KANDAHAR (Agencies): Glass pipes where grape juice once flowed are now clogged with dust.
Birds swoop through a maze of conveyer belts before flying to their nests in the factory roof.
A bus that once carried workers rusts away in the yard, all its valuable parts long since stripped."We used to be the pride of the whole of Afghanistan.
"It makes me so sad," said Koot Boden, the manager of a fruit juice and jam factory where production stopped years ago.
Today it could be a symbol for the country's decline.
In the 1970s, Afghanistan produced tons of high-quality grapes, apples and pomegranates.
Dried or fresh, jammed or juiced, fruit was one of the country's major exports and provided a livelihood for thousands of mostly rural families.
Decades of invasion and civil war put an end to that by destroying orchards and vineyards along with the infrastructure needed to process, package and transport the produce.
Despite peace for the first time in 22 years and fresh investment, the industry might miss out on a recovery because of a punishing and protracted drought.
Boden and 19 other senior employees still collect their salary from the government-owned factory on the eastern outskirts of Kandahar.
But their main job now is to maintain the few working machines in the hope a wealthy investor might one day drop by and restore the factory to its former glory.
That, and the occasional bit of sweeping, makes up their day.
The factory was built in the 1960s under the communist President Najibullah.
Foreign engineers and Italian machinery ensured quality, and production was initially high, Boden said.
The huge complex struggled on through the Soviet invasion in 1979 and was the site of numerous battles during an ensuing guerrilla campaign to kick out the Russians.
Massive damage to the infrastructure was done by a ferocious air campaign by the former Soviet Union.
Irrigation canals destroyed, orchards devastated.
It stopped altogether in early 1992, shortly before the pro-Moscow government fell and U.S.-backed Islamic rebels took power.
Bitter fighting between rival Islamic groups led to the rise of the hardline Taliban who seized control of this southern city in 1994 and Kabul two years later.
Russian planes bombed, strafed or simply cut down hundreds of orchards to stop U.S.-backed insurgents from using them for cover.
The Russians were driven to a withdrawal in February 1989 and in 1992 the communist government collapsed.
"Our gardens were once famous like those in California," said Amin Aziz, planning director at the region's agricultural ministry.
"These days, they are all bombed." Next January will mark the fifth year that no rain has fallen over several parts of southern Afghanistan.
The region used to get about five inches of rain a year, just enough to fill wells and keep rivers running.
Engineers are having to dig deeper and deeper to access ground water.
Crop irrigation is expensive, time consuming and sometimes impossible.
"The drought has compounded all the destruction from war," said Keith Polo, an US aid worker helping farmers to revive the fruit growing industry.
"It is has knocked the legs out of fruit production."