Police dog handlers wait outside the Loftus Road stadium after FA Cup Fourth Round between Queens Park Rangers and Chelsea on January 28, 2012 in London, England. Security has been stepped up after QPR player Anton Ferdinand recieved a package containing a bullet. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Groundhog handler Ron Ploucha holds Punxsutawney Phil after he saw his shadow predicting 6 more weeks of winter during the 126th annual Groundhog Day festivities on February 2, 2012 in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

Retired 90 year old Frank Foss of St. Petersburg, Florida, with his home made banjo, made from a frying pan, a length of wood and some strings. (Photo by Fox Photos/Getty Images). 2nd July 1972

Is it the surface of the Mars or Venus or an undiscovered planet? Not at all. These pictures aren’t what you think they are. Christopher Jonassen, a Norwegian photographer shot these beautiful and otherworldly series called ‘Devour of frying pan bottoms’, which are visually similar to craters and scars on a planet’s surface. In his series Jonassen refers to a quote of Jean-Paul Satre who said: ‘To eat is to appropriate destruction’ and the meaning of the word ‘devour’, which stands for eating up greedily, destroying, consuming, and wasting.

Boys pan for gold on a riverside at Iga Barriere, 25 km (15 miles) from Bunia, in the resource-rich Ituri region of eastern Congo February 16, 2009. Ituri is one of many areas of the country to have experienced bitter ethnic conflict between rival tribes in recent years. Massacres have left tens of thousands dead. It is this fighting that led U.S. authorities to take the unprecedented step of naming Congo in section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation act, which says U.S.-listed companies that source gold, tungsten, tantalum and tin from Congo or its neighbours must assure the U.S. stock exchange regulator that their business is not helping fund conflict. (Photo by Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters)

Ucil, a trained monkey, takes part in a street performance on June 1, 2011 in Jakarta, Indonesia. The street performances usually involve the monkeys wearing masks, such as dolls' heads or attire to mimic humans, with the monkeys trained to act out human activities such as shopping, riding bicycles or other simulations of human behaviour. Poverty drives the handlers to exploit the monkeys in the hope of earning small change, but the effect and cruelty to the monkeys is a cause that charities such as the Jakarta Animal Aid Network are increasingly taking up. (Photo by Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images)

Throughout the course of the long war in Afghanistan, Coalition troops have relied on thousands of military working dogs to help keep them safe, and make their jobs easier. The dogs are trained to detect explosives, to find illegal drugs, to search for missing comrades, or target enemy combatants. Not only are they active on the front lines, but behind the lines they serve as therapy dogs, service dogs, and loyal companions. They also share the same risks as the ground troops, suffering injuries and sometimes death on the battlefields. Gathered here are images of these dogs and their handlers in Afghanistan and back home, from over the past several years, part of the ongoing series here on Afghanistan.