All That Remains | Assignment Afghanistan

All That Remains

October 2011

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Sherifullah, 11, and Abdel Basit, 8, stand on one of the upper floors of the Russian Palace of Culture, which was heavily shelled during the mujahidin civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal. Until recently, the bombed out buildings have sheltered homeless Afghans and heroin addicts.

Men gamble on a Karate match in Shar-e-Now Park in downtown Kabul. Under the Taliban government, activities involving gambling and most forms of play were strictly forbidden, including favorite pastimes like bird and dog fighting.

Assad Parvanta, 51, sits in the staircase of his family's sole remaining property in Kabul. Out of concern for his security, Assad recently stopped wearing western clothing during his trips to Kabul.

Young men play football before school on a hill overlooking Kabul, beside an ancient mudbrick fortress and the rusting hulk of a Soviet armored personnel carrier.

Wahid, 18, stands in front of the bullet-pocked theater screen in the Russian Palace of Culture in Kart-e-Char, Kabul. A mural depicts a mujahid giving lessons to Afghan boys.

Children play atop Bibi Mahru Hill in central Kabul, next to an olympic swimming pool and platform diving boards constructed by the Soviets. Local lore has it that the Taliban used to force suspected homosexuals to jump from the highest platform; if they lived, they were deemed innocent, if they died, it was trial, sentencing, and punishment in one fatal plunge.

Afghan men and women herd a flock of hundreds of goats through the streets of downtown Kabul, past concrete blast walls protecting the Ministry of Finance.

A young boy rides on a donkey cart at dawn, collecting scraps of metal and plastic with his older brother. While the numbers of children enrolled in school has increased since the fall of the Taliban, many children must work out of economic necessity.

Passenger cars emerge from the Salang Tunnel, a vital link between northern and southern Afghanistan, completed with the assistance of Soviet engineers in 1964. At over 11,000 feet in the Hindu Kush mountain range, the Salang was once the highest tunnel in the world. A bitterly contested conduit for Soviet supply convoys during the Soviet-Afghan war, the Salang now serves as a supply pipeline for NATO forces.

A Soviet grain elevator and bread factory known to Kabulis as the "Silo," seen from a defunct watchtower. The Silo, which once produced seventy tons of bread per day, served as a roost for snipers during the mujahedin civil war of the early nineties.

A student walks past the cafeteria at the Kabul Polytechnic University in Karte Mamourin. The USSR facilitated the construction of the institute in 1963 to provide high-level training for Afghan engineering students. The Polytechnic was heavily damaged during the Afghan civil war, but re-opened in 2003. Reconstruction efforts are underway, and the Polytechnic is once again a top destination for Afghan students.

An Afghan de-miner painstakingly searches for landmines and unexploded ordnance in a new neighborhood next to Dar Ul Aman Palace. More than twenty years after the Soviet withdrawal, there are still over 100 minefields in the greater Kabul area, which was the most heavily mined region during the Soviet occupation and the ensuing civil war. Over 400 Afghans—mostly children—are still wounded each year by landmines and explosive remnants of war. De-mining programs employ 14,000 Afghans and cost the international community $100 million annually.

Hundreds of Pashtun families from war-torn southern provinces like Helmand make their homes in a temporary camp on Kabul's western outskirts, the latest wave in Afghanistan's long history of internal displacement. Multiple generations share each rudimentary mud and plastic hut, lacking running water, electricity, and sanitation facilities.

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