Kabul's Sleeping Giant

The Kabul Housing Factory is the biggest monument to Russia’s ten year control of Afghanistan.
This huge apocalytic-film-set of a factory overlooks the airport. At one time they employed 15,000 people on an 8 hour shift, 24 hours a day. At full strength this site pre-fabricated a city quarter of 1980s Kabul called Macroryan. Started soon after the Soviet invasion, Macroryan became popular with Russians and local party members. Now it is occupied by Kabul’s wealthier occupants despite its slightly disheveled appearance.
Kabul Housing Factory (KHF) will wake up their half-destroyed facilities to make manholes for our dull but very worthy sanitation programme we are installing here in Murad Khane, Kabul.
Although this is an impressive site by anyone’s standards what is unusual is that, apart from looting by the Taliban in the 1990s, the high-grade machinery and materials lie dormant, ready to use. Along with the president of the company who sits at his desk, we met the mould makers and engineers who had worked on a skeleton staff waiting for the next big project that may never come along. This could transform Kabul’s housing standards in a matter of years but for anti-Russian political reasons no-one will provide the go-ahead to refurbish the machines and link in local developers and the urban plan.