Gold bricks for Russia's new embassy building in Afghanistan. Why not?

So, PRAVDA.Ru’s assumptions have been fully been proven. Russian aircraft are really airlifting bricks to Kabul. Four-hundred-eighty tons has already been airlifted at the minimum, maybe even more. Mikhail Kasyanov, Russia’ prime minister, told journalists this, commenting on an unprecedented operation, that is, the landing during a single day of 12 Russian Il-76 military cargo planes near Kabul. The operation was carried out on November 26th. Judging by the statements made by the Russian authorities, aviation has brought to Afghanistan the needed equipment and materials for the restoration of the Russian embassy in the country.

Doubts have immediately arose regarding the validity of such an explanation. Whether or not there was a necessity in the airlifting at one time such an amount of equipment and materials during a single day (during a single morning, to be exact). Where is it all to be stored, and how is it all to be guarded? Moreover, the bulk of this stuff is deemed secret. It is sensible to drop it in the devastated Afghanistan, while the building itself exists only in the form of a design.

PRAVDA.Ru then assumed that it was common practice in Afghanistan to import bricks by plane (maybe, there was a deficiency of bricks in the country). Or we may be dealing here with a military operation, as troops and armoured vehicles may be airlifted to Afghanistan.

Today, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov fully confirmed one of PRAVDA.Ru’s guesses. He denied media reports that Russia had allegedly airlifted to Afghanistan two paratrooper regiments. “It can’t be so, because I know all the decisions in this sphere, and they have been made public,” the prime minister is quoted as saying at the closing ceremony of the CIS summit meeting.

According to him, the transport aircraft really flew to Kabul, though exclusively in the framework of a program ratified by the government, which is necessary to supply building materials for the restoration of the Russian embassy to Afghanistan. In total, 17 flights of the kind are planned, though most of them have been already carried out, he stated. However, the bricks transported to airport near to Kabul by military transport aircraft turned out to be almost golden. This was passed over in silence by the prime-minister, but here, a reasonable question appears: if it is hard to find building materials in Afghanistan (which is unbelievable), it might be cheaper to transport them by cars from, let us say, Uzbekistan, and not by aircraft from Russia.

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2001/11/29/34368.html