Taliban orders out BBC reporter

By Kate Clark in Kabul
Thursday, 15 March 2001

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The road to the Pakistani border is potholed and rutted. The drive from Kabul to neighbouring Pakistan where I will be based from tomorrow to cover Afghanistan is long. The country's ruling Taliban yesterday ordered me to leave Kabul in a protest against the BBC coverage of the Taliban destruction of ancient Buddhist statues.

They told me the BBC coverage "was not based in reality and conflicted with the Taliban way of thinking". Last month, the Taliban ordered the destruction of pre-Islamic statues of Buddha, saying they were idolatrous and had no place in an Islamic society.

Ignoring international outrage, the Taliban demolished most of them, including the two towering statues of Buddha hewn from a cliff in central Bamiyan in the 3rd and 5th centuries. I was informed of the expulsion at a Taliban Foreign Ministry press conference yesterday. Officials handed me a letter giving me 36 hours to leave. It was a shock. This is a country I have become deeply attached to since I started reporting here in autumn 1999.

The BBC was the first news organisation to set up a bureau in Kabul and is the only international agency here with a foreign correspondent. Reporters have stayed here, telling the world of the fall of the Communists, the bitter civil war and the rise of the Taliban. This is the first time a BBC correspondent has been expelled.

The BBC expressed regret and asked the Taliban to reconsider. The British Foreign Office minister Brian Wilson also urged the Taliban to reverse its decision, saying: "The eviction of journalists cannot conceal the truth from the world."

Kate Clark also reported for 'The Independent' from Kabul

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