If a case of soap is pilfered from a US military base here or pinched from a NATO shipping container, it will probably, sooner or later, end up for sale in the Bush Market, a sort of thieves’ outlet mall in central Kabul.

Named after George W. Bush, the US president who launched the war in Afghanistan, the bazaar has flourished for more than eight years, thanks to the long presence of foreign troops that provided war booty aplenty. But in the Obama era, with its steady withdrawal of US forces, the good times are ending in the sprawling hive of vendors who hawk mountains of Pop-Tarts and enough Head and Shoulders shampoo to combat the dandruff of untold army divisions.

In a way, the market serves as a microeconomic barometer of the concerns of Afghans across class lines when 2014 ends — and with it, the US-led coalition’s combat mission. President Obama’s announcement in his State of the Union address Tuesday of the accelerated pullout of 34,000 troops in the coming year has only heightened many merchants’ worries about what happens after Western forces finally step on their air hose of cash and material support.

“My business once was good,” lamented a shop owner named Sabor, standing next to a shelf packed with Stridex acne pads and Just for Men hair dye. “But it has become a depression.”

Several vendors said sales have already fallen by 50 percent since last year as the “surge” troops that began arriving in 2009 have departed. The amount of military goods available to be pilfered has dropped, they said, and prices have gone up. Also, fewer foreign development workers come to shop for familiar Western brands.

“If Obama had announced, ‘I don’t want to withdraw the soldiers,’ business would grow,” said Sabor, 47, who goes by one name and is among the Afghans who oppose a pullout, despite President Hamid Karzai’s fervid argument — repeated this week — that it is long overdue.

Sabor credited the 11-year US presence with bringing his war-ravaged country increased security, opportunities for girls and women and a functional government.

“Some people say that Americans should leave this country, but it is a loss for us,” he said.

Others in the bazaar, like 20-year-old Samiullah, clad in a T-shirt sporting a fake US Army logo, said they trust their fates to a power higher than the American greenback.

“God is kind, and if Obama doesn’t give us bread, God will give us bread,” he said.

A warren of some 600 shops and stalls, Bush Market also exemplifies in miniature the massive corruption that has flourished with the flow of hundreds of billions of dollars in military and development aid to Afghanistan, where skimming Yankee dollars is common from the very top social rungs on down.

Most shopkeepers expressed ignorance about the origin of their goods. But as one longtime merchant explained, Afghans who get military-base jobs are ingenious when it comes to obtaining five-finger discounts on bulk items.

Trash trucks leave US installations with crates of supplies concealed under tarps, said the merchant, who declined to be identified.

“My neighbor got very rich doing this,” he noted.

The market is rarely subject to raids by Afghan authorities, unless US forces suspect that something sensitive has ended up there. Vendors said the last time they remember seeing US troops accompanying Afghan security forces was about two years ago.

The US military did not respond to a request for comment about the market’s inventory. But the problem of looted on-base goods, as well as diverted shipments, has not escaped official notice.

Last May, Army Maj. Gen. Richard Longo, who directed the US forces’ anti-corruption task force here, visited the market on the invitation of the Stars and Stripes, the independent military newspaper.

“I’m certainly not going to deny that pilferage is going on,” he told the paper, observing that merchants bagged customer purchases in plastic sacks made for the US Army and Air Force Exchange Service.

Many of the stalls stock military-style goods, but Chinese-made knockoffs of official watches, boots, T-shirts and backpacks seem to outnumber the genuine articles. There are rows of knives and brass knuckles of the sort you’d find in a US military-surplus store.