Tent City for U.S. Troops in Afghanistan and Iraq

In Afghanistan and Iraq, many U.S. troops live in tents. Tents are usually equipped with bunk beds or standard Army cots and sleep up to 40 per tent. Wall or footlockers are provided.

After the President announced that he will send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, the Military needed somewhere to house them all. They started building additional housing facilities, mostly in southern Afghanistan for new arrivals. They will mostly live in tents with portable toilets.

The Afghanistan countryside sports brilliantly blue skies with weather ranging from summer sand storms and 120-degree temperatures, to freezing, harsh temperatures in winter. The tents are usually heated and air conditioned as weather requires. The tents can get extremely hot inside during the sweltering summer heat.

There is no privacy for troops housed in tents and many use iPods to block out the noise from inside and outside the tents, like the roar of F-16 fighter jets if they are at a major hub airfield like Kandahar.

Tents are a soft-walled shelters made from various fabrics and textiles. The outside of the tent is stacked with sandbags for protection and insulation.

Even the MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) and gym are housed in tents at many bases.
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