IRIN Special Report on the effect of sanctions on the aviation sector

Sitting in the control tower of Kabul International Airport, there is precious little for the air traffic controller to do. Seven storeys above the once bustling international terminal, 38-year-old Mohammad Homayun surveys aircraft of Ariana - Afghanistan’s once proud state airline - standing idle on the tarmac and wonders what the future holds. The 3.5 km-long runway is completely clear now. Aside from the odd anti-aircraft gun and the burnt-out fuselage of a Russian MiG fighter in the distance, there is little of interest to see from here. The decrepit, bullet-scarred waiting area below, once filled with carefree passengers flying to London, Paris and other European destinations, lies empty now - testimony to 20 or so years of brutal warfare, and now to UN sanctions. While the gates to the airport are open, it remains to all intents and purposes closed. “Having worked here for 10 years, I don’t know what will happen,” Homayun told IRIN. “This place is dying.” How a building, or an entire industry like the aviation sector, can actually die is difficult to say. Indeed, it is a miracle that the Kabul facility actually works at all. The airport still bears the scars of numerous rocket attacks brought to bear against it between 1991 to 1995, but remains operational. Under the additional weight of the latest round sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council on the Taliban Islamic administration in January, the 40 year-old airport, like the entire Afghan airline industry it represents, is rapidly deteriorating. “We are living in a landlocked country devastated by war, where communications, roads and infrastructure are next to nonexistent,” Raz Alami, deputy minister of the Afghan Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism, told IRIN. In a ramshackle office at the ministry’s building in the Afghan capital, Kabul, the US-educated airman said: “Our national airline is blocked, and everyone says this will not affect the ordinary people in this country. Who really believes that?” According to Alami, the role of aviation is particularly important to the social and economic development of the country. He he said the sanctions against the Taliban, including the suspension of all Ariana international flights, had adversely affected both the Afghan people and the airline. “I’m afraid we will no longer be able to withstand this,” he lamented. In an effort to bring about compliance from the Taliban to expel Saudi dissident Usama bin Ladin, wanted in connection with the bombings of two American embassies in East Africa in 1998, as well as in an effort to end alleged Taliban support within the country for international terrorism, the UN Security Council imposed two rounds of sanctions affecting Afghanistan’s civil aviation industry. Under UN Security Council Resolution 1267, imposed on 14 November 1999, all Ariana international flights (except those classed as humanitarian or for the fulfilment of religious obligations) were suspended, company funds were blocked, and no spare parts, supplies or training could be provided by foreign companies. Following the Taliban’s consistent refusal to comply with UN demands, UN Security Council Resolution 1333, imposed on 19 January this year, banned all international flights to the country, closed all Ariana’s offices outside Afghanistan and barred Taliban government officials from flying out of the country. While the UN maintains the sanctions are directed at the Taliban authorities and not the ordinary citizens of Afghanistan, the Taliban argues that the sanctions have caused immense suffering for Afghans countrywide. The UN vehemently denies this accusation. Taliban sources in Kabul told IRIN there was a shortage of medicine and humanitarian materials previously brought into Afghanistan by Ariana, and ordinary citizens were suffering as the result of the absence of an air link with the outside world. Today, it is precisely the issue of sanctions that evokes the most emotional reaction on the part of the airline’s remaining employees. While Ariana humanitarian and religious flights continue under the sanctions, the paperwork in securing permission for even just one flight from the UN is daunting. “It can take anywhere from two days to two months,” Alami said. “In addition to permission from the UN sanctions committee, we are required to get permission from every country whose airspace we wish to fly over.” However, the UN does not formally inform such countries of having granted permission for the flights. “These countries then tell us that we have to go through diplomatic channels, but our country doesn’t have diplomatic relations with them anyway,” he added. During the recent pilgrimage (the Hajj - an important rite for Muslims throughout the world to travel to Mecca in Saudi Arabia), some 2,000 Afghan pilgrims were prevented from making the journey for precisely the reason given by Alami. Moreover, he said, two months ago, his ministry was informed that about 500 Afghans were in prison in the United Arab Emirates as illegal immigrants. “We asked the sanctions committee to allow us on humanitarian grounds to fly there and repatriate them to Afghanistan, but they never responded.” Two weeks ago the Taliban embassy in Dubai said that figure had