The Boys' Republic: Silhouettes at play off the coast of Stone Town, Zanzibar, as the sun sets on summer's longest day.

Straw Rain

Blond Ivory: An albino woman prepares a lunch of maize porridge for her family. With an estimated 150,000 albinos within its borders, Tanzania has the largest population of the group in Africa. The group faces intense persecution, with dozens killed or maimed in recent years for their body parts in witchcraft-fuelled attacks.

Rural Tradesman: A cow herder in traditional dress near Morogoro, in Tanzania's southern highlands.

Urban Craftsman: Textiles in a Dar es Salaam market.

Halal: Shoppers and shopkeepers during a late afternoon lull at a meat market in Zanzibar City, the main city on the island of Zanzibar. Unlike mainland Tanzania, a predominantly Christian stronghold that had been run as a separate colony under British rule, an overwhelming majority (97% - 99%) of Zanzibar residents identify as Muslim.

Tangle / Freed: A sunrise knot at the fishermans' docks along the Dar es Salaam waterfront.

Brochure Azure: The House of Wonders looks out over Stone Town, Zanzibar. Composed of equal parts European, Moorish, Arab, African and Indian DNA and once the largest city in East Africa, Stone Town has been at different points in its history the centre of the African spice trade, slave trade and, today, the country's tourist trade.

X Clones

The Fortress Wall: Dock workers gather in the shade cast by a 12 metre wall of shipping containers on a hot day in Stone Town, Zanzibar.

Small Fry Sunset

Windscape: High winds mould a fresh snowfall into a protective crust over the permafrost. Seen here shortly after noon, the moon is the brightest (and, outside periods of high auroral activity, indeed the only) source of light on Svalbard from mid-November until late January, when twilight again reclaims the middle hours of the day.

Lightscape: Aurora dance over the wooden carcass of an old mining tramway at the southern end of Longyearbyen. With a population of 2000, Longyearbyen is the only sizable pocket of humanity for 1000km in any direction, including north, where it's the last civilian settlement of any sort before the North Pole.

Icescape: A windstorm whips up snow on a distant mountain across the long plateau that separates Spitsbergen's Endalen and Fardalen valleys. Funnelled by barren, treeless valleys, high winds can quickly turn into gales.

Twilicked: Silhouetted in twilight's mid-November remnants, UNIS students Harry and Eli joke atop a glacier.

Slow Motion Fireworks: Aurora light up the sky over Sarkofagen south of Longyearbyen.

The Mountain Interrupts

Peak Spear

Tapped Out: Entrances to the former Mine 4, sealed shut by of decades of multiyear ice, puncture the seams of coal-rich Sarkofagen.

The Amber Compass: Viewed from two valleys and 10km away, the lights of Longyearbyen compete with cloud-reflected moonlight for real estate in the sky.

City Mount, Country Mount: The reflected lights of Longyearbyen end abruptly at the moonlit mouth of Larsdalen, a 3km-long valley winding up to the Lars glacier and the 810m peak of Trollsteinen beyond. Here, as with everywhere outside the perimeter of the settlement's tungsten glow, expeditions must carry a rifle to combat the very real threat of polar bears.

Orange's Diagonal Incursion: Seen here during early November's 1pm twilight, a row of former miner's barracks, six of which now house the island's student population, comprise the main and only drag of Nybyen ("New Town"), 2km from Longyearbyen.

Beers in Barrack 10: Late night drinks in the UNIS dorms. Sequestered away in nearby Nybyen, roughly 10% of Longyearbyen's population at any given time consist of students enrolled at the University Centre Svalbard, a joint venture of four mainland universities. Hailing from science programs in Norway, Russia or further afield, students generally visit Svalbard for one or two semesters of Arctic studies.

Labwork: UNIS marine biology masters student Ida Helene prepares samples of clione limacina, a little-researched pteropod found in Arctic waters, for genetical testing in a campus lab.

Hymns for Winter's Longest Night: Svalbard's amateur mixed choir performs for the community during an arts festival marking the year's last atmospheric twilight and the beginning of the polar night. With the closure of the nearby Russian mining town of Pyramiden in 1998, the church hosting the recital, we're occasionally reminded, is once again the world's northernmost.

Carnivorous Triangle: Although Svalbard's difficult terrain makes it difficult to gather precise data, the archipelago's polar bear population is estimated at 3000-4000 individuals; in any case, higher than its human population. Unlike grizzly and black bears, the fast, agile polar bear shows little mercy with humans, and attacks, though exceedingly rare, are nevertheless the leading cause of death here.

