Afghanistan

Three decades of war and internal conflict has left an indelible mark on the fabric of Afghan society. Nowhere is this more evident than Afghanistan's educational system. Here, the success or failure of the country's schools will have tremendous impact on its future.

Video by Shaun McCanna, Flamingo Productions

Produced in association with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

Began airing on Foreign Exchange September 11, 2009

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With the new administration, the focus of U.S. interests in the Middle East seems to have shifted from Iraq to stabilization of Afghanistan. But periodic suicide bombings in Baghdad and elsewhere remind us that while we may have moved on, the ethnic and religious struggles in Iraq continue. Nir Rosen has recently returned from the region under the auspices of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He shares first hand accounts of what he's learned.

Vanessa Gezari, for the Pulitzer Center

Journalist Vanessa Gezari answers your questions about her story on the Human Terrain program in Afghanistan for The Washington Post Magazine. She writes from Helmand Province, where she is embedded with a Human Terrain team attached to the Marines. Comments and questions for Gezari are marked in italics.

Vanessa Gezari, for the Pulitzer Center

Journalist Vanessa Gezari answers your questions about her story on the Human Terrain program in Afghanistan for The Washington Post Magazine. She writes from Helmand Province, where she is embedded with a Human Terrain team attached to the Marines. Comments and questions for Gezari are marked in italics.

Shiberghan, Afghanistan (one day before the election)—There was no mistaking the general's "castle." Its pastel-colored two-storey walls and lapis cupolas shocking amidst the drabness of the surrounding neighborhood. Somewhere inside the compound was General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the most notorious of Afghanistan's warlords. In almost three decades as a militia leader, Dostum has earned a reputation for ruthless brutality towards enemies, as well as an opportunist's disregard for alliances, which have shifted without notice.

Vanessa Gezari, for the Pulitzer Center

Journalist Vanessa Gezari answers your questions about her story on the Human Terrain program in Afghanistan for The Washington Post Magazine. She writes from Helmand Province, where she is embedded with a Human Terrain team attached to the Marines.

Check back soon for additional responses!

Vanessa Gezari, for the Pulitzer Center

Journalist Vanessa Gezari answers your questions about her story on the Human Terrain program in Afghanistan for The Washington Post Magazine. She writes from Helmand Province, where she is embedded with a Human Terrain team attached to the Marines.

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan | Eight years ago, this northern flood plain was the scene of the Taliban's last stand.

Now, it's the locus of a resurgent militancy in a region that is fast becoming a new front in the Afghan war - with troubling consequences for coalition supply lines and U.S. allies whose will to stay and fight is being tested by rising casualties.

The details of a deadly coalition airstrike near the city of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan are yet vague. However, the attack has potentially deep military consequences as well as political ramifications far away — in Germany. NATO said in a statement that Friday's airstrike targeted militants who had stolen two fuel tankers the day before. It said that most of those killed were Taliban. But Afghan authorities are saying that civilians who had flocked to collect free fuel at the behest of insurgents died among them — with an overall death toll estimated as high as 70.

Jason Motlagh has been reporting from Afghanistan throughout the past year, including on military missions assigned to try and make the country safe enough to hold elections on August 20. Most recently, he has spent weeks covering the upheaval resulting from those elections. He shares his images and insights with iWitness.

Motlagh's coverage from Afghanistan is funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and is part of a joint reporting venture between the center and FRONTLINE/World.

Journalists covering the Afghan war rely heavily on coalition forces to gain access to a hardscrabble backcountry populated by Taliban militants. So the reaction was far from muted when the news broke last week that the Defense Department was paying a controversial private firm to profile reporters seeking to accompany — or "embed" — with troops. Reporters quickly complained that it was tantamount to building a blacklist and that the U.S. military was deliberately working to sideline journalists critical of its mission.