Kate Clark (journalist)

Last updated

Kate Clark
NationalityBritish
Occupation journalist

Kate Clark is a British journalist. She was based in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1999 as a foreign correspondent. On March 14, 2001, the Taliban ordered her expelled. [1] At that time, she was the only western reporter based full-time in Afghanistan. Her expulsion was seen as a reaction to her reports on the Taliban's destruction of the Buddhist statues at Bamiyan. [2] [3]

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the Taliban's expulsion of Clark. [4] It said that since there is no independent domestic press in Afghanistan many Afghans relied on the short-wave broadcasts the BBC transmitted in Dari and Pashto.

Clark continued to report on Afghanistan, from outside its borders, and returned to Kabul on 15 November 2001, after the Taliban retreat. [5]

In September 2002, Clark was able to interview Wakil Muttawakil, the former Taliban Foreign Minister. [6] He told her that he had first heard rumors that Al-Qaeda was planning a large sneak attack in the continental United States, and that he immediately took steps to warn the United States Department of State. Clark described this as a "massive failure of intelligence".

In May 2010, Clark left the BBC and joined the research group Afghanistan Analysts Network. [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taliban</span> Islamic political and armed movement founded in Afghanistan

The Taliban, which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalist and Pashtun nationalist militant political movement in Afghanistan. It ruled approximately three-quarters of the country from 1996 to 2001, before being overthrown following the American invasion. It recaptured Kabul on 15 August 2021 following the departure of most coalition forces, after nearly 20 years of insurgency, and currently controls all of the country. However, its government is not recognized by any country. The Taliban government has been criticized for restricting human rights in Afghanistan, including the right of women and girls to work and to have an education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mullah Omar</span> Afghan cleric who founded the Taliban

Muhammad Umar, known in the West as Mullah Omar, was an Afghan militant who founded the Taliban in 1994. During the Afghan Civil War of 1996–2001, the Taliban fought the Northern Alliance and took control of most of the country, establishing the First Islamic Emirate for which Omar began to serve as Supreme Leader in 1996. Shortly after al-Qaeda carried out the September 11 attacks, the Taliban government was toppled by an American invasion of Afghanistan, prompting Omar to go into hiding. He successfully evaded capture by the American-led coalition before dying in 2013, reportedly from tuberculosis.

The following lists events that happened during 2001 in Afghanistan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Afghanistan (1992–present)</span> Fall of Najibullah to present

This article on the history of Afghanistan covers the period from the fall of the Najibullah government in 1992 to the end of the international military presence in Afghanistan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freedom of religion in Afghanistan</span>

Freedom of religion in Afghanistan changed during the Islamic Republic installed in 2002 following a U.S.-led invasion that displaced the former Taliban government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (1996–2001)</span> Taliban-led partially recognized government of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, also referred to as the First Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, was a totalitarian Islamic state led by the Taliban that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. At its peak, the Taliban government controlled approximately 90% of the country, while remaining regions in the northeast were held by the Northern Alliance, which maintained broad international recognition as a continuation of the Islamic State of Afghanistan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bamyan Province</span> Province of Afghanistan

Bamyan Province, also spelled Bamiyan, Bāmīān or Bāmyān, is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan with the city of Bamyan as its center, located in central parts of Afghanistan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bamyan</span> City in Bamyan Province, Afghanistan

Bamyan also spelled Bamiyan or Bamian is the capital of Bamyan Province in central Afghanistan. Its population of approximately 70,000 people makes it the largest city in Hazarajat. Bamyan is at an altitude of about 8,366 feet (2,550 m) above sea level. The Bamyan Airport is located in the middle of the city. The driving distance between Bamyan and Kabul in the southeast is approximately 180 kilometres (110 mi). The Band-e-Amir National Park is to the west, about a half-hour drive from the city of Bamyan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Buddhas of Bamiyan</span> Destroyed sculptures in Afghanistan

The Buddhas of Bamiyan were two 6th-century monumental statues carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley of central Afghanistan, 130 kilometres (81 mi) northwest of Kabul at an elevation of 2,500 metres (8,200 ft). Carbon dating of the structural components of the Buddhas has determined that the smaller 38 m (125 ft) "Eastern Buddha" was built around 570 CE, and the larger 55 m (180 ft) "Western Buddha" was built around 618 CE, which would date both to the time when the Hephthalites ruled the region. It was a holy site for Buddhists on the ancient Silk Road. On orders from Taliban founder Mullah Omar, the statues were destroyed in March 2001, after the Taliban government declared that they were idols. International and local opinion strongly condemned the destruction of the Buddhas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tayseer Allouni</span> Syrian-Spanish journalist

Tayseer Allouni is a journalist from the Al Jazeera news channel. He was born in Deir ez-Zor in Syria in 1955 then in 1983 he moved to Spain, where he studied Economics, and has lived there ever since, adopting Spanish citizenship in 1988. He interviewed Osama bin Laden following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, and was controversially convicted on terrorism-related charges in Spain in 2005.

Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil Abdul Ghaffar is an Afghan politician. He was the last Foreign Minister in the Taliban government of the first Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in 2001. Prior to this, he served as spokesman and secretary to Mullah Mohammed Omar, leader of the Taliban. After the Northern Alliance, accompanied by U.S. and British forces, ousted the regime, Muttawakil surrendered in Kandahar to government troops.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taliban insurgency</span> Insurgency during the War in Afghanistan

The Taliban insurgency began after the group's fall from power during the 2001 War in Afghanistan. The Taliban forces fought against the Afghan government, led by President Hamid Karzai, and later by President Ashraf Ghani, and against a US-led coalition of forces that has included all members of NATO; the 2021 Taliban offensive resulted in the collapse of the government of Ashraf Ghani. The private sector in Pakistan extends financial aid to the Taliban, contributing to their financial sustenance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Khairullah Khairkhwa</span> Information Minister of Afghanistan since 2021

Khairullah Said Wali Khairkhwa is the Afghan Minister of Information and Culture and a former Minister of the Interior. After the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, he was held at the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba for 12 years. He was released in late May 2014 in a prisoner exchange that involved Bowe Bergdahl and the Taliban five. Press reports have referred to him as "Mullah" and "Maulavi", two different honorifics for referring to senior Muslim clerics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dadullah</span> Afghan Taliban commander (1966–2007)

Dadullah was the Taliban's most senior military commander in Afghanistan until his death in 2007. He was also known as Maulavi or Mullah Dadullah Akhund. He also earned the nickname of Lang, meaning "lame", because of a leg he lost during fighting.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (MoFA) is the cabinet ministry responsible for managing the foreign relations of Afghanistan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archaeology of Afghanistan</span>

Located on the strategic crossroads of Iran, India, China and Central Asia, Afghanistan boasts a diverse cultural and religious history. The soil is rich with archaeological treasures and art that have for decades come under threat of destruction and damage. Archaeology of Afghanistan, mainly conducted by British and French antiquarians, has had a heavy focus on the treasure filled Buddhist monasteries that lined the silk road from the 1st c. BCE – 6th c. AD. Particularly the ancient civilizations in the region during the Hellenistic period and the Kushan Empire. The world's oldest-known oil paintings, dating to the 7th c. AD, were found in caves in Afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley. The valley is also home to the famous Buddhas of Bamiyan.

Afghanistan is uniquely situated as a throughway of cultures throughout its history due to it geographic placement in South Asia. Afghanistan's location lends porous borders to trade routes between the East and West, while the Silk Road providing a vector for Buddhism and Hellenistic culture and even Egyptian influences from the west, renders an amalgamation of culture and art. Perpetual invasion and conflict has rendered a cyclic continuum of renaissance and destruction of art and culture in Afghanistan.

Maria Grazia Cutuli was an Italian journalist who worked as a reporter with the daily newspaper Corriere della Sera. She was killed while on assignment in Afghanistan where she was covering the US military invasion following the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. She was murdered between Jalalabad and Kabul with three other journalists. Cutuli was the first female and first Italian journalist to be killed during the War in Afghanistan in 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Death of Karen Fischer and Christian Struwe</span> German journalists who were shot in Afghanistan

Death of Karen Fischer and Christian Struwe is about two German journalists working for Deutsche Welle who were shot on 7 October 2006 in a tent they had pitched alongside a road near Baghlan in Afghanistan, while they were doing research for a freelance documentary. They were the first foreign journalists killed after the 2001 invasion in the War in Afghanistan

References

  1. Sanjay Suri (14 March 2001). "Taleban expel BBC correspondent". BBC News. Archived from the original on 6 July 2015. Retrieved 5 July 2015. Kate Clark has reported for the BBC from Afghanistan since Autumn 1999, and is the only foreign correspondent working for an international news organisation to be based in Kabul.
  2. Kate Clark (12 February 2001). "Taleban 'destroy' priceless art". Kabul: BBC News. Archived from the original on 28 January 2006. Retrieved 5 July 2015. Reports started to circulate last week that the Taleban were destroyed non-Islamic artefacts in the museum, including statues of the Buddha dating back nearly 2,000 years.
  3. "The world this week". The Economist. 15 March 2001. Archived from the original on 6 July 2015. Afghanistan's ruling Taliban expelled Kate Clark, a BBC correspondent, for reporting criticism of the destruction of the country's Buddhist statues.
  4. "CPJ condemns Taliban's expulsion of BBC reporter from Afghanistan". Committee to Protect Journalists. 14 March 2001. Archived from the original on 6 July 2015. Retrieved 5 July 2015. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is dismayed by the ruling Taliban militia's decision to expel BBC correspondent Kate Clark from Afghanistan. Authorities ordered Clark to leave the country within 36 hours in response to BBC reports about the militia's destruction of ancient Buddhist statues in Bamiyan, some 100 miles northwest of the capital, Kabul.
  5. Kate Clark (15 November 2001). "Kabul opens its arms to the unknown". New Zealand Herald . Retrieved 5 July 2015.
  6. Kate Clark (7 September 2002). "Taliban ex-foreign minister released". The Independent . Archived from the original on 6 July 2015. The minister then ordered him to alert the US and the UN about what was going to happen. But in a massive failure of intelligence, the message was disregarded because of what sources describe as "warning fatigue".
  7. Cockburn, Andrew (2015). Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins. p. 196. ISBN   9781250081636.