Tungsten Mountain Climbers: Residential buildings, a kindergarten and a sports hall sprawl along Longyearbyen's main avenue. The town's other amenities include a well-stocked supermarket, several restaurants and pubs, a hospital, and a single-screen cinema that can seat 15% of the town's population at one time.

Port of Call: The Norwegian container ship Arctic Star unloads at the Port of Longyearbyen. Apart from its maritime traffic, the island remains tethered to the mainland via a small airport that bounces a 737 back and forth several days a week to Tromsø, two hours to the south. Embattled state-owned SAS, the only airline to serve Svalbard, nearly grounded its fleet in November, a move that prompted the local governor's office to issue a joint statement with the Norwegian Coast Guard to calm locals' fears that they would be cut off.

Trellisaze: Elaborate support structures made of wood shipped from the mainland -- the remnants of an aerial tramway once used to transport coal between Longyearbyen's long-shut mines and its port and power plant -- frame a view of town (centre-left) and Nybyen (right). Today, only Mine 7 in nearby Adventdalen, together with the company town of Svea and limited operations in the fast-evaporating Russian exclave of Barentsburg, offer material evidence to the industry that built today's Svalbard.

Nightlocked: Crosses mark the gravesites of men and women who died in the early years of Longyearbyen. The cemetery has been closed to new burials since the 1930s, when it was found that the permafrost halted the natural decomposition of bodies. One body exhumed in the 1990s was found to possess a still-intact strain of Spanish Flu, the influenza pandemic that killed tens of thousands worldwide in 1918. Nowadays, no births or deaths are "permitted" on Svalbard; the pregnant or terminally ill are sent to the mainland instead.

Supervised: An old headframe watches over Nybyen from the former Mine 2B, for decades Svalbard's highest-yield mine. Perched high on the hillside above town, the mine was a strategic target of Axis shelling during World War II. The last coal fire from the war was finally extinguished in 1962 and the mine was closed six years later.

Icebound: Stalagmites and ice floes tear at the innards of Mine 2B.

Shifting Dimensions, Impossible Angles

Implements: Sundry bits of machinery, their intended use no doubt lost on any who might visit them now, clutter the floors of former offices and store rooms inside the mine.

Faded Beauty: Pornographic pin-ups adorn the walls of what may have once been a change room or supervisor's quarters.

A Mid-Century Miner's Fantasy

Out of Time: A sign displaying the number of days since the mine's last accident hangs above other bits of miscellany in an old office. Note the fluorescent light, one of three maintained in the mine and charged with a power lead run up from Longyearbyen to create...

...The Mine 2B Santa: Perched 200m above Longyearbyen and viewable from everywhere in the valley, the fairylit remnants of Mine 2B sub for Santa's workshop during the month of December. At the mountain's base, a lantern letterbox invites children and adults to leave correspondence for the hillside Santa.

Towing the Line: Svalbard reindeer, a boxy subspecies endemic to the archipelago, graze on months-dead grasses. Since the hardy Scandinavian icon has no natural predator here -- they're capable of outrunning a polar bear in spite of their shorter-than-usual legs -- the Svalbard reindeer is as tame as cattle.

Ice Sarcophagus: Aided by crampons and an ice axe, UNIS student Tobias Vonnahm prepares to abseil into the inky black depths of a glacier cave underneath Lars glacier. During summer, hidden channels of underground rivers allow water to drain from glaciers at their bases; frozen in winter, these honeycombed cave networks often extend for hundreds of metres in waterslide-like configurations.

Resting Mountain, Cloud Blanket

Skyplay: Its power neutered by the full moon, slivers of Aurora dance in Adventdalen.

Peek-a-Moon: As if to compensate for the loss of sunlight, from mid-November the moon here never sets, instead tracing a funnel around the sky at a bearing that rises steadily with the days.

Trail of the Arctic Leprechaun: An auroral rainbow merges with Longyearbyen's omnipresent haze of light pollution. At 78° N, Svalbard falls to the north of the most auroral displays, which tend to cluster on a band around 66° N, and activity like this, in the northern half of the sky, is rare here.

The Diagonal's Human-Shaped Tumour: A silhouette looks out over the buildings of an island in the Tiber River.

