Taliban cavalry!

Well, not actual cavalry, and not even all Taliban at that! 

These are from Empress Miniatures.  The two on the left are built as intended (well, mostly, I think I mixed the passengers up, should have been two beardies and two masked blokes sharing each bike). The two on the right have been civilianized.  I had to rather messily chop off the AK rifles that were cast on to these figures, and then cover up my hatchet job as best I could with paint.

Two civilian motorbikes.  I modelled some simple saddlebags for one of the bikes.  Afghans will modify or personalize pretty much anything, so this was my effort to pick up this habit.  I resisted the temptation to add a Mickey Mouse blanket. 

And two Taliban motorbikes!

My next challenge is to find one of these in 28mm!

Afghan bakery and ANP sangar (pic heavy)

In a previous post (see here) I mentioned that I made a few shops.  Unfortunately, the two shops looked pretty dull, more like they had been abandoned than actual going concerns.  I have started to address that with my first attempt at some detailed scenery.  This shop is a bakery, providing the famous Afghan bread, naan-e-afghani for the local populace.  Delicious stuff, and in real life tasty as anything (but eat fresh, it goes stale quickly).  I'd stay away from the naan on this table, looks like it would be about as tasty as clay.

I even made furniture.  What has come over me?

My bigger project, now nearly complete, is a sangar for the ANP.  This one is supposed to represent a sangar made from Hesco bastions, which are a kind of metal gabion basket lined with kevlar, which can be readily filled with locally sourced rocks or soil.  And a sangar is a fortified outpost (read the wikipedia article if you want to learn more).  

I looked up a few articles on line before starting this project.  This one was particularly helpful. Being me, I didn't follow the article exactly so mine is slightly different. I'm the same in the kitchen:  the recipe is the start point, more a guideline than a strict rule.

I started with a plywood based, and a selection of small wooden cubes from the dollar store.

Using white glue, I built up the shape I wanted, with a volunteer from the ANBP to address concerns about functionality.

I used modelling clay to make a layer of sandbags for the sangar roof.

I left the clay sandbags to dry overnight, and of course the material shrank a bit.  So I added another layer the next day.

I wrapped the sangar in brown paper and then with drywall mesh to replicate the Hesco bastions/gabions.  What is the correct term here? Hesco seems to call them bastions but the sure look like gabions to me.

The exposed surfaces (tops) then got covered with a mix of sand, model railway ballast and white glue, and left to dry.

I then added paint and there you go.  I need to finish up the Afghan flag (it needs the national emblem to be added in white in the centre of the flag.  I doubt I can paint it properly so I may cheat and print it out instead.

The motor pool

The Afghan Border Police have now got themselves some transport and support rolled into one!  After a small (minuscule) amount of research, I found that the ABP have been given M1114 Humvees (aka HMMWV or High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicles), which I first discovered in the ancient days of the 1980s and my attempts to get friends to play Twilight:2000. I looked around the interwebs to find a suitable model, and chose this lovely example from Company B (who also provided the elephant that can be seen in my previous post).  Strictly speaking, the ABP have been issued M1151 armoured hummers, but I doubt anyone I game with will know the difference. I sure as hell don't!

I'm very happy with this hummer.  I initially painted it in a plain sand colour, which pretty much matched the standard US issue paint job as seen here.  And then I did more research and found out to my dismay that the ABP chose to paint their vehicles in their own chocolate chip camo pattern like this  (photos lifted from http://g503.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=180539):

And so here is the result!  The 'chocolate chips' are too big, and I still haven't figured out a good way to paint windows but overall I'm pleased with the result.

I also tried out some weathering on my red Bedford jingle truck and added a bit of decoration to my blue Opel Blitz. You wouldn't find either truck on the road in modern Afghanistan, but WWII trucks are readily available in 1/56 while more modern trucks are not, so I'm content with the compromise.

One more 40' shipping container to help fill out the village.

And a few shots of the current motor pool.  The Range Rover in the front is another Cars model, barely modified.  All I did was put some black paint over the eyes on the windscreen and a smear of putty over the mouth on the front bumper.