Afghanistan

We’re less than 100 days away from the Presidential Election, but the candidates don’t seem to be talking about the war in Afghanistan. Why is that?

The deaths of 30 special operations personnel who were in a helicopter that was shot down in Afghanistan Saturday focus a new spotlight on the war there.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has announced seven areas of the country which will pass from foreign troop control into Afghan hands this July. We touch down in one of the cities expected to be put under local control.

Four New York Times journalists are now free after being captured by government forces while reporting in Libya. Their colleague, correspondent Michael Kamber, joins us to talk about the dangers of working in a war zone and his own reporting from Afghanistan.

In late January, a suicide bomb went off in a Kabul, Afghanistan supermarket killing 14 people. Among the dead was an entire family that included one of Afghanistan’s most prominent human rights advocates, Hamida Barmaki. We take a look at her legacy.

One of the movies nominated for an Oscar this week is “Restrepo,” a documentary about American soldiers at a remote outpost in Afghanistan. We revisit a conversation with Army Capt. Dan Kearney, featured in the film.

In 2008, New York Times reporter David Rohde was kidnapped by insurgents in Afghanistan. He tells the story of how he escaped in a new book, co-written by his wife, Kristen Mulvihill.

A White House review of the Afghanistan War concludes that this year’s troop surge has diminished the influence of al-Qaida and the Taliban, though gains are fragile.

The New York Times’ Tyler Hicks describes photographing the aftermath of a recent suicide attack in Afghanistan that left six Americans dead and more than a dozen American and Afghan troops wounded.

Much of the news we hear from Afghanistan is bad: political corruption, fraudulent elections and casualties from the war. But two veterans, just back from the country, say they saw a silver lining while touring businesses and factories there.