By JOHN DOYLE
Thursday, March 27, 2003

Airing Tonight

Return to Kandahar (CBC, 9 p.m.) is a wonderful documentary, a companion to the movie Kandahar that CBC aired on Monday. The movie was based on the story of the Afghan-born Canadian journalist Nelofer Pazira and her search for a friend (altered to a sister in the film) in Afghanistan who had written to her saying that she intended to commit suicide. The movie, a small art-house feature, suddenly got tons of attention when the United States attacked Afghanistan after Sept. 11 and the word "Kandahar" was suddenly familiar to everyone.

The documentary, made by Pazira and Paul Jay, chronicles the real journey that Pazira made to Afghanistan to find her friend Dyana. As such, it is both about the two women and about Afghanistan. It's about the turbulent history of the country in the last few decades and how the country became the focus of world events. Those events -- the Soviet withdrawal and the success of the U.S.-backed mujahedeen leading directly to the rise of the Taliban, the use by al-Qaeda of Afghanistan as a base and, today, to the excuses for the attack on Iraq. It's an astonishing story of the personal and political.