No radar? No problem! Kabul Airport reopens for domestic flights

• Taliban reopens Kabul Airport for domestic travel.
• Ariana Afghan Airlines relaunches three domestic routes from Kabul Airport.
• Technical team from Qatar repaired parts of Kabul Airport traffic control system.

Ariana Afghan Airlines announced in a statement on its Facebook page that it has resumed domestic flights between the capital city of Kabul and Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar.

Ariana Afghan Airlines flights between Kabul and three major provincial cities in the west, north and south of the capital restarted after a team of aviation engineers from Qatar repaired parts of the air traffic control system last week and reopened the capital’s airport for aid and domestic services.

Earlier, Qatar’s Ambassador to Afghanistan Saeed bin Mubarak al-Khayarin said a technical team had been able to reopen Kabul airport to receive aid.

Lauding this as a step taken to return the country to relative normality after a tumultuous period, the ambassador added that the airport runway has been repaired in cooperation with Afghan authorities.

But the Kabul airport is operating without radar or navigation systems, making it difficult to resume international civilian flights.

Reopening the airport, a vital lifeline to both the outside world and across Afghanistan’s mountainous territory, has been a high priority for the Taliban as it seeks to restore order after they completed their lightning seizure of the country by taking Kabul on August 15.