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 On the very northern edge of Kabul. A shipping container is re-purposed as home to men working in a yard casting concrete blast walls. Each section, when sold to foreign embassies or the military, fetches $1000 per piece. Simon Norfolk 2011 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 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 A de-mining team from the Mine Detection Centre in Kabul with a member of the German Police who is mentoring them. Simon Norfolk 2011 At a music school on Kabul, boys are taught the traditional Afghan instrument the rubab. Difficult to play, it is a skill which nearly became extinct due to the Taliban prohibition on secular music. Simon Norfolk 2011 Afghan Police being trained by US Marines, Camp Leatherneck. 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 Some of the nonsensical property development taking place in Kabul. The district of the city, Karte Char Chateh, is remembered by Kabulis as part of the bazaar which was burned by the British in 1842 as collective punishment for the killing of the British Simon Norfolk 2011 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
