¹⁄35

Which way to Tora Bora?

I build lots of vignettes and dioramas till now but my figures were always straight from the box with some little changes; cutting and reshaping arms and legs, adding details with plasticard, filler putty, milliput and masking tape or replacing heads with new ones. I always had a desire to make fully converted figures and build a vignette with these non-market figures.

Thinking operations against Taliban in Afghanistan is today's subject and Northern Alliance Warriors is a good choice to convert, I decided to build a vignette showing Afghan Warriors in their local clothing.

The first step was to have the enough knowledge about the clothing and equipment of these warriors and U.S. Spec Ops in Afghanistan. It was not so hard to gather knowledge because the subject was daily. I found lots of photos, websites and documentation that could help. Here, I have to thank to Armorama and Mil-Mod members for their great help in the message boards....and an Italian journalist's webpage -Postcards from Hell (http://www.ciriello.com) is an excellent photo resource for modelers with lots of wonderful photos for Somalia, Chechnya, Lebanon, Kosovo and Afghanistan. The Afghans wear long cotton shirts, which hangs outside of their loose cotton trousers. Over the shirt, they wear vests cardigans and padded or quilted jackets. On their heads,  they have Turbans from a long length of cotton or flat topped Karakul hats. The colors of clothing are usually different tones of gray, black, white, khaki and olive drab. They carry Russian made weapons (RPK heavy machine gun,AK-74 versions) and equipment. U.S. Spec Ops in Afghanistan wear the standard 3 color Desert BDUs. Over the BDUs, they wear protective or assault vests with lots of pouches. They have a large variety of weapons but mostly CAR-15 with scopes, laser pointers or silencers.