This is a record of a dangerous journey in disguise from the Pakistan border across Soviet-occupied Afghanistan to the city of Herat. One of the Holy shrines of Islam, Herat was renowned for the beauty of its mosques and mausolea, yet according to rumour, many of them had been destroyed in the eight years of fighting since the anti-Communist rising of 1979. Determined to see for himself, the author was escorted by Mujahedin. Travelling by foot, on horseback and in the back of lorries, he crept through enemy lines, was attacked by Soviet gun-ships and witnessed Communist onslaughts on an Afghan village. A contributor to the Spectator and the Observer Sikorski is the London-based foreign correspondant of the US National Review.