Soldiers from the Afghan National Army (ANA) move toward the front lines in Dasht-e Archi.
A pomegranate lies on the side of the road between Kabul and Nangarhar Province.
Soldiers load the body of a colleague onto the back of a Humvee. They had been surrounded by the Taliban for four days inside a small walled compound called a patrol base, but no one had been able to reach them to retrieve the corpse.
Getting to the base took a day of fighting, during which one man had to dig up five IEDs with his bare hands. These men waited for the Humvee to return and have just realized that the dead soldier was their friend.
Major Hamid Saifi of the ANA, who fought for nine years in Sangin, the most violent district in Afghanistan, prays near the front line with the Taliban in Dasht-e Archi, where he has been redeployed. Sangin fell to the Taliban late last year, soon after Saifi left.
Female internally displaced persons, who fled their homes after the Taliban took Kunduz for the second time in 13 months, wait for medical attention. With the government unable to help, this makeshift camp was set up with donations from affluent friends of the local governor. Takhar Province, Afghanistan
Surgeons in a hospital in Kabul, built and run by the international NGO Emergency, treat a gunshot wound.
Soldiers from the ANA patrol frontline positions in Dasht-e Archi.
A soldier looks out over the Spin Ghar Mountains, which mark the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the front line with ISIS, which uses tunnels in local salt mines to its advantage. These tunnels were recently targeted by US forces, which dropped a MOAB, or Massive Ordnance Air Blast, bomb approximately half a mile from here. The bomb is the biggest nonnuclear weapon in the US arsenal. Achin, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan