Pfc Mack Thornton, machine gunner, age 22, from Sturgis Kentucky. Thorton is a US Marine with 3/2 Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marines. (Photo: Teru Kuwayama)

Viewed this blog entry on Teru Kumayana’s work in Afghanistan over 5 1/2 months. An award-winning photojournalist, Kumayana spent 10 years taking photos in Afghanistan for Newsweek and NGOs, and “five years trying to get out.” Realizing that “his photos didn’t end the war,” he went looking for “a different approach”. He was invited by a Marine officer whom he’d met 6 years before in Eastern Afghanistan to join his Batallion of over 1000 marines for a tour in Helmand, Southern Afghanistan. To his suprise, the officer obtained permission from the military and he obtained funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and was also named a TED Fellow.

One of the TED fellows encouraged him to publish a WordPress website on the project, aimed at providing information to families of the 1,000 soldiers in batallion. Kumayana and team created Basetrack, a kind of dashboard for families of marines, and communicated with those families via the Basetrack Facebook Page. The website, the journalist team itself, and the facebook page became a source of sustenance for families, and ultimately got them kicked out of Afghanistan by the U.S. Military 5 1/2 months into the tour.

You can see more of the photos in Foreign Policy online.