Making Themselves Feel Right at Home

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At Bagram--a modest airstrip expanded by the Soviets in the 1980s and currently used as the main in-country base for coalition forces--an air of permanence is taking hold. Soviet-era military debris--from MiG fighters to helmets--is being bulldozed into piles. The runway apron has been extended. Offices and a gym are under construction. The Post Exchange supply shop has begun to accept credit cards. There are even efforts to control the ever-present dust, a fine gray chalk that infiltrates everything--seams, food, mouths--and turns to slime at the slightest hint of rain. And while U.S. officers concede that the mission in Afghanistan has no end date, they do like to point to the fact that most of the new construction is in wood, not brick.

--With reporting by Mark Thompson/Washington