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Located on the main road leading to the largest air base in Afghanistan, Mir Salam traverses a pile of electronics in front of Mir Salam, recovered from those leaving U.S. troops.
There is plenty of rubbish and debris equipment in the area, ranging from telephones and thermoses to computer keyboards and printer cartridges.
“This is what Americans do,” the 40-year-old told AFP news agency. “They destroy everything.”
The Pentagon leaves the Bagram air base empty as part of a plan to withdraw all forces for the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attack on the U.S., which would be completed by the end of the month.
Military equipment is being taken home or handed over to Afghan security forces, but tons of civilian equipment must be left behind. Some of the results are a growing scrap business that is making money, but it leaves a lot to be desired.
“They’re exploding or they’re burning,” says the team that rejected Salam. “There were a lot of new things on this basis – enough to rebuild Afghanistan 20 times – but they destroyed everything.”
For two decades, Bagram was the nerve center of U.S. operations in Afghanistan.
It is a small city visited by hundreds of thousands of service members and contractors. It has swimming pools, cinemas and spas as well as fast food outlets such as Burger King and Pizza Hut.
It also has a prison that held thousands of Taliban and other prisoners over the years.
Bagram was built by the US for its alliance in Afghanistan in the 1950s during the Cold War as a protection against the former Soviet Union in the north.
Ironically, the country became the scene of a Soviet invasion in 1979, and the Red Army significantly expanded it into a decade-long occupation.
When he left Moscow, he became the center of a fierce civil war. It was reported at one point that the Taliban was in control of one end of the three-kilometer (two-mile) track and the other of the opposition Northern Alliance.
Salam pays 1,000 Afghans ($ 13) a month to rent a modest fenced plot of land on the Bagram road each month, where he stores basic scrap that he seeks nuggets to sell to specialized vendors.
The road to the base is made up of dozens of similar companies, some of which are dilapidated, but others with imposing warehouses with armed guards.
Large players have contracts to remove equipment that has been dismantled, and they select items that can be repaired. All they don’t use is left to small vendors like Salam.
To remove the copper wires, the circuit boards are crushed to rare earth metals and the aluminum is collected to be melted into ingots.
Nothing is wasted, says Haji Noor Rahman, another scrap dealer. “Anything that can be reused, people buy it,” he told AFP.
Its warehouse is like a large scrap yard, covered with a stunning array of items – broken chairs, wet TV screens, rusty gym equipment, electronic piano keyboards, artificial Christmas trees and other festive decorations.
Selecting the selection is Abdul Basir, a friend who came from Kabul and slammed six metal doors to about 8,000 Afghans ($ 100).
Elsewhere, a young man found shoes that had some marks on them that still seemed to be a few miles away. Another browser bought a teddy bear and a mini rugby ball.
“The withdrawal of American troops will have a negative impact on the country’s economy and Bagram,” Lalah Shrin Raoufi, the district governor, told AFP.
“I met employees of a company that provided basic food … they are afraid of losing their jobs,” he said.
Raoufi said they are doing everything they can to control the base and security when the last U.S. forces leave.
Meanwhile, the cleanup continues.
“They came to rebuild our country, but now they are destroying it,” says Moagram Amin, a neighbor of Bagram, looking over a pile of scrap metal.
“They could have given all this.”
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