It was the arrival of more than a dozen humanitarian flights in October 2000 that finally heralded the end of the air ban imposed on Iraq for invading Kuwait in 1990 and that left the facility all-but abandoned.

Deserted terminals, empty duty-free shops and an air traffic control tower that controlled nothing painted a sorry scene for most of the 1990's at Baghdad's international airport.

But the regime officially declared it reopened on August 17, 2000.

A trickle of humanitarian aid flights, first from Russia and France, spurred Arab nations to defy the air embargo.

Iraq had long protested that the ban had no legal justification and blamed Washington for the scores of fatal accidents on the hazardous 1,000-kilometre (625-mile) Baghdad-Amman highway, Iraq's main link with the outside world.

Iraq, which also has major airports at Basra in the south and Mosul in the north, resumed domestic flights in November 2000.

By December, renovation work began on a second runway at the airport which lies some 20 kilometres (13 miles) by motorway west of the city.

But it was not until 2001 that Amman's Royal Jordanian obtained approval for regular charter flights to Baghdad from the UN committee supervising the application of sanctions.

Commercial aircraft began to land regularly in Baghdad, with charters serving Damascus and Amman, leaving in tatters an air embargo that divided the UN Security Council.

Unlike the United States and Britain, Russia, China and France argued that the UN resolution against Iraq does not require an embargo on flights which do not involve any financial or commercial transaction.

First opened in 1982, the airport boasts three terminals.

Cleaned up for the reopening, it presented a stark contrast to the best hospitals in the sanctions-hit state, where air conditioning does not work and the lifts remain padlocked, with no electricity to run them.

The airport's check-in hall and departure lounge, cafes and restaurants, travel and car hire agencies all gradually geared up as regular flights slowly returned to Amman and Damascus.

The duty-free shops offer imported products and local souvenirs.

"Down with America!" read graffiti scrawled in blood-red Arabic and English on the enormous columns at the airport's entrance and departure lounge.

Iraqi Airways, itself grounded since 1990, began sending pilots and technicians to Malaysia and Jordan to train on planes built by the European consortium Airbus in the hope of relaunching services.

But its fleet of some 15 planes remained stranded in Iran, Jordan and Tunisia.

Calls by the Iraqi government for the return of the planes which Baghdad dispatched for safekeeping on the eve of the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait fell on deaf ears.

SPACE.WIRE