Peacekeepers dragged away the wreckage of a Soviet-era plane on Saturday in an effort to cleanup Kabul’s battle-scarred airport and encourage more commercial air traffic. Two years after the fall of the Taliban, the view from the runway presents arriving passengers with a sobering summary of Afghanistan’s brutal history. The rusting hulks of planes destroyed by U.S. bombs in the assault that toppled the Islamic hardline regime in late 2001 are mixed with those from earlier wars. To help in the cleanup, German soldiers used a bulldozer and two cranes on Saturday to haul the crumpled carcass of an Antonov cargo plane from a patch of grass next to a main taxiway to an area known as "the graveyard" - already littered with dozens of destroyed planes and helicopters.
"Dieter! Get that bulldozer over there and move that wrecked Antonov off the taxiway!"
"But sir, that’s a brand new Russian plane!"
"Like I was saying, get that wreck outta there!"
"If we want to go into the future we need to remove the signs of 23 years of war," German Gen. Andris Freutel told reporters watching the removal work, as one of the Afghan national airline’s few jets roared off toward Dubai. Troops from the 5,500-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force have already removed dozens of wrecks, but the airport is still littered with rusting fuselages, burnt-out tanks and troop carriers. The area around the airport, which lies in the north of the city with a clear view of the snowy Hindu Kush mountains, also remains heavily mined. Red flags flutter around the sections where mine clearers are working painstakingly to remove them. The de-mining is due to be completed in about a year.
"Welcome to Kabul International Airport. For your safety, no smoking is allowed inside the terminal, and please watch where you step." |