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Kabul — This is what nation-building looks like — a dozen young Afghan men standing in camouflage uniforms in a cold drizzle while they wait for the signal to drop to their bellies, peer down a rifle range, and fire their M-16s.

They are a few of the 7,000 Afghan army recruits at the sprawling Kabul Military Training Center, a facility built by the Soviets in the 1970s and bombed out by the United States in 2001. It is now back in commission, feeding men into Afghanistan’s premier national institution, the Afghan National Army.

  

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