The need to educate people is one of the things she insists is a lesson of the Afghanistan situation. "If people aren't educated they will believe anything," she says. The Afghans were "longing for a return to their spiritual roots after such a long period of war," first with the Russians and then among the mujahedeen. But what they got was rule by a group even less educated than the population as a whole: literacy was running about 15 per cent in Afghanistan, but 90 per cent of the Taliban can't read, even though in the first chapter of the Koran it says that believers should read the holy book.

What's more, all information media were closed down. "But now that information is getting through, Afghanistan could lead the way to great political changes in many Asian countries."

Armstrong says that "safety, fairness, justice, equal rights, and getting rid of poverty can be accomplished under any government, given the political will." Yet the one aspect of Armstrong's career which seems wildly out of tune with the rest is a book she wrote in 1992 about Mila Mulroney, the prime minister's wife. That was a year before Brian Mulroney retired from politics and the Progressive Conservatives were swept out of power.

"Literary hypoglycemia," sniffed critic Donna Lypchuk about the chatty biography. In it, Armstrong tells us about Mila's warmth, her intelligence, her charm, the serious way she approaches motherhood, her charity work for cystic fibrosis, her decorating ideas, her skill at hairdressing.

If she were a closet Conservative, a renegade Red Tory, the contrasts with Armstrong's tough reporting elsewhere might be understandable. Cheryl Embrett says Armstrong has never said anything about her political allegiance, and Armstrong herself insists she has no political leanings.

"The Mila biography," she says, "was written because it was a new challenge. I learned a heck of a lot about writing a book and about what goes on behind the scenes in government.

Nor does Armstrong think much of the suggestion that perhaps she was so taken with Mila because Canada's first lady was another young, intelligent, energetic wife and mother who could do anything if she wanted to. "I wonder if you ever read the book?" she says when asked that question.

Nevertheless, the coda that she gives Mila in the book could just as easily be written for her: "I've picked up a few new skills in this job. I'd like to upgrade a few others, maybe go back to school... I'm a great believer in never looking back. I adapt quickly. I'm going to love my life. I'm going to love growing old."

	Armstrong at home in Oakville, Ont. PHOTO: Susan King

When I speak with her in January, Armstrong, 58, is hard at work on the second book, which will draw on all her visits to Afghanistan as well as the two chapters of her master's thesis which deal with Afghan women and girls and human rights documents. She started the master's program in 1998, when she decided it was time to take a break from magazine editing.

"I'd been to Kosovo three times, I'd seen Homemaker's switch from being mostly a controlled-circulation magazine to a subscription one with 810,000 readers in the first year. It was time to think of other things I might want to do."

Shortly afterwards, however, Chatelaine magazine called to ask if she could do six pieces a year while she was in school, and so she went back to Afghanistan in the winter of 2001 on assignment for that magazine. The trip for UNICEF last fall caused her to miss the U of T convocation where she would have received her degree.

Since the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, "people have been going around saying that nothing will be the same now," she notes. If for some that signifies a tragic loss of innocence, for Armstrong it is more a question of bringing an end to willful ignorance. In her speaking engagements and through her articles and films, she always brings her audience face to face with the problems of others, refusing to dismiss them as too complex for action and challenging the notion that they result from cultural relativism. According to Armstrong, "In this age of globalization, the phrase 'innocent bystander' is an oxymoron."

"I certainly hope that some things will not go back to the way they were," she says. "The battles are not won, there is much to do in Afghanistan and elsewhere, I'm still worried about how things will progress." But Armstrong is cautiously optimistic that the world will pull itself out of its current problems into a better place -- if we work together.

To read the articles mentioned, go to www.homemakers.com/specialreports/veiled_threat or www.yorku.ca/iwrp/afghan/news-shrouded.htm. For what you can do to help, see www.w4wafghan.ca, www.wapha.org or www.rawa.org.