Right of Way

Speed of Traffic

Christmas Races the Colosseum to the Sky: Duelling icons of millennia-old events separated by ten metres and eighty years. If Christ had lived out a 21st century lifespan, he may have been alive to attend the Colosseum's inaugural games.

Ornamental

Column Censorship

The Vatican, Sunny Side Up

The Vatican, Shady Side Out

Of Vessels and Gods

The Gospel of Geography: Lost tourists near the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome's Old City.

M Marks the Spot: Two women watch the departures board for trains to the provinces at Termini Station.

Trinket Tykes: A Russian family browses the wares from one of dozens of carts selling identical souvenirs to brisk business along the main corridors of Rome's Old City. The 3rd most-visited city in Europe, to walk Rome is to be assaulted by a panoply of languages and accents -- geographic distances be damned.

Your First Left Past the Horse

Rome Ancient

Rome Modern

18 Frame Timepieces: Different ways of passing time on the platform at Termini Station.

Tip the Season: Buskers unleash smooth jazz Christmas carols on unsuspecting passer-bys in Rome's Old City.

A Story of Hats and Heads

See the Holy See: A hop-on, hop-off tour bus enters a roundabout opposite St. Peter's Square en route to the Vatican.

Over and Out

RGB Summoner: Fireworks and raucous applause herald the arrival of each new school on the avenue.

Submitting To the Arrows' Will: An estimated five million people participated in the five-day Rio extravaganza, including a capacity crowd of 72,000 folded into the 800m parade route. Officially the "Sambódromo" and known among locals as "Sapucaí", the parade route was redesigned last year by centenarian architect Oscar Niemeyer, best known for his mid-century designs for the United Nations headquarters and the planned city of Brasilia.

Colourstruck.

Catalogue Smile.

Emblem Takedown.

Occupational Hazards.

Face for a Smile.

Witness on the Stand: High up on a float, a destaque watches in horror as a fellow dancer stumbles on a level below her.

Pound of Cotton, Almond of Flesh.

Sunflowers.

The Face in the Flock: Air thick with the smoke of her stalled float's sputtering engine, a headdress-garbed performer watches maintenance crews battle her school's diminishing chances.

Feather Fortress.

Ill-Timed Repairs: Crews work to repair a collapsed, power-less float as its school advances onto the avenue ahead of it. The float was eventually patched up and thrust into the parade six spots late, as the school's penultimate float. Parading floats out of order is sometimes worse than leaving them out entirely: each school tells a story through its costumes, sets and choreography, and to jumble the pieces risks confusion (and lost points).

Poodle Poms.

An Outspoken Minority: Supporters of Estação Primeira de Mangueira, popularly known as Mangueira, fly their school's colours from the nosebleeds of Sector 1.

Mask for the Invisible.

Her Polka Face.

Clay Accordions: Performers on Unidos da Tijuca's "abre-alas", or the first float of its parade, spring to life in time with the beginning of their song. Unidos da Tijuca would later be crowned the winner of the 2012 Carnival, just the third time the school has won the coveted title in its 82-year history.

Starcast Rafters.

Warbird.

Deflated Dreams: An abandoned float lays exposed to the elements the night after its school's parade outside Cidade do Samba, the "Samba City" of warehouses and rehearsal spaces where each school spends the twelve months before Carnival preparing in secrecy.

Veiled Suspicion: A woman walks through a Kabul alleyway laid to waste during the country's last civil war. Though Afghans are quick to denounce the oft-cited (and impossibly exaggerated) figure of 90%, much of Kabul's infrastructure was destroyed in the years following Soviet withdrawal as extremist factions on both sides jostled for control of the country's supply routes. Afghanistan has weathered alternating bust-bust cycles of civil war and international engagement since its last monarch, King Zahir, was deposed in a 1973 coup.

Single-Minded: More fascinated by a piece of string than the strip of meat it hangs from, a cat plays in a alleyfront sundry shop.

One (Is The Loneliest Number)

Textile Crossing: Cotton merchants socialise under a poster of the late opposition leader and 1980s Mujahideen hero Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Thousand Year Old Skyscraper: Tenements crawl up a mountainside in Shahr-e-Kohna, Kabul. At 1800m above sea level, Kabul is among the highest major cities in the world.

Load-Bearing

A Warren of Mud and Stone: Informal commerce and commuters converge in a knotted, multi-level maze of alleyways in Chindawol, Kabul, many of which date back over 2000 years.

Staple on the Stake: A baker awaits customers at a naan stall in Chindawol, Kabul.

