• To Boston From Kabul With Love

    Courtesy Beth Murphy / Principle Pictuers

    A chicken vendor in Kabul, Afghanistan expresses sympathy for Bostonians after the marathon attack.

    By Ron Mott, Correspondent, NBC News

    KABUL – After more than three decades of war, you would think Afghans would be desensitized to violent attacks like the Boston Marathon explosion. A Boston-based documentary filmmaker found just the opposite.

    Instead of disregard, she found empathy among Kabul's residents for the three killed and more than 170 injured in the twin bomb blasts at the center of Boston 6,500 miles away. And she has the images to prove it. 

    In the wake of the attacks, Beth Murphy awakened Tuesday morning in Afghanistan to a confounding text message from her husband.

    "I thought at first I was re-reading my own message to him saying, 'Yes, I'm OK'," said Beth Murphy. She was referring to a text message she had sent her husband about a large-scale Taliban attack in western Afghanistan on April 3 that left more than 40 people dead.

    "But it said, 'It's OK, we're safe.' So I did a double-take.

    Courtesy Beth Murphy / Principle Pictures

    A man with a donkey carriage in Kabul, Afghanistan relates to the victims of violence in Boston.

    "I immediately went online before I even got back to him and saw what was happening in Boston, and [got] that overwhelming feeling of helplessness and sadness and feeling so far away. I thought, 'I'd really like to be home right now.'"

    Murphy's husband, Dennis, and 5-year-old daughter were fine. But as a runner who had felt the joy and pain of crossing the finish line of the Boston Marathon, she felt compelled to do something.

    In an effort to show solidarity with the city she calls home, Murphy set off for her day's work on a documentary project in Kabul armed with a simple sign she made that read: "To Boston From Kabul With Love."

    Courtesy Beth Murphy / Principle Pictures

    A bookseller in Kabul, Afghanistan expresses sympathy for Bostonians after the violent marathon attack.

    Her initial plan was to photograph herself holding the sign and post it online but reactions from Afghans to the unfolding tragedy in Boston prompted a change of plans.

    "As I started to talk with people here about what was happening, I saw the expressions on their faces change," she said. "They experience things like this here all the time. You might expect that they'd be desensitized to it or talk about it with a lack of compassion, but it was the exact opposite. There was this shared experience of pain and suffering, and the way people expressed that to me was really beautiful."

    Those expressions led Murphy to ask permission to photograph them holding her sign – a spontaneous idea that quickly spread around the world and went viral on the Internet.

    Beth Murphy, a Boston filmmaker currently in Kabul Afghanistan, was so moved by the marathon violence she wanted to send some love to her home city from 6,500 miles away. She explains the "incredible connection" and "shared experience of pain and suffering" Afghans expressed for Bostonians.

    Murphy published a series of black and white photos rich with the color of everyday life here: a bookseller crouched before his wares, a chicken vendor with a trio of whole fryer birds hanging over his shoulder, a little girl's largely expressionless face starkly contrasted by those of her shrouded female relatives in the distance.

    Courtesy Beth Murphy / Principle Pictures

    Beth Murphy, a Boston-based documentary film maker set out on the streets of Kabul after the Boston Marathon attacks with a simple sign that read: "To Boston From Kabul With Love." She was overwhelmed with the expressions of sympathy by Afghans for Bostonians.

    And the common thread binding the images and the people in them is a collective nod of empathy for the people of Boston.

    "I've been really overwhelmed by the response," Murphy said. "It certainly wasn't anything that I anticipated. I'm happy that the pictures resonated because I think they speak to a common humanity that we all share."

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    Parents of suspects say their children were framed

    Family of dead suspect's wife: 'Our hearts are sickened'

    On social media, Tsarnaev's mixed religious fervor, whimsy

    Slain MIT officer's family mourns: 'Our only solace is Sean died bravely'

    Obama: 'We've closed an important chapter in this tragedy' 

    A nation cheers arrest of Boston bombing suspect

    Slideshow: Timeline of terror hunt and capture

    Boxing photos of dead Boston suspect revealed 

     

  • Afghan 'insider' attack marks grim milestone for US troop deaths

    In light of recent attacks, troops are told to "build trust, but make sure you have a bodyguard present." NBC's Richard Engel reports.

