An Afghan refugee girl, in a mud house built with help from the Norwegian refugee council in Ghorian district of Herat province, Afghanistan, after returning to her home country on May 27, 2008. Many Afghan refugees struggle to rebuild their lives in their shattered homeland after spending years, sometimes decades, in Pakistan and Iran where they fled over the last 30 years of almost continual war. #

An Afghan skateboarding instructor with Skateistan, shows his skills to Afghan boys in Kabul, on August 8, 2008. The Skateistan program taught students in skateboarding basics, instruction techniques and skate park management over a 12 month period. The project team, which includes Australian and Afghan personnel has procured in-kind support from skateboarding experts, technical advisors, engineers, designers, IT experts and journalists in Australia, Germany and Japan. #

A wounded Afghan child receives treatment at a hospital after a roadside bomb in the Obe district of Herat province on July 9, 2013. The Taliban bomb killed 12 women, four children and one man traveling in a three-wheel minivan, officials said, adding that at least seven other passengers were wounded. #

Afghan orphans line up at an orphanage in Kandahar, on November 19, 2012. Two decades of war in Afghanistan has left some one million orphans and abandoned children across the country. #

An Afghan boy cries as others orphans tease him during a class at the Balkh Orphanage in the outskirts of Mazar i Sharif, on October 7, 2012. 58 children, mostly boys, live here where they are fed, schooled and educated by caretakers under the direction and support of the Afghan government. #

A wounded Afghan boy with blood on his face, at the site of a car bomb attack in Kabul, on January 16, 2013. A car bomb exploded in front of the gates of the Afghan intelligence agency, witnesses said, near heavily barricaded government buildings and Western embassies. #

Children run away after an explosion in Kabul, on May 24, 2013. Several large explosions rocked a busy area in the center of the Afghan capital, Kabul, with witnesses describing shooting in the area. #

12-year-old Tarana Akbari cries out near dead and injured people after a suicide bomber killed more than 70 civilians during a religious ceremony at the Abul Fazel shrine in the center of Kabul, where Shia Muslims were marking the Day of Ashura, on December 6, 2011. Agence France-Presse photographer Massoud Hossaini won the agency's first Pulitzer Prize for the picture on April 16, 2012 in the breaking news photography category "for his heartbreaking image of a girl crying in fear after a suicide bomber's attack at a crowded shrine in Kabul." #

An Afghan boy from the Pashtun tribe watches as a joint patrol between soldiers from the 1st Platoon, 1-64 Armored Battalion of the US Army, operating under NATO command, walks through the Morghan-Khecha village in Kandahar province, on September 8, 2012. #

A girl looks at U.S. soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 32nd Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division as they walk by on a patrol near Camp Florida in eastern Afghanistan, on September 7, 2006. #

A boy on a donkey reacts as Canadian soldiers with the 1st RCR Battle Group, The Royal Canadian Regiment, patrol in Salavat, southwest of Kandahar, on September 11, 2010. Minutes later the soldiers were attacked by grenades while leaving the village. #

8-year-old Razia plays ball at the U.S. military hospital in Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, on June 11, 2009. Razia was evacuated to the hospital in May after she was severely burned when a white phosphorus round hit her home in the Tagab Valley, killing two of her sisters during fighting between French troops and Taliban militants. #

Zardana, 11, talks in Kandahar, Afghanistan on April 22, 2013 about a pre-dawn incident on March 11, 2012, when she says a U.S. soldier burst into her family's home. Zardana said her visiting cousin saw the soldier chasing them and ran to help, but he was shot and killed. "We couldn't stop. We just wanted somewhere to hide. I was holding on to my grandmother and we ran to our neighbors." Family members explained that Zardana was also shot in the head. She spent about two months recovering at the Kandahar Air Base hospital and three more at a naval hospital in San Diego receiving rehabilitation therapy, accompanied by her father, Samiullah. U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales of Lake Tapps, Washington, plead guilty to seventeen counts of murder and six counts of assault and attempted murder in the massacre. His guilty plea earned him a life sentence, avoiding the death penalty. #

A boy works at a brick-making factory outside Kabul, on July 15, 2010. Laborers, most of whom work barefoot and without gloves, earn from $3 to $8 a day depending on their working hours and the number of bricks they make. #

Two Afghan children watch US military soldiers from the 3rd platoon, C-company, 1-23 infantry on patrol in Genrandai village at Panjwai district, on September 24, 2012. #

The body of an Afghan child, during his funeral procession outside the city of Khost, Afghanistan, on November 24, 2009. A remote-controlled bomb hidden in a water tank exploded outside Khost, killing six people, including four children, and wounding one, authorities and relatives said. All the victims were members of the same family who had been going shopping ahead of the Muslim holiday Eid. #

A young amputee practices walking with her prosthetic legs at an International Committee of the Red Cross hospital for war victims and the disabled in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, on May 1, 2013. #

Fazel Rahman, one of four child bombers who were arrested before staging a suicide attack, reacts in a classroom at the Kabul Juvenile Rehabilitation Center in Kabul, on May 14, 2011. The orders from their religious teacher were clear-cut: Go to Afghanistan, strap on a suicide vest and kill foreign forces. With that, 14-year-old Ghulam Farooq left his home in Pakistan with three other would-be boy bombers and headed into eastern Afghanistan. They were told there would be two members of the Taliban waiting for them at the Torkham border crossing in Nangarhar province. Instead, members of the Afghan intelligence service, who had been tipped to the boys' plans, arrested them at the border. #

U.S. Marines from Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, Lance Corporal Chris Sanderson, (rear) and Sergeant Travis Dawson, (front) protect an Afghan man and his child after Taliban fighters opened fire in the town of Marjah, in Helmand province, on February 13, 2010. U.S.-led NATO troops launched an offensive against the Taliban's last big stronghold in Afghanistan's most violent province and were quickly thrown into a firefight with the militants. #

A five year old Afghan girl, allegedly raped by a 22 year old man, lies in a hospital bed in Kaldar district of Balk Province of Mazar-i-Sharif, on November 12, 2012. The alleged rapist and neighbor was later detained by police. There is little sign that violence against women in Afghanistan is decreasing, despite billions of dollars of international aid which has poured into the country during the decade-long war. Some 87 percent of Afghan women report having experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage, according to figures quoted in an October report by the British charity Oxfam. #

An Afghan girl touches her mother's artificial leg the ICRC Ali Abad Orthopedic center in Kabul, on November 12, 2009. The center, which is run mostly by disabled people, aims to educate and rehabilitate landmine victims and people with any kind of deformities, to help them integrate effectively into society. #