St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Maysa Albarcha, holding her daughter Sara, shops last month with her sister-in-law, Remy Javed, at the St. Louis Galleria. Albarcha and Sara are St. Louis natives. Javed and her family are from Pakistan.

Q: What do Muslims believe?A: The faith that Muslims practice is called Islam, which means "submission to God." Muslims believe in one God, which, translated into anglicized Arabic, is Allah.

Creating an independent, noncorrupt police force in a place like Afghanistan was never going to be easy, not with feuding warlords and deep ethnic divisions and the temptation of easy money from the world's biggest source of heroin.

The elders and businessmen sitting cross-legged on mats under a grove of mulberry trees have a focused agenda.

The satellite connection was a little shaky. A wind storm was kicking up the desert dust outside.

As he patrols the western outskirts of Afghanistan's capital, Sgt. Eric Proulx wears a flak jacket and helmet in the front seat of an open, jeeplike vehicle.

On a hot and dusty plain just south of Kabul, as trucks hauling howitzers lumber into sight, Sgt. Greg Pearce ticks off some of the reasons why this is the most unusual teaching experience he's ever had.

Commander Mohammed Malangyar says that after 25 years of near-continuous fighting, he is ready for civilian life.

In a parched mud-hut village, in a place where the wells have run dry and children gather for lessons under a tree for want of a school, what could a flimsy piece of laminated paper be worth?

The otherwise drab metal gate that marks the entrance to the Kabul offices of Doctors Without Borders is marked by a drawing of an assault rifle in a circle, covered by a big red X.

An overflow audience some 300 strong showed up last week at Iran's main teacher training college to discuss a locally produced film from which government censors had made 17 cuts and whose release had been delayed for nearly two years.

After quick victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. armed forces are suddenly on both sides of Iran's Islamic republic, the country that gave Americans their first taste of Islamic extremism a generation ago.