Rare color photos from the 1980s bring the the U.S.S.R.'s "hidden war" to light.
'Jihad By Camera': How U.S.-Trained Afghans Photographed The Soviet Invasion
5
A mujahedin fighter scans the sky after an air strike. As conditions became increasingly risky for foreign journalists inside Afghanistan (in 1984 a Soviet diplomat vowed any journalist caught with mujahedin fighters would be killed), Washington also funded a controversial program to supply Afghan rebels with cameras.
6
A photographer snaps a portrait of mujahedin. Beginning in 1985, American journalists began training Afghans in visual reporting.
7
The Afghan Media Resource Center (AMRC) handed out some 50 cameras to teams embedded with mujahedin groups to document what had become a "hidden" war because of the obstacles to foreign reporting. The photographs in this gallery are some of the 94,000 images made during the project.
8
A Soviet field base. More than 20 of the photographers and journalists working for the AMRC project were injured, and two were killed.