans carrying only one bag as they fled.

“There was this fear at the end,” she says. “People kept talking about Vietnam — that image of people clinging to the last helicopter rising from the roof of the embassy in Saigon.” “In fact, it was a hundred times worse – Afghans racing to the airport, clinging to the bottom of the planes. It was a really traumatic experience.”

Since returning to power, the Taliban have systematically erased women from public life through a series of harsh measures. Girls have been completely banned from secondary education and university, women have been forced out of many workplaces and banned from public spaces, and strict adherence to the burqa is required. Last month, an official decree was issued that effectively recognized child marriage. Just this week, a rare demonstration in the western city of Herat against the arrest of women accused of violating hijab rules ended with the deaths of two people, including a child.

“Five years later, the situation has become worse,” Doucet says. “It is a disgrace to our world.” “But the courage of Afghan women is extraordinary.”

Doucet is also frustrated that the barriers facing Afghan women extend beyond those inside the country. “There are Afghan women who get scholarships, but there are no visas now to allow Afghan women to come and study in Britain and many other places,” she says. “They face obstacles everywhere. We live a very privileged life here, and we are not happy to abandon the Afghans.

“The people who were in Afghanistan – the activists and international journalists – are finding themselves having to start over from scratch,” she continues. “It’s something none of us want to do.”

However, Doucet believes the world must be careful not to ignore the achievements of the post-2001 period. “People often say: What has 20 years of international engagement achieved? Was it all in vain? I always say it was not in vain. Many mistakes were made, but that period helped create the most educated and well-connected generation in Afghan history,” she says. “When you see girls saying: ‘I want to go online, can you help me get a scholarship, can you help me get some kind of education?’ … They know their rights now.”

This month, for the first time, the European Union is preparing talks with Taliban representatives in Brussels, despite concerns that participation threatens to legitimize a bloody and authoritarian regime. Doucet is cautious about describing the solution.

“I’m a BBC journalist,” Doucet says. “My job is to explain, not to advocate. But [some] Mediators may say that negotiation is better than isolation. “The only change must come from within the Taliban.”

Currently, there are few signs of change in the country. But Doucet is reluctant to compromise on a quality that Afghans themselves value above all others.

“The Afghans always said: The last one to die is hope,” she says. “Afghanistan has probably experienced every political system the world has ever tried – and the thread through Afghan history is that nothing lasts forever.”