Afghanistan’s stunning scenery and cultural richness is intertwined with the stark, cold reality of ongoing conflict that has ravaged the country for years in Giammarco Amici’s stunning book, Afghanistan: A Country at War with Itself. 

Giammarco Amici was working as part of a multinational team of military personnel acting as mentors for the new Afghan National Army (A.N.A.).  The goal was to teach them how to become organized and efficient, how to work effectively and, most importantly, how to gain visibility with local populations. 

To achieve these goals, the Coalition Forces were to work with the A.N.A. distributing humanitarian aid to villages. But that was easier said than done in a land where every local vehicle is a potential threat, where any village may sell off the aid they receive for weapons, where the Taliban may hide among the hungry.   

In the villages, Amici found people struggling to scratch out a life for themselves in the unsettled dust of war. From the biting cold of winter through the scorching heat of summer, Amici’s saga lays bare the ultimate conundrum of Afghanistan: how is it possible to live today in these conditions?

About the Author

Giammarco Amici currently lives in Florence, Italy.  He is working on photo books of Sarajevo and the Dachau Concentration Camp.