A 1981 Film from behind Soviet Lines and those first few crucial moments in a conflict that still rocks the world
Afghanistan Between Three Worlds – a one hour documentary
by Paul Fitzgerald & Elizabeth Gould
The Story: Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on December 27, 1979, the entire corps of 1136 Western journalists was expelled, leaving what President Jimmy Carter called the “the greatest threat to peace since the second World War,” shielded in secrecy from Western eyes. In 1981, the Afghan government granted us exclusive permission to spend 10 days inside the country. What our camera saw and reported in an exclusive news story for CBS News was a country desperate to survive the vice-like grip of superpower confrontation while building a modern identity from the mire, violence and confusion of its feudal past. Aired on the PBS network from 1982 to 1983, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds stands today as the only documentary of its kind to challenge the monolithic Cold War images of the era by casting its focus on a different facet of the Afghan war. It is a witness to what might have been had diplomacy prevailed and to one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century. View the film here.