The Globe and Mail

Think of a movie, any movie. Seriously, anything: from the biggest Hollywood blockbuster to the most obscure Japanese anime cult classic. Every Saturday morning, it’s all here, at the Kandahar Air Field.
The soldiers at the KAF can’t normally go to the local bazaars, so once a week, the bazaar comes to them. In a wide open space that looks like a cross between a parking lot and a dust carpet, dozens of Afghans set up stalls and hawk everything from watches to jewelry to elaborate, Lord-of-the-Rings-esque knives. This is also the place to go for war booty – if it was left behind by an army and doesn’t explode, there’s a good chance you’ll find it here.
But the main attraction is undoubtedly the dizzying array of pirated DVDs. If you don’t mind a lot of Chinese script and a strangely shaped Mickey Mouse on your packaging, you can buy a collection of just about every Disney animated feature ever made for about 10 bucks. From the music DVD racks, you can get something called “Pop Idol’s,” or “Los Reggaeton Chart.” I’m not entirely sure how legit a company “Sangeet DVD” is, but they offer a five-in-one, single-DVD collection of Penelope Cruz movies.
Any single movie goes for less than five dollars. It’s a win-win for the soldiers and the vendors. Not only are the prices right, but the speed with which blockbusters go from movie theatres to Kandahar’s markets is a model of efficiency – I don’t know if Superbad has come out on DVD in North America yet, but it sure has here.
The movie market makes for some surreal interactions. I watch an Afghan man sell a bootleg Rambo 3 DVD to a couple of American soldiers, and I feel like there’s a poignant message here about the history of Afghan war and shifting alliances, but really there isn’t.
But while the most ubiquitous items are the DVDs, the most interesting are artifacts of war. There are entire stands full of crossbows, muskets and war carpets. I pick up a Kelvin and Hughes 1917 compass that looks like it hasn’t done anything useful in about 50 years, and an old Soviet flask. The likelihood that the latter is just a regular flask with Soviet emblems glued on is quite high. Still, it beats the CSI box set in the stall next door.
As the rest of the Canadian media contingent and I walk through the makeshift market, we are surrounded by some of the most well-off Afghans in Kandahar. Anyone who rounds up about $200 in profit today will match the average doctor’s monthly salary. And while many of the items on sale here cost less than $50, there are some biggies – some of the largest carpets can cost upwards of a grand.
(Between this bazaar, demand for interpreters and the myriad day-work jobs on the base, NATO is one of the most lucrative employment opportunities in this country.)
But you’re expected to haggle, my more experienced colleagues assure me. Much like the bazaars of Egypt, Morocco and the world’s other great cultural tourist attractions, this market makes foreigners feel empowered by tossing astronomical opening prices at them, and letting them fight for something more reasonable. My colleague, helping me buy a gift, spends five minutes working the price of a shawl down from 10 dollars to eight. Ultimately successful, she looks at me like she’s just climbed Everest in flip-flops.
As we wind our way through the stalls, it seems unlikely I’ll find a behemoth purchase here to top the current record-holder for priciest item on sale at Kandahar Air Field: a $4500 big-big-big-screen TV at the Dutch duty-free store that’s wider than the bed I sleep on.
If you’re going to watch every Disney movie ever made, you may as well do it right.