That's No Way to Say Goodbye

American newsmen are booted from Iran and Afghanistan

First came an announcement from Iran's Revolutionary Council that U.S. journalists in the country must leave. Three days later in neighboring Afghanistan, the new Soviet-installed regime announced it would follow suit. By week's end the U.S. newsmen in both countries were being deported, and the American press faced the dismal prospect of covering the world's two most volatile stories from afar. Tales of two expulsions:

IRAN. In the 2 1/2 months since the U.S. embassy takeover, the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's government had ejected a handful of Western journalists, including TIME'S Bruce van Voorst and Roland Flamini. Those who remained met relatively little hostility as they covered the daily anti-U.S. demonstrations in Tehran. But when the press rushed last month to cover unrest in the city of Tabriz, government officials were infuriated. Says Robert Semple, foreign editor of the New York Times: "It persuaded them that the U.S. press was a greater liability than benefit."

Word of the expulsion, which affected the remaining 86 American journalists in the estimated 300-member foreign press corps in Tehran, came early last week from Abol Ghassam Sadegh, Iran director general for the foreign press in the Ministry of National Guidance. He also forbade Iranian employees of U.S. news organizations to file dispatches, and warned that European newsmen too could be expelled for any "biased" reporting. The Americans, said Sadegh, "were out of touch with reality and "unfair to Iran and its revolution." He speculated that their departure might actually cool the hostage crisis by shifting press attention elsewhere. At least one senior Western diplomat agreed: "Perhaps, just perhaps, this might change the situation for the better."

One hint of that possibility came next day, on the first anniversary of the Shah's departure from Iran. As American journalists packed their typewriters and cameras, awaiting their flights home, surprisingly few Muslim militants turned out for a scheduled embassy protest. But some newsmen speculated that the expulsions might presage new moves involving the hostages, such as show trials. For now, what happens in Iran will have to be gleaned by the U.S. press in roundabout fashion: placing long-distance phone calls to Iranian officials and foreign diplomats in Tehran; making arrangements with the remaining Western reporters and TV crews; monitoring Iran radio and Pars, the country's national news agency. Still, says Dick Salant, NBC'S vice chairman for news: "This is a major story and we should be there reporting it with our own people."

AFGHANISTAN. To many U.S. journalists, it seemed less surprising to be expelled from Soviet-occupied Afghanistan than to have been admitted at all. Eight days after Babrak Karmal was installed as the country's new President, the borders were reopened, and some 300 foreign journalists, half of them Western, were al lowed in. Almost immediately there was tension. Photographers snapping pictures of Soviet troops found themselves detained, their film confiscated. One ABC news team tried to avoid interference by entering Afghanistan from Pakistan to film a guerrilla maneuver, only to find that the skirmishes occurred by night. So the newsmen turned on their battery-powered floodlights in the dark. That move attracted the Pakistan army, which rapidly escorted them back over the border.

After a Jan. 10 news conference in which President Karmal castigated the Western press, the Afghan welcome wore thinner. Two Italian TV newsmen were treated to a burst of semiautomatic rifle fire at their feet when they tried to film Soviet soldiers near the Salang Pass. A Kabul-based stringer for Germany's Der Spiegel had her car tires shot flat. TIME'S David DeVoss, traveling with Dutch Photographer Hubert Van Es, was stopped by Soviets northwest of Kabul when Van Es tried to photograph some newly widened artillery pits. The pair was held in a snow-filled ditch and guarded by four Kalashnikov-toting Soviets.

Over the next two hours, captives and captors exchanged pleasantries in French, and the newsmen learned that the Soviets are quite delighted to be in Afghanistan. A middle-aged private showed off his thick, standard-issue felt boots. "They are for Siberia," he said proudly. A lieutenant ventured that Soviet soldiers prefer liquid warmth, and are glad to receive "100 grams of spirits a day." Throughout, the smiling Soviets never lowered the Kalashnikovs.

To follow the story, the newsmen bivouacked at the Kabul Inter-Continental Hotel, plying diplomats for information over ashak canapes (leek-stuffed pastry in a sour cream broth) and mutton, or drinking Czech pilsner beer in the hotel bar. Here one evening last week a sheepish employee announced that all American newsmen were to have their passports checked in the lobby by two Afghan policemen. Instead, the U.S. newsmen sallied forth with blazing floodlights and whirring film cameras. Terrified, the Afghan policemen fled. But the reprieve was short-lived. By 8 the next morning, armed Afghan police sealed off the hotel and placed the 20 or so Americans there under house arrest until they could be deported. Said Gul Ahmed Faried, Afghanistan's chief press censor and a journalism graduate of Columbia University: "U.S. journalism is bourgeois journalism. You don't write for the benefit of the masses."

U.S. news executives plan to cover Afghanistan in much the same way as Iran, using phone calls, interviews with refugees and covert assistance from remaining journalists. Says Jerry Loughran, foreign editor of the Associated Press: "It is a very unsatisfactory way of doing things."

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