You might like Left Right Shah-do-Shamshira Mosque is known as the Mosque of the King with Two Swords. It was built in the 1920s on the order of King Amanullah’s mother on the site of one of Kabul’s first mosques named in honour of an early Muslim king who died fighting Hindu inva Simon Norfolk 2011 Wasteland at the back of shops used as stabling for draught horses. In the distance is the Bala Hissar citadel, now home to an Afghan army base and mooring for one of the American blimps that carry electronic surveillance gear and cameras. Simon Norfolk 2011 The Sham-e-Paris (‘Parisian Evenings’) wedding hall in the Taymani neighbourhood. Common in Pakistan, these huge wedding complexes have sprung up all over Kabul with dining and entertainment halls to seat a thousand on each floor and even an on-site honey Simon Norfolk 2011 A watchtower guarding a street of foreign embassies in central Kabul. For the British army these improvised fortifications are called ‘sangars’, although the term is Dari for ‘barricade’ and is one of the few words the British brought home form the Anglo- Simon Norfolk 2011 The whole eastern side of Kabul, for miles along both sides of the Jalalabad Road is one huge logistics yard capable of supplying the foreign military and rapidly growing embassies with everything they might need from a single cup of coffee right through Simon Norfolk 2011 Historically, Kuchis were strongly pro-Taliban; feelings made more intense by being bombed by NATO off their traditional grazing lands in Helmand. They are allowed to set up camp here on Kabul’s periphery only because it is below a large, new Afghan Army Simon Norfolk 2011 Afghan Police being trained by US Marines, Camp Leatherneck. Simon Norfolk 2011 Afghan police trainees being taken to the firing ranges by US Marines, Camp Leatherneck, Helmand. Simon Norfolk 2011 The armoury of the British Embassy. The Embassy has a guard force of five hundred. Simon Norfolk 2011 Watchtowers on the perimeter of Camp Bastion. Simon Norfolk 2011 ‘Radio TV Mountain’ in the centre of Kabul seen from where the Kabul River cuts through the mountains creating the Deh Mazang gorge. In the first Anglo-Afghan War it was the site of a crucial skirmish and hasty retreat by badly outnumbered British cavalry Simon Norfolk 2011 There are 16,000 US Marines aboard Camp Leatherneck spread over 1,600 acres. Empty shipping containers are used as storage, wind breaks or blast walls. In May 2010 a mysterious fire, that may have been sabotage, destroyed 9 acres of containers. It burned Simon Norfolk 2011
