Afghan and Pakistani leaders met for critical talks last month as President Hamid Karzai traveled to Islamabad to sit down with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. It was Karzai’s first visit to Pakistan since Sharif, a former two-time prime minister, took the helm of a new civilian government in June. aimed at patching Kabul’s frayed relations with Islamabad and seeking the release of senior Taliban prisoners to revive the stalled peace talks. But the lead up to the meeting did not augur well.

The Afghan capital erupted in joyous pandemonium Wednesday night after the national soccer team defeated India to win the South Asian Football Federation championship. It was the first international soccer trophy ever for the war-weary nation and the first ebullient mass outpouring anyone here could remember.

It's 8 a.m. on a recent day at Forward Operating Base Nolay, a small Marine outpost in Taliban-infested Sangin District of southern Afghanistan's Helmand province. The Marines are in the process of caffeinating and preparing for the day. Suddenly, explosions and gunfire ring out. The Marines don't run for their weapons or bunkers for that matter. They don't even flinch. "We can sit here and we can have a cup of coffee when there's booms going on, we're not concerned about it," says Lt. Col. Jonathan Loney.

The International Rescue Committee is temporarily suspending its operations in Afghanistan following the brutal killing of five of its local staff members, the latest in a string of violent attacks against aid groups in the country in just about three months. The aid workers, who were in their 20s, were part of a development project in Herat province under the Afghan government’s National Solidarity Program, of which IRC is a facilitating partner.

Noor Zia Atmar, a young activist and then one of the country’s first woman MPs, travelled the world with her colleagues to show that things were changing. That was three years ago. Now, she lives in a shelter for battered women, the victim of an abusive husband - and a symbol of the way progress in women’s rights is unravelling as the West withdraws and more traditional conservative values return to the fore.

On a sunny, crisp November day in 2008, three American civilians joined a platoon of United States soldiers on a foot patrol in Maiwand District, a flat, yellow patch of earth crowned by black-rock mountains in southern Afghanistan. The civilians were part of the Human Terrain System, an ambitious, troubled Army program that sends social scientists into conflict zones to help soldiers understand local culture, politics and economics.

Those who speculate that Iran will somehow absorb western Afghanistan into its sphere of influence when US and NATO forces drawdown in 2014 have not been through the doors of the threadbare “Public Library and Cultural Center” in Herat. Iran built the domed structure and stocked its library and classrooms seven years ago, a $190,000 project that it presented as a gift to the Afghan government. Today the center fulfils a critical need for its 700 mostly poor Afghan student members: English, math, art, Quran, and computer classes, and a study hall to prepare for university entrance exams.

Insurgents attacked the Indian consulate in Afghanistan's eastern capital on Saturday, killing nine people and reinforcing fears that a bloody regional power struggle will be played out in the country once most foreign troops leave. Twenty-three people were wounded when checkpoint guards stopped three attackers in a car as they approached the consulate in Jalalbabad city, the office of the governor of Nangarhar province, Gul Agha Sherzai, said in a statement.