INSTAPUNDIT HAS A NEW AFGHANISTAN PHOTO CORRESPONDENT, Major Robert Macaraeg, who conveniently enough rotated in just as Major John Tammes rotated out. Here’s a report from Kandahar:

Here are some images from the local bazaar that is held at Kandahar Air Field (KAF). Not many soldiers are allowed off KAF to go into the city of Kandahar to go shopping, due to a few obvious and not so obvious reasons. The obvious is for safety and the not so obvious is that the US Army does not want to flood the local economy with dollars and ruin it with inflation.

All the vendors are vetted and searched for prohibited items. The bazaar site is next to the air field and then it is commerce at its best.

I asked a vendor about sales tax and he said is what that? Then I explained the concept of paying taxes and he said only in America.

The little boy at the stand was a pretty good salesman and I picked up some trinkets from him.

These gentlemen are meeting a great need of soldiers here. They sell videos to the military and they cater to their taste. The videos are cheap, but the quality is sometimes lacking. One idea that Hollywood should take from these guys is to sell multiple movies (the average is six) on one disk based on a single theme. It would be a good way to move their back catalog.

I think that putting so many movies on one disk is why the quality is lacking. I’m sure the MPAA wouldn’t approve of these efforts, either . . . .

But thanks, Major. I hope we’ll see many more photos from this under-covered region.