The following photographs are from my time embedded with Regimental Combat Team 2 in Nimroz and Helmand provinces, Afghanistan. Personal favorites and asides:

Picture 9: As one of his Marines dug for a pressure plate IED, an American patrol leader yelled at the Afghan cop standing behind the potential bomb to back up or get down. The police officer was unmoved by the warning, in true fatalistic Insha™allah ("It is as Allah wills"�) style.

While snapping pictures at an elders™ shura in the Musa Qala district center, I backed up to frame a shot, eventually leaning against what I thought was a pillar. It was the face of an open door, and I tumbled over backwards, to the amusement of Marines and village elders. After standing and taking a bow, I quickly snapped a couple of photos of their mockery. I believe picture 12 is one of those shots. Now you know what that elder is smiling at.

It was uncommon to see the woman without an adult male escort captured in picture 13. The photo was surreptitiously shot from the hip, as it™s frowned upon for a strange foreign man to look at her, much less take pictures.

Picture 16: Some villagers living on the western side of the wadi in the village of Karamanda had ordered their kids to stay away from Marine and Afghan patrols after a recent Taliban bomb killed 3 children gathering around a convoy. Despite the warning, curious kids poked their heads out of a compound to get a look at Marines and "Bandit" the bomb-sniffing black Lab. At first they stared at the dog, until the tongue-wagging pooch drew giggles by making a few loping passes by their doorway.

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