Multipurpose: An Afghan National Police officer looks out over the bombed-out remains of the Soviet-era Palace of Science and Culture in Kart-e-Char, Kabul. Boasting a library, exhibition space, classrooms and an outdoor cinema playing an unending loop of Soviet propaganda films, the palace was once an emblem of the grandiose new ideas sweeping through Afghanistan in the 1980s. After the Soviet withdrew, it became a key site in the battle for Kabul as opposition groups weathered rocket attacks inside its heavily fortified walls.

Illyich Defaced: A mangled portrait of Vladimir Lenin greets squatters and trespassers inside the Palace of Science and Culture.

Rusted Ambitions I: Soviet tanks lie rusting in the deserts northwest of Kabul.

Rusted Ambitions II: Although the majority of Soviet tanks lost in Afghanistan were lost in battle, others were captured by the Afghan Mujahideen and are still in service decades later.

Future-Facing: Kabul University undergraduate students, most of whom were born in the chaotic half-decade between Soviet withdrawal and the beginning of Taliban rule, congregate on the plaza outside the Faculty of Social Sciences. Built with Pakistani seed money and propped up by a South African telecommunications giant, the faculty and the university at large are designed to prepare students for an increasingly globalised future, with exchange programs in place and teachers often sourced from outside Afghanistan.

Open Door, White Window: A peek inside Kabul University.

Vaccine: A UNICEF volunteer administers an oral polio vaccine to a child in Kandahar City. Backed with funds from CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) and two departments of the United Nations, polio eradication has been the most-discussed of Canada's three signature projects in the country. Afghanistan is one of just four countries in the world where the disease is still endemic.

Combat Hospital: A specialist prepares the ER of the Role 3 trauma hospital in Kandahar for an incoming medevac of Afghan civilians wounded by an IED blast.

Sunrise Clique

At Play in the Shadow of Ghosts: Afghan boys play football under the hulking ruins of Darulaman Palace, sixteen kilometres southwest of Kabul. Built in the 1920s as the show-stopping centrepiece for a new capital city to be connected to Kabul by tramways, for a half-century the palace was only sporadically occupied before war gutted it. The planned city, meanwhile, was never built.

Crescentlit: A waxing crescent moon rises alongside the "moon of Kabul", an ISAF surveillance airship that took to the skies in summer 2011. Dubbed the Blue Devil, the dirigible is equipped with cameras and listening devices to monitor conversations and detect insurgent threats. The airship is longer than a football field and seven times the size of the Goodyear Blimp, making it the largest airship produced since, yes, World War II.

Household Purchasing Decisions

Tandoor Fruit: Disc by disc, a vendor clears out the night's stock of Obi Non, an Uzbek-style naan bread popular in Kabul.

Grill Fruit: Meat, cooked and uncooked, wait for hungry passerbys during a slow night at a kebab stand opposite Pārk Shāre Naw, Kabul.

Elemental: A kebab vendor fans hot coals to cook a line of cubed-beef skewers.

Men and their Hairstyles

Slow Winch: Already stripped of its rotors and weapons, the helicopter is guided into the belly of the Antonov. The An-124 is the world's largest serially-manufactured cargo plane.

Hotel Womb on Kandahar Airfield.

Black Flag.

Ascending: Final checks before the Antonov departs for Ontario via Kuwait. The Canadians have found an eager buyer for the Chinook in the US Army, who will inherit it after maintenance is performed in Ottawa.

Fragile: The Ukrainian flight crew secures an assortment of Canadian soldiers' personal belongings to the fuselage.

Humvee Dust Up: An ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) humvee kicks up a cloud of dust against a row of Canadian sea containers awaiting passage from Kandahar Airfield (KAF) to the sea ports of the Indian Ocean and back to Canada beyond. In closing out Kandahar, the Canadian Forces estimate some 1800 containers of military hardware and support equipment were shipped through Pakistan between August and December 2011.

Chemical Cleanse: The soil remediation program sets Canada's combat close-out apart from other nations' withdrawals. In an effort to curb environmental damage to its former Forward Operating Bases throughout Kandahar province, soil from around the bases is shipped to a remediation plot at KAF and treated with a chemical compound to flush out heavy metals and harmful toxins.

Razor Window: A Canadian Forces soldier tears down a maintenance shed at one of the 19 Canadian sites on Kandahar Airfield being closed or transferred to other coalition forces. A total of 1300 Canadian soldiers were deployed to the MTTF on six-to-nine month rotations, the last of which end this week.

