The Finest Hotel in Kabul: a ‘haunting’ history of modern Afghanistan

The Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul has “been witness to many events of moment” in Afghanistan’s recent history, said Bijan Omrani in Literary Review .

In the 1970s, it was a “cosmopolitan watering hole” where “princes, diplomats, spies and journalists” mingled. After the Soviet invasion of 1979, “Red Army advisers” would sip vodka in its bar, while “rustic mujaheddin warriors got stuck in the revolving glass door”. In late 2001, after 9/11, it “hosted a gathering of Taliban clerics, who decided against handing over Osama bin Laden to the United States”. During the US-led occupation that followed, it was attacked several times by suicide squads.

Now the BBC correspondent Lyse Doucet has written a moving, richly detailed history of the hotel, which doubles as a portrait of modern Af