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  • 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
    View by appointment
  • The former home of Jangalak Industries, a metalworking factory that once had a workforce of 1,800 but was wrecked during the civil war in the 1990s. It is now used as a massive storage yard for scrap metal. This area is all discarded hospital beds and sch

    Simon Norfolk
    2011
    View by appointment
  • 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
    View by appointment
  • Jaw Aka Faisal Nahman and his daughter Nono from Bamiyan province, now living in an improvised plastic shelter in the ruined gardens of Darulaman Palace. Built in the 1920s to house an Afghan parliament, ‘Darul Aman’ translates as ‘abode of peace’.

    Simon Norfolk
    2011
    View by appointment
  • The swimming pool that crowns Tepe Wazir Akhbar Khan, built by the Soviets in the 1970s and restored in recent times at great expense by USAID. It is uncertain if it will ever be used.

    Simon Norfolk
    2011
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  • The crew and ground staff of the new independent operator, ‘Safi Airways’.

    Simon Norfolk
    2011
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  • The armoury of the British Embassy. The Embassy has a guard force of five hundred.

    Simon Norfolk
    2011
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  • The seemingly endless number of helicopter pads and hangars at Camp Bastion.

    Simon Norfolk
    2011
    View by appointment
  • ‘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
    View by appointment
  • At Waisalabad high above West Kabul. It has taken 26 men from the Mine Detection Centre and four de-mining dogs more than three months to clear mines from an area the size of a few soccer pitches. Kabul’s rapid expansion has increased pressure for buildin

    Simon Norfolk
    2011
    View by appointment
  • Pakistani ‘Jingle Trucks’ end their long journey up from Karachi at the gates of Kandahar Air Field where they wait to be scanned, x-rayed and searched. Only people, ammunition and emergency requirements come by aircraft. Warlord-owned security companies

    Simon Norfolk
    2011
    View by appointment
  • 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
    View by appointment
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