A Soon-To-Be Former Site: Canadian soldiers carry away metal trusses earmarked for donation to the Afghan National Security Forces.

Can on the Move: A Canadian sea container loaded with tarpaulins is carted off to the Humanitarian Assistance Yard. Canadian flag-bedecked sea containers are a familiar sight on the roads from KAF into Kandahar City, with several dozen containers having undergone CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency)-sponsored conversions into residences for Afghan civilians.

Intersection.

Wave/Weigh: To save taxpayers from the shipping burden, buyers are sought among the other coalition nations for every piece of the Canadian war machine. All items remaining must be shipped back to Canada, with high priority and protected technologies flown home via a staging area in Kuwait and less important items driven overland in convoys through Pakistan to ports on the Indian Ocean. Items deemed too complicated to ship home are donated to the Afghan National Security Forces. The tank pictured here was sold to the United States.

Always Fresh / The Canadian Workplace.

The Donut Run Juggle: The 30,000 deployed Canadian soldiers served at Afghanistan's only Tim Hortons, while impressive, pale next to the 2.5 million customers the chain estimates have visited it from the 47 ISAF contributor nations, with the donut shop becoming such a favourite on KAF that the Americans, who take control of Canada House in December, plan to replace it with a Dunkin' Donuts. The location was originally scheduled to close with the departure of combat troops in July but a fierce outcry from the incoming MTTF team prompted head office to keep it open until Christmas 2011.

Sugar Envy: Since opening its doors on Canada Day in 2006, the KAF Tim Hortons has served 4,000,000 cups of coffee and 3,000,000 donuts. More than 300 sea containers of Tim Hortons products were shipped over five years from Kingston, ON.

Delivery Day: Canadian Forces service members CAPT Magill, SGT Wade and MAJ Meszaros walk back to their residences with mail and packages sent from overseas. The USPS and Canada Post, among others, maintain branches at KAF.

Off-Hours Activity: "Fan mail" sent to Canadian Forces members is made available at Canada House to read or reply to during off hours.

Unsolicited Scripture.

Slates, Former Lives: Outside the former Canadian HQ on KAF, a wood-and-granite cenotaph carries the names of every Canadian and international soldier killed on the Canadian combat mission. The monument will be repatriated to Ottawa after withdrawal.

The Rag Doll's Surrounds.

Red Box Comforts: Prior to shipping from Afghanistan, every item -- however insignificant -- is given a unique barcode with information about its history, destination and, if applicable, buyer. The British have been watching the Canadians closely in preparation for their own withdrawal from Afghanistan next year.

Idle Players.

Husky Handover: With just a tenth of the military vehicles Canada used in Kandahar being redirected to Operation Attention in Kabul, buyers are being sought for the remainder. Here, Canadian (tan uniform) and Australian (green uniform) soldiers field test a Husky mine detection vehicle being transferred to the Australians for use in Uruzgan province.

Rio bisected: Halves of affluence, poverty seen at sunset.

To Arms: A crudely drawn portrait of Osama bin Laden watches over boys at play in the sprawling Cidade de Deus (City of God) favela near Rio de Janeiro.

Bebidas: Best known for his role as gang leader Li'l Ze in the 2002 film City of God, actor Leandro Firmino grew up in the titular favela and still lives there today.

Shadow City: In a bitterly ironic twist for the city's many penthouse owners, Rio's best views are indisputably found in the numerous favelas that crawl up the city's mountains. Although definitions are blurry, 513 different favelas are officially listed within Rio de Janeiro city limits.

Samba de Roda: Dancers at the Unidos da Tijuca samba school rehearse their parts in February's Carnival during Saturday's midnight rehearsal. Resplendent in million dollar floats and thousands-strong casts, thirty-one samba schools compete for top honours in the parade. Unidos da Tijuca has won twice: in 1936 and 2010.

Embrace I.

Embrace II: Adopted as an infant by a white family, 10-year-old Joaquim Patana is very much the face of a new Brazilian middle-class: post-racial, multilingual and upwardly aspirant. Here, he takes a break from configuring his new Facebook account to kiss his sister Valentina, also adopted.

Jungle Gym Bleachers: Local boys watch blue and green square off during a three-team football "championship" organised by Joaquim's parents.

Corner Kick.

