Kabul Carries On : Luck Is Your Co-Pilot on This Airline

At 24,000 feet, Ariana Airlines Flight 455 to Herat was somewhere over Afghanistan’s war-torn Bamiyan province last week when Ariana employee Bismillah very casually mentioned the enemy anti-aircraft base located directly below.

A few weeks ago, he told his first American passenger in years, U.S.-backed moujahedeen rebels fired an American-supplied Stinger missile at his civilian airliner.

“Not to worry,” the cheery Bismillah shouted over the drone of the Soviet-made Antonov-26 turboprop. “It missed.”

Crash in Iran

But one anecdote led to another, and Bismillah, who works as a flight dispatcher, quickly moved on to the story of a hijacking in August:

The co-pilot of another Ariana domestic flight, it seems, pulled a gun on his best friend, the pilot, and tried to force him to land in neighboring Iran, where the co-pilot planned to defect to the Muslim rebels. A gun battle ensued in the cockpit, and the plane crashed in Iran, killing six.

“And that’s why, you see, Ariana Airlines is now down to just five domestic aircraft,” Bismillah lamented with a sigh. “You see what it is like trying to run an airline during this war? You see what this war has done to all of us?”

Indeed, after a decade of war, the Afghan government’s domestic airline, complete with its battered planes, neurotic air crews and nonexistent schedules, is a typical example of President Najibullah’s effort to maintain a semblance of government in a nation of ruins.

Destroyed on Ground

Despite rebel anti-aircraft emplacements, rocket attacks that have destroyed planes on runways and a budget that allows wages of just $14 a month to employees such as Bismillah, who risk their lives daily, Najibullah has insisted that Ariana’s domestic show must go on.

The handful of European and East Bloc diplomatic observers who remain in Kabul, the capital, say such issues are key symbols of survival for Najibullah’s beleaguered, pro-Soviet government.

The regime has steadfastly defied Western predictions that it would fall within weeks of the Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan last February. The troops had been supporting the Afghan government against the rebels.

But, as a Times reporter learned firsthand during a recent visit to Afghanistan, there are prices to pay for such symbolic shows of strength. In the case of Ariana Airlines, the exercise clearly has produced the strangest commercial airline on earth.

Ariana’s passengers, for example, never have to worry about the airline losing their check-in baggage. They sit on it during the flight. There is no “Fasten Seat Belt” sign--because there are no seat belts. As for “No Smoking” sections, forget it. The ground-maintenance crews puff away on Russian cigarettes even while they refill the wing tanks.

And Ariana Flight 455 from Kabul to the extreme western city of Herat was typical.

It began in a bombed-out storage shed that Ariana calls its domestic departure lounge in Kabul. None of the employees on hand had the faintest idea what time the plane would depart. They didn’t know whether Flight 455 would stop somewhere en route to Herat. In fact, they weren’t even all that sure there would even be a Flight 455 that day.

“How can we make schedules?” a grim-faced Bismillah later said. “We never really know exactly where our planes are going to land even after they take off.”

With boarding passes--tiny, blank pieces of cardboard--in hand, passengers were then led to a battered bus outside the shed. The bus windows were sealed shut, but air circulated well through the dozens of shrapnel holes torn into the bus’s sides from the weekly rebel rocket attacks on Kabul’s only airport.

Stand Up During Takeoff

Soon, it was announced that Flight 455 would indeed depart, and the plane was quickly packed solid with sacks and bags and passengers, some of them forced to stand even during takeoff.

Space on Ariana’s few daily flights is coveted, to say the least. After 10 years of war, most of Afghanistan’s roads are largely impassable. What Soviet aerial bombardments haven’t destroyed, rebel artillery attacks have. Then, there are the added travel risks of kidnaping and robbery by armed bandits and tribal fighters from both warring sides along the roadway.

But there were other glimpses of the war on board the plane.

The vast array of baggage, for example, underscored the strangeness and the brutality of Afghanistan’s unending conflict. It ranged from giant tambourines and peacock feathers to artificial limbs and a coffin.

Extreme Isolation

And the extreme isolation of Afghanistan--10 years after Najibullah’s ruling party appealed to their Soviet backers and received 115,000 Red Army troops--also was obvious during a brief conversation on board between a Westerner and a young Afghan engineer.

“Where are you from?” the wide-eyed engineer asked after hearing the Westerner speak to a colleague in English.

“America,” came the reply.

“My God,” the engineer shrieked. “I am so happy. You are the first Americans I have seen in 10 years. When I was in Kabul University in 1978, all of my teachers were Americans. I remember Miss Cooper from Texas. There was another one from Chicago.

“But, why are you on this plane? Why are you going to Herat? There is nothing in Herat but more war.”

The war also was discussed in the cockpit, where, as is standard practice, the pilot was an air force colonel and the co-pilot a civilian, a precaution against hijacking and defection.

Ill-Fated Flight

The practice almost worked two months ago on the ill-fated Ariana domestic flight to Zaranj, in the extreme southwestern corner of Afghanistan a few miles from the Iranian border.

For most of the flight, the defecting co-pilot, whom several sources said was the son of Afghanistan’s former prime minister Hassan Sharq, tried to persuade the pilot to join him.

It was only after the co-pilot pulled a gun, forcibly took control of the plane and crossed the Iranian border that the pilot fought back, grabbing the pistol and wounding the co-pilot. But it was too late to return to Afghanistan, and the plane crash-landed in Iranian territory, where all the survivors, and the wreckage, remain to this day.

“Imagine,” Bismillah mused, as Flight 455 slowly crossed over the desolate, lunar Afghan countryside, “our own co-pilot hijacking the plane. You see what it has come to here, what happens when brother fights brother and best friend fights best friend. Where it will go, only God knows.”

Symbol of Hope

But Bismillah is one of Afghanistan’s many symbols of hope.

Like most Ariana employees, the flight dispatcher also accompanies international Ariana flights to Frankfurt, West Germany; Dubai, in the Persian Gulf; Prague, Czechoslovakia, and New Delhi. He has had many chances to defect or simply walk away. And he has had many good reasons to do so.

Trained by American advisers decades ago, the 28-year veteran Ariana employee would make 100 times his salary outside Afghanistan. During his night stops in foreign countries, Ariana gives him less than $20 a day for hotel, meals and taxis. And, as he noted, “in most countries, people don’t try to shoot down your airplanes.”

Resists Temptation

But Bismillah has resisted temptation. In fact, he has forbidden all eight of his children to join the 5 million refugees who have fled Afghanistan. And, Bismillah said, none of the reasons for his resoluteness are political.

“I don’t like politics. . . ,” he said, adding, “In the last 10 years, I have seen for the first time with my own eyes the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Germany, India and Dubai. So many places. And, in any one of those countries, I could make so much more money.

“But I do not go. Those places are not my home. And it is better to stay in your own country. Everyone must do what little they can to keep our country alive. Yes, that is much better.”

Suddenly, the Antonov-26 lurched downward. Bismillah glanced around sharply to make sure it hadn’t been hit. It hadn’t; it had simply encountered an air pocket.