#3
A hospital? An embassy? Russian camp mystifies Kabul
By Michael Steen

KABUL, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Uniformed Russians with Kalashnikov assault rifles have occupied a patch of wasteland in the heart of the Afghan capital, Kabul, and they said on Tuesday they were building a field hospital, or perhaps an embassy.

About 100 men from Russia's Emergencies Ministry -- which is not part of the military -- set up base after dark on Monday, providing a source of rumour and even some consternation among scores of spectators the following day.

"Are they soldiers?" asked one man. "Are they bad people? What are they doing here?"

Russians with guns have a checkered past in Afghanistan.

The Soviet invasion from 1979 to 1989 left the country awash with war widows, landmines and the hulks of burnt-out Soviet tanks and armoured personnel carriers.

The men from the Emergencies Ministry -- some armed with possibly the newest and shiniest Kalashnikovs in all Afghanistan -- were not too forthcoming.

"We are building a field hospital," said one, dressed in a blue anorak emblazoned with "EM - Russia" in large white letters. "And a temporary embassy."

Having spent a freezing night sleeping by camp fires, the Russians parked their 12 huge Kamaz trucks in a circle and strung up green camouflage netting from them while the men with rifles patrolled the perimeter.

In Russia, the Emergencies Ministry usually deals with helping the victims of natural disasters such as floods.

Russia has for years provided the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance with weapons. Following the collapse of the Taliban government, Moscow pledged to help relieve humanitarian problems in Afghanistan.

But if that was the point of Tuesday's exercise, no senior officer was free to explain their mission. And as a location for a clinic based in tents -- a stone's throw from two proper brick and mortar hospitals -- it seemed a quixotic choice.

A Russian delegation has been visiting Kabul and said one of its priorities was to survey the wreckage of the old Soviet embassy, a huge compound amid the destruction of west Kabul.

The area was turned into a moonscape of pulverised buildings by civil war in the early 1990s and the gunshot-riddled old compound now provides shelter to thousands of people made homeless by two decades of war.

Though why Russian diplomats would want to live in tents behind green camouflage -- which highlights rather than disguises things against the pale yellow dust of Kabul -- also remained a mystery.

"The Russians have come here and I don't understand what they are doing," said Fayaz, an unemployed man watching the spectacle. "If they are really setting up an embassy, then I suppose that is fine."