AFGHANISTAN – The Views of a Foreign Correspondent

Dieter Herrmann joined the FCA right after his arrival to Australia. He still is correspondent for “Deutsche Welle” and at the same time he works as editor-in-chief for “Die Woche” (“The Week”), Australia’s only German language newspaper.

Dieter is one of the few real experts on Afghanistan. His first trip to Afghanistan started in the early summer of 1973. Since then he had been to the country at the Hindu Kush more than 100 times and in total spent several years in Afghanistan. He got to know all political systems from the kingdom up to the today’s Islamic Republic. In about 60 chapters, based on diaries and memories, he describes his experiences in the country, which has not come to a rest since 1973. Among many other experiences, he was arrested and imprisoned twice during this time, had to live temporarily in the bunker of the Turkish embassy and had an amazing interview with Mullah Muttawakil, the personal spokesman for Taliban leader Mullah Omar and later Taliban Foreign Minister. He describes his personal feelings and doubts as well as political and human events, movements in the population and developments in the country. Nothing about his manuscript has been invented or added – however, to avoid endangering anyone, he left out some of his experiences. He changed some names to protect friends and informants. Whether the last chapter will ever be finished is questionable. He was supposed to be back in Kabul in late 2018, but the security situation was too bad. Now his net trip to the country is planned for late 2019. Nevertheless his contractors are reluctant. “German media trainer murdered by Taliban” would be a catastrophic headline for everyone involved.

Dieter’s blog is available in German language as well as in (broken) English. If you would like to read the blogs in English, please click on www.australia-news.de/?lang=en. Afterwards on the flag of Afghanistan in the middle. The German text is here: www.australia-news.de and then please click on the flag. Previous chapters can easily be opened by clicking on the arrow in the upper left corner of the picture on top. To subscribe please scroll down to the bottom of the page.