In Pictures: Afghans sift through leftovers of US occupation

Squatting in the dust by the main road to Afghanistan’s biggest airbase, Mir Salam sifts through a pile of broken electronics salvaged from departing United States troops.

All around are heaps of junk and scrapped equipment, ranging from telephones and thermos flasks to computer keyboards and printer cartridges.

“This is what the Americans do,” the 40-year-old told AFP news agency. “They destroy absolutely everything.”

The Pentagon is vacating Bagram Airbase as part of its plan to withdraw all its forces by this year’s 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the US, and it could be done by the end of the month.

Military gear is being taken home or given to Afghan security forces, but tonnes of civilian equipment must be left behind. The result is a booming scrap business that is making money for some but leaving many resentful.

“They blow it up or are burning it,” says Salam of the equipment being discarded. “There were lots of new things in this base – enough to rebuild Afghanistan 20 times – but they destroyed everything.”

For two decades, Bagram served as the nerve centre for US operations in Afghanistan.

A sprawling mini-city visited by hundreds of thousands of service members and contractors, it boasted swimming pools, cinemas and spas, and even a boardwalk featuring fast food outlets.

It also has a prison that held thousands of Taliban and other inmates over the years.

Bagram was built by the US for its Afghan ally during the Cold War in the 1950s as a bulwark against the former Soviet Union in the north.

Ironically, it became the staging point for the Soviet invasion of the country in 1979, and the Red Army expanded it significantly during their near decade-long occupation.

When Moscow pulled out, it became central to the raging civil war. It was reported that at one point, the Taliban controlled one end of the three-kilometre (two-mile) runway and the opposition Northern Alliance the other.

Salam pays 1,000 afghanis ($13) a month to rent a modest fenced plot on the Bagram road, where he stores base scrap that he searches for nuggets to sell to specialised dealers.

The road to the base is lined with dozens of similar enterprises, some ramshackle, but others featuring imposing warehouses with armed guards.

The big players have contracts to remove the scrapped equipment, which they cherry-pick for items that can be repaired. Anything they do not use is left for smaller dealers such as Salam.

Cables are stripped for copper, circuit boards broken down for rare earth metals, and aluminium collected to be smelted into ingots.

Nothing goes to waste, says Haji Noor Rahman, another scrap merchant. “Anything reusable, people buy it,” he told AFP.

His warehouse is like a department store for scrap, with the floor covered by an astonishing array of items – broken chairs, busted TV screens, rusting gym equipment, an electronic piano keyboard, artificial Christmas trees and other festive decorations.

Picking through the selection is Abdul Basir, who came from Kabul with a friend and snapped up six warped metal doors for around 8,000 afghanis ($100).

Elsewhere, a young man unearthed a pair of branded shoes that still appeared to have a few miles left on them. Another browser bought a teddy bear and a mini rugby ball.

“The withdrawal of American troops will have a bad impact on the economy of the country and that of Bagram,” district governor Lalah Shrin Raoufi told AFP.

“I met the employees of a company that provided basic food … they are afraid of losing their jobs,” he said.

Raoufi said everything is being done to take charge of the base and its security when the last US forces leave.

Meanwhile, the clear-out continues.

“They came to rebuild our country but now they are destroying it,” says Bagram resident Mohammad Amin, looking over a pile of scrap.

“They could have given us all this.”