Photographic Memory of Kabul City: A Deployed Geographer's Perspective

Kabul, an urban area of nearly five million residents and the capital city of Afghanistan, is wrapped in urban mystique. Many people talk about it, particularly when assembling to conquer or defend it, yet few truly understand its role in the context of Afghanistan’s nationhood, security, economy, and ethnic relations. Kabul City’s importance has also evaded closer attention from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for nearly a decade. This changed in 2011, when the author began publishing his research and alerting ISAF, multiple intelligence agencies, the U.S. State Department, and NGOs about the consequences of Kabul City’s evolution and geographic expansion. This book is a photographic memory of that work, with 167 photographs, maps, and a narrative that unveils a mysterious place in many ways. The photographs are the foundation of the book and the primary purpose of the text is to support and explain them. The author’s message is comprehensive. It explains how (human) geography as a discipline, and a geographer as a professional, can assist military and intelligence efforts in an applied way and put human geography into an operational context. Simultaneously, it also presents the cultural transition of the Afghan capital and how rapidly it changed within the period of a decade, much of which is documented in the record of cultural landscape change.