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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
  • 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
    View by appointment
  • 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
    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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  • A view of Kabul city centre from Bala Burj.

    Simon Norfolk
    2011
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  • Strongly pro-Taliban refugees. For the photograph, they chose to partially cover their faces.

    Simon Norfolk
    2011
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  • ‘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
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  • 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
    View by appointment
  • The peripheries of the city of Kabul, especially to the north and east are endless building sites. Since most of the documentation concerning land title was lost during the war, much of this speculative and illegal construction is concerned more with esta

    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
  • One of the huge logistics compounds at Camp Leatherneck. A modern, technological army needs hundreds of thousands of different kinds of objects in order to keep it working. A $100m warplane can be grounded for the want of a $1 part. Supplying these things

    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
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