Need rec for best phone system to speak to a soldier in Afghanistan

[Jersey Devil]

My son in law in the Air Force is being deployed to Afghanistan in September for a deployment scheduled for 5 months. He will have a new laptop with him equipped with wifi and a camera and headphones. My question is how reliable will Skype be to make Skype to Skype calls to him (and from him) in Afghanistan? We're thinking Skype because we want to also include video since he will become a new Daddy in October, has a 2 year old at home, and we want him to be able to see his babies as often as possible.

Of course we will supplement this with real phone calls via prepaid calling cards, VOIP calls supplied by the AF and I also have read that a good idea would be to get him an international cell phone with a prepaid Afghan SIM card so that all calls to him would be free (at his end).

Does anyone have any experience doing this?