The twisted remains of several all-terrain vehicles leaned precariously inside Baba Mir’s sprawling scrapyard, alongside smashed shards that were once generators, tank tracks that have been dismantled into chunks of metal, and mountains of tents reduced to sliced up fabric.
It’s all U.S. military equipment. The Americans are dismantling their portion of nearby Bagram Air Base, their largest remaining outpost in Afghanistan, and anything that they are not taking home or giving to the Afghan military, they destroy as completely as possible.
They do so as a security measure, to ensure equipment doesn’t fall into militant hands. But to Mir and the dozens of other scrap sellers around Bagram, it’s an infuriating waste.
“What they are doing is a betrayal of Afghans. They should leave,” said Mir. “Like they have destroyed this vehicle, they have destroyed us.”
As the last few thousand U.S. and NATO troops head out the door, ending their own 20-year war in Afghanistan, they are deep into a massive logistical undertaking, packing up bases around the country. They leave behind an Afghan population where many are deeply frustrated and angry. They feel abandoned to a legacy they blame at least in part on the Americans — a deeply corrupt U.S.-backed government and growing instability that could burst into brutal new phase of civil war.
The bitterness of the scrapyard owners is only a small part of that, and it’s somewhat self-interested: they’re angry in part because they could have profited more selling intact equipment. But it’s been a common theme for the past two traumatic and destructive decades where actions the U.S. touted as necessary or beneficial only disillusioned Afghans who felt the repercussions. Kathy Gannon, Bagram, AP
No Comments