jumped to 800. Meanwhile, employees back at the airport are more concerned with the basics. “Inside the country we cannot find spare parts. There is no fuel - nothing,” Kabul airport’s technical department manager, Abdul Bashir Rashidzadeh, told IRIN. Asked how their fleet of three Boeing 707 and five Russian-built Antonov AN-24 aircraft were maintained, one mechanic, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “What we do is not right, but we do the best we can under the circumstances.” Asked about spare parts, he smiled and said: “Let’s just call it Afghan technology.” “This is not a safe operation here,” Qiyamoddin Ahmadi of the ministry’s flight safety board told IRIN. None of the Antonov AN-24s used for Ariana’s domestic flights, allowed under UN sanctions, are properly maintained,” he said. “It will just be a matter of time before one of these domestic planes and its passengers crashes - something the UN is fully aware of,” he warned, adding: “If the safety of ordinary civilian passengers, many of them women and children, is not a humanitarian concern of the UN, then I don’t know what is.” Aside from the 20 or so UN and ICRC flights per week into Afghanistan, there is hardly any traffic at the airport. Its main source of revenue, according to Afghan aviation officials, comes from the international flights passing daily through Afghan airspace, each paying US $400. This equates to about US $48,000 per day, a paltry sum for maintaining airports and equipment and providing training to international standards. “Most people are unaware that this [Afghanistan] is the most direct route from Asia to Europe,” Ahmadi said. “Nor do most people flying overhead realise that it is Afghan air traffic controllers that are guiding their pilots through Afghanistan’s 12 air corridors.” There are only 10 aircraft controllers employed now in Kabul, down from the 50 prior to sanctions. Rotating in three shifts daily under difficult and often stressful working conditions, they navigate international aircraft through Afghanistan’s often turbulent air space, for which they are paid US $10 per month. Despite the obvious difficulties of the profession and an ever-changing technology, they are barred from travelling abroad for further training, making the maintainance of international standards a fruitless endeavour. For example, according to Qiyamoddin, if a pilot does not fly for 90 days, US federal aviation administration safety standards stipulate that he be required to make three landings and three takeoffs under the supervision of an instructor pilot. “The three takeoffs are an absolute minimum, and then the pilot must immediately begin flying regularly. How are we supposed to maintain such standards?” Such questions are being asked by the UN itself. “We are doing a lesson learned in the sanctions debate,” Manuel Bessler, senior adviser for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in New York, told IRIN on Monday. Bessler, who is currently in Kabul as part of a two-week assessment of the humanitarian implications of sanctions imposed on Afghanistan, said: “Security Council Resolution 1333, adopted in December 2000, set a precedent in requesting the Secretary-General to assess and review the humanitarian implications of the sanctions imposed on Afghanistan, and to report back to the council with an assessment and recommendations at regular intervals.” This was the first time such an assessment had been called for, which demonstrated “the council’s awareness of the humanitarian implications of sanctions on a country like Afghanistan, and the UN’s sensitivity towards it,” he added. While admitting there had sometimes been “collateral damage” in imposing sanctions on the Taliban, he remarked: “There is the possibility that sanctions can have humanitarian implications, which is precisely why we are doing the assessment that we are.” Bessler stressed that the UN was “concerned” with safety issues affecting Ariana, and would be meeting with officials in Kabul to discuss what measures needed to be taken to be included in the second assessment report expected in June. Bessler’s views were echoed by the first UN assessment report, issued on 20 March, which called for urgent steps to be taken “to facilitate procurement of aircraft spare parts and maintenance flights for the Ariana fleet”. It said: “The imposition of the sanctions made it increasingly difficult for Ariana airlines tp carry our essential maintenance.” The report also quoted warnings by aviation officials in Kabul, stating that “failure to properly maintain aircraft is likely to place Afghan civilians at risk on internal flights”. Meanwhile, back at the aviation ministry, officials remain fatalistic about the future and wonder if the UN will act in time. Asked to comment on arguments that the sanctions do not affect ordinary Afghans, Qiyamoddin Ahmadi of the ministry’s flight safety board remarked: “How can you put a knife across one’s throat and not expect it to bleed. Everyone in this business is close to retirement age, and there are no young people to replace us. If the sanctions continue like this, Ariana will lose all its pilots, engineers and technical staff, not to mention its aircraft, which will no longer be flightworthy. These are all the assets of the people of Afghanistan. Where is the future?”