BBC - Radio 4 In Afghanistan - Thirty Years of Conflict and Chaos

In Afghanistan - Thirty Years of Conflict and Chaos

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	9.00 - 9.30am, rpt 9.30pm, Tuesday, 4 and 11 Nov 2008.

	Former Kabul correspondent Alan Johnston reflects on decades of turmoil in Afghanistan, from the Soviet occupation in 1979 to the intervention by the West


Programme 1. Trapping the Bear (9.00 - 9.30am, rpt 9.30pm, Tuesday, 4 Nov 2008) The tale of the catastrophic miscalculation that humbled the mighty Red Army in the Hindu Kush. Tens of thousands of troops, tanks and helicopters poured into Afghanistan late in 1979. They laid waste to the land for a decade, during which millions of Afghans died or were forced to flee. But in the end it was the Russians who retreated, chased out, in part, by the Cold War warriors of the CIA who backed the rebels in the mountains.


Programme 2. Into the Morass (9.00 - 9.30am, rpt 9.30pm, Tuesday, 11 Nov 2008) While America looked away, Al-Qaeda took root in the wreckage of Taliban-held Afghanistan. But when the Twin Towers collapsed into the streets of Manhattan confrontation became inevitable. And so British and American soldiers find themselves fighting in same dust where the Russians failed. Hopes that Afghanistan could easily shed it’s traumatic past are in ruins and there’s talk now of the conflict lasting for decades to come.