Afghanistan: Life In A Historical Battlefield

The Afghan capital Kabul viewed from a neighboring hilltop. 

The tomb of Afghan King Nadir Shah, who was assassinated in 1933. The renovated shrine stands on Maranjan Hill overlooking eastern Kabul. A NATO surveillance airship can be seen just overhead.

 

An Afghan boy herding a flock of sheep. 

Public portraits of former mujahedin fighters remain a common fixture in Kabul. Here, Mohammad Fahid, Burhanuddin Rabbani, and Ahmad Shah Masud. 

Women wearing all-encompassing burqas are seen mainly in Afghan villages and poor city outskirts. 

Toilet paper, alcohol-free beer and Pop Tarts -- some of the products up for sale at Kabul's Bush Bazaar, formerly known as the Brezhnev Bazaar during the Soviet occupation. 

A typical Afghan village, where houses are built on hilltops from stone, clay, or concrete. 

Some of Afghanistan's earliest European explorers described Kabul as "paradise" because of the sound of birds singing in local gardens. Here, an Afghan man selling finches at a market. 

A U.S. military vehicle outside Bagram Air Base. 

Afghanistan remains littered with the hulls of Soviet tanks destroyed by mujahedin fighters during the 1979-89 occupation.