You might like Left Right 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 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 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 Young women in the indoor skatepark of the NGO ‘Skateistan’, set up by American volunteers to help young Afghans improve their skateboarding and indoor rock-climbing skills. Simon Norfolk 2011 Strongly pro-Taliban refugees. For the photograph, they chose to partially cover their faces. Simon Norfolk 2011 Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador Sir William Charters Patey KCMG, his private secretary and his Nepalese mercenary security guards. Simon Norfolk 2011 Afghan police trainees being taken to the firing ranges by US Marines, Camp Leatherneck, Helmand. Simon Norfolk 2011 Security lights and communications antennae at 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 The districts of Wazir Akhbar Khan and Sherpur, home to all the NGOs and contractors, occupy the site of the former British fortress from the Second Anglo-Afghan War, ‘the Cantonment’. Glitzy, kitschy ‘poppy-palaces’, flung upon a hectic property boom aft Simon Norfolk 2011 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