Fixing lives and limbs through decades of war in Afghanistan
Al Jazeera
For more than 30 years, an orthopaedic centre has been a source of hope for Afghans caught in conflict.
After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan – a campaign that lasted 20 years and took the greatest toll on Afghan civilians. Photojournalist Ricardo Garcia Vilanova covered Afghanistan between 2007 and 2011. He writes about photographing those trying to help amidst the conflict.
The first memory I have of Afghanistan is arriving in the capital Kabul before dawn on a flight via Frankfurt. It was 2007 and I had been working for several years in Haiti before I decided to go to Afghanistan as a freelancer, without any real assignment. Once in the country, I was lucky to get work with American publications, which allowed me to continue travelling back and forth.
That first day, I left the terminal in darkness, watching as several soldiers stood guard on the periphery of the airport between barbed wire fences and concrete blast walls set up to protect the airport from car bombs. Unlike other airports, there were no taxis or any alternative means of transportation. It seemed I had no option but to sleep there until the next morning. But then a fellow passenger from my flight, an NGO worker, offered me a lift to my guesthouse in a convoy of two armoured cars.
