Afghanistan. French paratroopers at war.
No week without crossfire for French paratroopers since the tragic ambush of last August. From the forward operating base of Nijrab in the north of Kabul, a small camp like Fort Sagane trapped under the Hindou Koush mountains, the French battalion displayed on the front line has gone back to war of high intensity with a tough well-equiped enemy. Daily patrols and attacks led by French troopers has permited to reconquest the field around Kabul in a few months.
Photos ©Marc Charuel/LightMediation Text ®Frederic Pons
Contact - Thierry Tinacci - LightMediation Photo Agency +33 (0)6 61 80 57 21 thierry[AT]lightmediation.com
On the horsemen’s steps by Joseph Kessel.
In December 2001, in Afghanistan, during the war between the Taliban and the coalition forces, Alain Buu, photo-reporter, covers the Tora-Bora battle for Gamma agency. The terrible battles take place in a magnificent and strangely calm landscape. Alain Buu makes himself a promise: he will come back one day, but this time it will be to reveal the authentic and savage beauty of this unique country, capable of preserving it’s nobleness despite 22 years of war. He knows he will have to immerge himself into the very heart of this land desired by all the conquerors but never completely submitted, and follow Joseph Kessel’s footsteps who also let Afghanistan absorb him in order to render it so alive in his novel “The Horsemen“. The book “On the Horsemen’s steps”, photographs from Alain Buu and text from Joseph Kessel, preface from André Velter, will be published by Gallimard and is coming out on the 26th of October 2007, in France.
Photos © Alain Buu / Orizon / Lightmediation
Among the Afghans, an unstable daily life.
Zimagol is 37 years old; she has four children but no work. This afghan lady has brought up her children all by herself since the death of her husband. The mother has to manage with her one leg. During a bombing, her house was destroyed by the blast from the bombs. She has had her leg amputated above her knee by doctors. The woman has an expressionless face. Her eyes were hit by the bombings.
Zimagol is one of those prostrate people, overcome by war, bent over by their fate. One encounters these kinds of broken lives in Afghanistan often. After twenty five years of war the reconstruction of Afghanistan is collapsing and on the brink of an impossible precipice. Five years after the fall of the Taliban, the Islamic republic of Afghanistan looks like the life of Zimagol: chaotic; an unsettled, unstable daily life; a life from day to day.
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