Nine years ago, Faikola Tajik assisted with the laundry sorting at Gram Air Force Base, Afghanistan’s largest US military camp. He loved his job and earned it well – a sum equivalent to $ 600 a month.
In 2011, when U.S. forces began to withdraw from his country, the 25-year-old Tajik was fired from his job, with thousands more local residents from the city of Gram located west of the base. Today Tajik runs a scrap and old American equipment sale that was thrown by the Americans From the huge camp: spoiled sports treadmill, used jugs, broken printers and computer fans, he sometimes earns about $ 60 a month, he says. “If the Americans leave, I’ll close the business,” Tajik says, “I’ll leave, too.”
A boy in ruins of a building attacked in the area of the Gram Air Force Base about two months agoPhoto: Rahmat Gul / IP
The Afghan city’s proximity to the Great Air Force Base, which has served both the US and the Soviet Union for the past 40 years, has helped its economic growth but created a problem for its residents. On the one hand, Gram is dependent on an economic base and also provides him with a local workforce, but on the other. Second, these facts bring her to the top of the Taliban’s list of goals.
Since the opening of talks between Donald Trump and the Taliban government, which is expected to pave the way for withdrawal of US troops from the state, Tajik and about 80,000 Grammar residents have feared for their fate. “At this stage, we are doing more harm than good,” said Abdul Shukur, governor of An area in Gram, which claims the presence of the US military makes the area less safe, and also, he claims, “has economic implications.”
From an essential center to a scrap collection
A Gram base was built in the 1950s against the backdrop of snowy mountain peaks. During the ten years of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, he was a vital military nerve center and, with the completion of the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, a war between the Taliban and the Afghan Northern Alliance fighters was fought over. After the US invasion in 2001, the base began to grow into a kind of suburb of the city; in addition to the runway and landing, a permanent residence was opened and a Pizza Hut branch was opened there. At its peak, several tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians lived at the base of the base.
At the height of the war, 80 percent of the city’s economy in Graham depended on the base that got its name, says Socor. About three thousand Afghan workers, such as Tajik, traveled daily to the base. On several mornings there were about a thousand workers at the gate, he says. Now that Tajik comes to his business, only six or seven employees are waiting in his door.
For security reasons and as a result of the city’s population dwindling, many workers were replaced by foreign contractors. Now there is a kind of “wall” between the base and the community that surrounds it, says Socor. In the past, American soldiers used to leave the base to visit local leaders and talk to residents, he notes. Now there are miles of concrete walls, watchtowers, drone aircraft and occasional rocket attack or side charge blast.
The attacks became more frequent. In one of them, in November 2016, a suicide bomber sneaked into the base of the mass of workers and activated the explosive belt. In the attack, four Americans were killed and about a dozen injured. Last December, at least two civilians were killed and dozens injured in an exchange of gunfire with the Taliban.
US troops at the Gram base last yearPhoto: Alex Brandon / IP
Without the stable jobs and handsome pay they received from the base, the residents of Gram had to spend less money in bakeries and stores, which were gradually closing down. The economic slump, well felt in Kabul, capital, has pushed many residents to migrate to other places in Afghanistan. Some returned to agriculture, joined the Taliban or looked for ways to leave the country.
The erosion of the status of the base was most evident in the dozens of scrap yards surrounding the base. Said Jamal Nassari set up his scrap business with his father 17 years ago, when the Air Force base was still just a line of makeshift tents served by a small group of American soldiers pursuing Al Qaeda personnel in the Hindu Kush area. Nassari says he and his family then employed about a hundred workers, which on some days loaded about 15 trucks of equipment.
At the height of the war, Nassari earned a sum of $ 3,000 to $ 4,000 a month, he says. In 2014, when the number of American troops dwindled significantly from 26,000 troops to ten thousand, he earned more than $ 100,000 from the amount of equipment thrown from the base. But with a reduction in the number of soldiers from the US and other Western countries, and the scrap business culture near the air base, Nassari’s profits began to plummet. “, Says Nassari,” What else can I do? “
For the full article in the New York Times
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