Western Army Supplies Turning up in Afghan Bazaars

Western army supplies turning up in Afghan bazaars
by Bronwen Roberts

Left, Packets of ready-made omlettes, catering-size bottles of American sauces, even alcohol and pork forbidden in Islam — items somehow pilfered from foreign military bases or internationals-only stores are making an appearance in Kabul markets.

KABUL  – Packets of ready-made omlettes, catering-size bottles of American sauces, even alcohol and pork forbidden in Islam — items somehow pilfered from foreign military bases or internationals-only stores are making an appearance in Kabul markets.

Shelves of the small shops in Bush Market, near the dirty stream that the Kabul River has become, are packed with jumbo-sized containers of products that are sometimes unfamiliar to the shopkeepers and jar with their surroundings.

Pink bottles of sun cream stand near gleaming cans of antiseptic aerosol; there are Christmas stockings, bagels, horseradish and tins and tins of Quaker Oats…

"Pork?" a shopkeeper asks a foreigner in a sly whisper, gesturing to a soggy box on the dirty pavement.

Another asks for help in identifying packets of thawing meat which turn out to be Bratwurst and veal, according to small labels written in English.

Disassembled military MREs — Meals Ready to Eat for troops in the field — are sorted into boxes near packets of crab sticks and huge blocks of Dutch chocolate.

In one dim store hangs an old copy of Cosmopolitan magazine, its risque cover turned to the wall; elsewhere issues of army publication Freedom Watch are tossed on the floor and military ID pouches dangle in a window.

A shopkeeper standing next to a pile of canteen-style mealtrays is asked where the items come from. "Frankly, they are stolen," he says with a shrug and a grin.

Another trader, Mohammed Najib, adds: "They are smuggled out (of the military bases) by laundry workers, kitchen workers. Or food is given away when they don't need it, like expired stuff. And stuff that is left in the garbage, the workers bring out."

Sometimes goods are "gifted" to workers after they have offloaded trucks at the military stores, another says.

"We are not stealing — we buy it from someone," he says.

Western beauty and health products are favoured over available Chinese and Pakistani versions because they are considered better quality, Najib says. Foreigners and returned exiles are among his customers.

Most of the items come from the giant US military base at Bagram, about 60 kilometres (40 miles) from Kabul, he says.

The bazaar outside the Bagram base hit the headlines in April last year when flash memory drives containing military secrets were found to be on sale after being smuggled out by cleaners and garbage collectors.

The Kabul bazaar is popularly called Bush Market because of its association with the US military and        President George W. Bush who ordered the toppling of the Taliban government five years ago.

The tradition began with the Brezhnev Market that sold Soviet items after the 1979 invasion of the government of Leonid Brezhnev.

Najib says some of the shops used to sell beer — which is banned in Islamic        Afghanistan — but supplies dried up when authorities recently clamped down on stores and restaurants meant to sell alcohol only to foreigners.

Now there are regular inspections with authorities also looking for expired foods, he says.

But across town boxes of Heineken beer are boldly stacked in the sun against the flimsy walls of shacks that sell burgers wrapped in pages from the International Security Assistance Force newspaper.

There are other brands of beer, vodka coolers and a couple of cans of Guinness.

"We have got people who bring it — I think they get a whole container (from one of the foreigners-only shops)," says 19-year-old Rishad, part-owner of a little shop bedecked with saucy Bollywood posters.

A few free beers from time to time can persuade the police to accept the version with five percent alcohol content. It is the ones with more alcohol, hidden from display, that can cause problems. "We have to pay more," he says.

Rishad says he has a steady supply of Afghan customers besides the occasional Westerner.

"I have one who is in love and he drinks to forget his love. I have one who is stuck here and his family is in The Netherlands and and he drinks to forget he is lonely," he says.

On the ban on alcohol and mutterings in parliament about ubiquitous pictures of sexy Bollywood stars, Rashid says: "I don't have an opinion. Some people say this is a democracy, some people say it is an Islamic country.

"I know I am not earning clean money out of this, but what other job can I do?"

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