![]() I make a mental note to remember this next time. Equally interesting to me, the hefty duty-free carrier bags that most of my fellow passengers are carrying seem to pass unnoticed by the authorities scanning luggage. Interestingly, in the light of recent Taliban edicts, the two officials stamping passports are both women. Today, the queue for immigration comprises just me and my 12 fellow passengers. The Taliban is still classified as a terrorist organisation and most UN members have imposed sanctions which include freezing assets held overseas, and an embargo prohibiting all trade beyond the provision of basic humanitarian assistance. A large notice on the airside of the terminal building proclaims – more, one imagines, in hope than expectation – that the ‘The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan seeks peaceful and positive relations with the world’. The white symbolises the purity of the movement the calligraphy comprises the shahada (the Islamic declaration of faith) intertwined with the new name of the Emirate. The new flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan comprises elaborate black Thuluth calligraphy on a stark white background – a negative of the white-on-black flags favoured by most Jihadist movements. ![]() Since my last visit, the red, black and green tricolour of the Afghan Republic has been replaced by the Taliban flag. The terminal itself, built with a grant from the Japanese government, is a dump. The airfield is cratered, the tarmac littered with the remains of aircraft that have been cannibalised for spare parts to keep Afghanistan’s dwindling commercial fleet operational. It is, however, a visible metaphor for the trillions of dollars that the West has lavished on this country in the last 20 years and the baffling sense that no one truly knows where much of that money has gone. ![]() Sadly, Kabul International Airport today is no Shangri-La. As the plane weaves its way through the mountains, it is not hard to imagine why the first European travellers to the area thought that they had stumbled across the mythical kingdom of Shangri-La. Kabul is 1,800m above sea level, nestled into a narrow valley in the Hindu Kush. In a way somehow befitting a service operated by the World Food Programme, the catering could best be described as frugal: a thimbleful of water and a cloyingly sweet roll filled with an unidentifiable paste. ![]() Given the current situation in Afghanistan, even that seems an improbably large number. The payload for today’s UN flight 101 from Doha comprises a grand total of 13 passengers in the 56-seat aircraft. Those working for accredited NGOs are permitted to use the regular UN Humanitarian Air Services flights from Doha and Dubai. Afghan carriers, battling on in the face of sanctions, are denied access to maintenance and spare parts. Together with colleagues from the Royal Brompton & Harefield hospitals, we are trying to help the local team to rebuild the cardiac surgery service, decimated by the double jeopardy of the pandemic and the return to power of the Taliban.Ĭommercial flights to Kabul are few and far between. I am on my way to the FMIC hospital in Afghanistan’s capital, where I have been visiting for more than a decade. It is hot and, having flown through the night from London, I am tired and scratchy, waiting at Doha airport for the flight which will take me to Kabul, my second trip in six months. ![]()
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