 Kaplan note that "none of the American TV networks had a bureau for a war", and television cameramen venturing to follow the mujahideen "trekked for weeks on little food, only to return ill and half starved".In October 1984 the Soviet ambassador to Pakistan, Vitaly Smirnov, told Agence France Presse "that journalists traveling with the mujahidin 'will be killed.And our units in Afghanistan will help the Afghan forces to do it.'"