The Times
Jerome Starkey in Kabul

Country club, soup kitchen and air raid shelter — Kabul’s oldest bar has been many things over half a century of strife. It survived two coups, a civil war, two invasions and Taleban rule, but the United Nations International Community Association (Unica) succumbed to the unstoppable march of the city’s new property developers last week as staff called last orders at the pool for the final time.

Sold for $6 million, the waiters said the new corporate owners hoped to build a Dubai-style shopping mall on the club’s lawns and a multistorey business centre where the swimming pool once stood. “Inside Unica it was a different world; we could pretend we weren’t in Afghanistan,” said Abdul Hamid, the barman of 24 years.

The club’s pseudo-diplomatic status meant that it was the only bar to stay open under the Taleban — although the Islamist regime insisted on posting a mullah and two armed men at a checkpoint opposite.

Most of the embassies had closed. The Intercontinental Hotel’s wine cellar had been looted and burnt, so Unica became the de facto melting pot for the extraordinary blend of merchants, misfits, mercenaries and spies drawn to the Hindu Kush. “That was our busiest time,” said Abdul, 55. “This was the centre for exchanging information. Everyone came here.” Takings, he said, exceeded $3,000 a night.

When the Taleban first took Kabul, Abdul, a Russian-trained geologist, said they marched into the compound and started drinking water from the pool. “They were scooping it into their mouths, and they used it to do their ablutions,” he said. “I had to tell them it was for swimming in.” In 2003 an American stabbed an Australian in a drunken brawl, but for most of the time it was a sanctuary of normality in a city choked by poverty and war. When the rockets rained down on Kabul in the early 1990s, guests fled into an underground bunker.

Fighting closed it on only two occasions. The first time, in 1992, they had just taken delivery of three container loads of alcohol. In 1993, the bar acted as an impromptu aid station, doling out tea and bread to refugees.

“All we could see in the darkness was the flicker of hurricane lamps and the only sound was the shuffle of feet and the odd crying child or bleating goat,” said Jolyon Leslie, a Kabul resident. “It was probably one of the most bizarre ad hoc aid distributions the UN has carried out in Afghanistan.”