A former journalist with the BBC World Service and numerous newspapers, Kathy Evans, has died.  Read her obituary notices in the Guardian  and Times.
This from Nick Nugent in Afghanistan, 6.12.03
After a distinguished career reporting from the Arab world and Iran for various newspapers, Kathy Evans joined the then Eastern Service in the mid 1980s, mainly to help interpret what was happening in Khomeini's Iran -
which needed specialist understanding of the patch. In the absence of regular coverage, we had already taken pieces from her out of Tehran. During her time at the BBC, she did reporting tours in Afghanistan and Pakistan, covering elections in the latter during a gap in correspondent coverage.
Kathy was by instinct an on-the-spot reporter and sometimes felt frustrated by long distance reporting. She was never happier and never better than when she was there, interviewing the lead players, which was not always easy as a woman journalist in those countries. I shall remember her admiringly as someone who kept her eye on the story, never losing sight of the significance of an event in Iran, for example, just because it was not easy to interpret. After work she was a gregarious, heavy
smoking, gin loving companion, with a host of good stories and who loved a good conspiracy theory. She often joked at how she had taken up journalism after failing a typing test, revealing at the same time her pride in coming up the hard way. That so many respected her experience
and expertise showed that she had arrived.
Kathy's departure from the BBC coincided with the onset of her breast cancer, which at first she thought had been cured. After working shifts for a while at the Guardian, she gave up journalism altogether - but she did not give up on the region she loved. She became involved in charitable work in Afghanistan and also took up trading in Persian carpets.
Im writing this from Herat, western Afghanistan. I heard of Kathy's death from Lyse Doucet on the plane out to Afghanistan. Lyse is in action today following the explosion in Kandahar. Some may not remember that Lyse was the first BBC stringer in Afghanistan, setting up here in 1988 if I am not mistaken, another female journalist who has demonstrated that it is not necessarily a disadvantage being a woman in reporting from the Muslim world. A third is Pam O'Toole, who also joined the Eastern Topical Unit between her stints as UN and then Ankara correspondent.