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The future home of the Afghan Cash and Carry Superstore on the road between the foreign embassies and Kabul airport.

Simon Norfolk

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

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

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

A view of Kabul city centre from Bala Burj.

Simon Norfolk

A de-mining team from the Mine Detection Centre in Kabul with a member of the German Police who is mentoring them.

Simon Norfolk

The Political Staff of the British Embassy.

Simon Norfolk

The armoury of the British Embassy. The Embassy has a guard force of five hundred.

Simon Norfolk

The tennis court of the British Embassy.

Simon Norfolk

A storage yard at Kandahar Air Field looking out beyond the wire, back into ‘Afghanistan’.

Simon Norfolk

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

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