Tourmente sur l’Afghanistan: Grand reporter Andrée Viollis and civil war in Afghanistan,1929

Abstract

This article concerns an eye-witness account of the final episodes of a civil war raging in Afghanistan in 1929 by pioneering French international correspondent and grand reporter Andrée Viollis (1870–1950), pen name of Françoise-Caroline Claudius Jacquet de la Verryère), a then well-known author of front-page, banner-headlined articles serialised in the major Paris daily newspaper Le Petit Parisien. She was the first woman reporter to be so engaged in Afghanistan and the sole journalist on the ground in Kabul at the time. The interest of Viollis resides in her exceptional career as a ground-breaking woman in international journalism and as an astute interpreter of the events and geopolitical issues that would become the watersheds of our own day.