At a facility in Kabul, Afghanistan canine conscripts are training for a life or death mission: learning how to sniff out explosives in a country where blasts from mines and homemade bombs kill and wound hundreds a year.
Around 200 dogs train at a time at the Mine Detection Centre (MDC) in the Afghan capital, starting when they are just pups.
They are put through their paces around obstacle courses and are taught to correctly identify target smells from a conveyor belt of identical canisters during an intense two-year course.
Once qualified, they are a vital part of the team for Afghanistan’s bomb and mine detection squads.
"Dogs are protectors and a good friend for me, and always one step ahead of me in dangerous places," says Zainuddin Quraishi, chief trainer at the MDC.
The facility opened in 1989 and has now trained more than 1,100 dogs, which are now a common site at checkpoints, government buildings and other high-security sites around Kabul.
At least 1,432 people were killed or wounded in Afghanistan by mines or other explosive devices across Afghanistan in 2018, according to figures from Afghanistan's Directorate of Mine Action Coordination.
