I haven't read though all the posts just yet, but I have seen several movies recently about Afghanistan and I am struck by how much it does indeed look like New Mexico. I live in Albuquerque, on the eastern edge of the city and it absolutely looks like the scenery in Lone Survivor and other movies set in Afghanistan. Looking out my window there are mountains (to the east a short distance) that are mostly rock with tall pines and other trees higher up like aspens. That is just what the movie scenery is like.

I wondered to myself why our mountains do look so much like Afghanistan and I think I know the answer. Albuquerque is actually a mile high, like Denver - only here the clime is called high dessert. Where the Afghanistan military movies are supposed to be set are at an elevation of between 5,000 and 6,000 feet above sea level. We are at about 5,300 feet up I think.

We are also on nearly the same lat line as Afghanistan i realized.. Albuquerque is at about 34 degrees north I believe. The places in Afghanistan depicted in the movies are at about 35 degrees north.

I think the similarities in altitude and latitude probably explain why Afghanistan looks so much like the Albuquerque area.

I have read some of the comments now. I grew up in Los Alamos (the Jemez) and none of the scenery in the movie really looks like/reminds me of the Jemez. Northern New Mexico looks like what most people think of when they think of Colorado - tall pines with not much rock.

One way to tell if the scenes are Albuquerque is the coloring, but the relevant color is pink believe it or not. The Sandia Mountains are huge mounds of granite basically, with feldspar in the granite which is what gives the Kspar that pink hue. Sandia actually means watermelon in Spanish, so it's that light pink hue. There are a couple of scenes that I see that pink hue. The pink especially is visible here when the sun it setting and the sun's ray coming from the west hits the feldspar flakes and the whole mountain kinda glows that watermelon pink.