Snack Break: Joaquim watches from the sidelines as green and orange compete for supremacy. If the boys notice they're playing in a tennis pitch, they don't show it.

Skyscraping.

Gold: Million-selling records and memorabilia adorn a bathroom in the home of two-time Grammy Award-winning Brazilian recording artist Gilberto Gil.

Silver: Street performers prepare for their routine in a square in central Rio de Janeiro.

Spot Check.

Mixed Messages: Plush toys bearing the messages "You Are Special" and "I Love You" contrast scenes of poverty in the Vidigal favela in Rio De Janeiro's Zona Sul.

Essentials.

Guardian: A Slovak soldier watches a pre-game warm-up from the Boardwalk, an overnight mall of timber and shipping containers that circles the hockey rink. With the KHL season concluding in October and the final Canadian troops pulling out of Kandahar not long after that, Slovakia is set to assume control of the league for 2012.

The Nosebleeds: A Canadian soldier watches the Kandahar Storm square off in their last-ever playoff game against a squadron of American engineers. Matches between Canadians and teams of other nationalities are rare, even after the combat withdrawal; in the 24-team KHL, more than half of all teams are still Canadian.

Starting Lineup: Storm players watch as their team is put on the defensive. As with everywhere else on the airfield, the rink is vulnerable to Taliban attacks, with games routinely interrupted by a telltale siren warning of incoming rockets. Even between attacks, low-flying jet fighters and helicopter medevacs are common hazards for any easily-distracted player.

Right Wing Rush: The Storm take the offensive.

Line Change: A Storm player watches from the bench during a stoppage in play.

Fighting Words: Down by six goals, the Storm head coach calls a time out to rally his team back together.

Tally: The rink scorekeeper records another goal for the Americans. The Storm would lose 13-4 in one of the final games ever contested by Canadians in Kandahar, ending their five years atop the league.

Sportsmanship: Members of the opposing teams shake hands after the final whistle.

Pre-Game Stretches: Taking a cue from CBC's Hockey Night in Canada broadcasts, the Kandahar rink regularly hosts double-headers of Canadian teams. Here, members of the Angry Beavers, a team named after the brewpub in Belleville, Ontario that sponsors them, prepare to play in the second of the night's two games.

Stickwork.

Desert Formations: Divided into battle-ready battalions called kandaks, one of which is pictured here, an estimated 10,000 soldiers are enrolled in the KMTC's eight-week Basic Warrior Training program at any given time. Located on 81 km² of desert northeast of Kabul, the KMTC layout mimics the harsh, unforgiving conditions that soldiers can be expected to endure. Like many of the major Afghan bases, it was founded with Soviet muscle in the 1980s and laid to waste during civil war in the 1990s.

Hostile Compound: Three weeks into their eight week training program, a group of intermediate-level recruits storm a compound during a house-clearing drill.

Red-Tipped: ANA recruits take four corners for a firing exercise in a room riddled with the empty shells of past drills.

Shooting Skyward: Two trainers supervise a sentry on the roof of the house.

Show and Tell: An early beneficiary of ISAF's new policy of "training the trainers", an Afghan trainer demonstrates proper technique for holding a rifle. An estimated one-third of all active ANA soldiers were originally trained at the KMTC.

Sights and Scopes: A designated sentry keeps watch over the main entrance to the house.

Scalene: A triangle of M16A2 rifles open fire on an imaginary target.

Ammo Dump: An ANA recruit drops his empty cartridge on a stack to be reloaded with new shells after completing the house-clearing drill.

Decibel Wise: Two weeks into his training at the KMTC, a new ANA recruit waits for an open berth on the firing range.

Paper from Forty Paces: Stray bullets kick up plumes of desert soil at a firing range.

Ammo Strands: A recruit reloads cartridges as an incoming group takes possession of the firing range.

Results: Cartridges empty, two recruits take down their target sheets for assessment.

Zeroing Target: To pass the firearms test and be issued an M16 of his own, a recruit must hit the sheet of paper 38 times out of 50. This particular recruit's aim was uncommonly good.

Flawed Symmetry: Fresh target sheets in place, four recruits await marching orders on the firing range.

Spout: Recruits receive water top-ups as the firing range breaks for lunch.

Rations: In contrast to the lavish coalition bases that fly in most of their ingredients and dishes from abroad, an average lunch on an ANA base includes rice, chicken, a chickpea or bean curry, fruit, and rice.

A Warzone Picnic: ANA recruits break for lunch under the midday desert sun.