    By NBC News staff and wire reports

    Updated at 5:54 p.m. ET: An apparent insider attack by Afghan forces has killed a U.S. service member and a contractor, officials said Sunday – bringing the total number of U.S. troops killed inside Afghanistan to 2,000 according to some measures.

    A U.S. official confirmed the latest death in the 11-year-old conflict on Sunday.

    The American service member killed was a soldier. The American contractor was working as a trainer for either the Afghan army or police, according to NBC News.

    On Saturday night, an Afghan soldier approached Americans, killing a soldier and a contractor; with that, the number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan is around 2,100 in the United States' 11-year-war in the country. Insider attacks have become increasingly common – and no one seems to have a good answer about how to stop them. NBC's Lester Holt and Richard Engel report from Kabul.

    The attack happened Saturday at a checkpoint on a highway in Wardak Province, a defense official said. Two Afghan National Army soldiers approached the checkpoint and had a brief conversation with the troops there. One of the ANA soldiers then shot and killed the American service members and the contractor, officials told NBC News.

    With a suspected "insider" attack at a checkpoint. the US military has suffered its 2,000th death in the war in Afghanistan.  NBC's Atia Abawi and Mike Viqueira report.

    A brief firefight ensued, and left at least three Afghan Army soldiers dead - including the initial shooter, officials said.

    The Afghan military claimed the Americans were killed by a mortar attack, but the American military insisted that is not true, that the Afghan soldier opened fire and they returned fire.

    The dead U.S. soldier was identified as Sgt. 1st Class Riley G. Stephens, 39, of Tolar, Texas. Stephens was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne), based at Fort Bragg, N.C.

     

    The U.S. toll in Afghanistan has climbed steadily in recent months with a spate of attacks by Afghan army and police against American and NATO troops, and questions about whether allied countries will achieve their aim of helping the Afghan government and its forces stand on their own after most foreign troops depart in little more than two years. The U.S. is preparing to withdraw most of its combat forces by the end of 2014.

    The Associated Press reported Sunday that the latest death was the 2,000th member of the U.S. armed services killed inside Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion on Oct. 7, 2001.  However, that AP figure did not include those who died after sustaining injuries in Afghanistan or those killed in other countries as part of the same campaign against al-Qaida and the Taliban.

    TODAY's Lester Holt heads down the road to Sangasar, the physical and spiritual heart of the Taliban. He speaks with American and Afghan soldiers along the way.

    According to icasualties.org, an independent monitoring organization which uses the wider definition, the latest death brings the toll of U.S. service members to 2035. At least a further 1,190 coalition troops have also died in the Afghanistan war, it says.

    The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based research center, said 40.2 percent of the deaths were caused by improvised explosive devices, with the majority of those after 2009 when President Barack Obama ordered a surge of 33,000 troops to combat heightened Taliban activity. According to the Washington-based research center, the second highest cause, 30.6 percent, was hostile fire.

    Tracking civilian deaths is much more difficult. According to the U.N., 13,431 civilians were killed in the Afghan conflict between 2007, when the U.N. began keeping statistics, and the end of August. Going back to the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, most estimates put the number of Afghan deaths in the war at more than 20,000.

    The 2001 invasion targeted al-Qaida and its Taliban allies after the Sept. 11 attacks, which claimed nearly 3,000 lives in the United States.

    "The tally is modest by the standards of war historically, but every fatality is a tragedy and 11 years is too long," Michael O'Hanlon, a fellow at the Brookings, told the AP. "All that is internalized, however, in an American public that has been watching this campaign for a long time. More newsworthy right now are the insider attacks and the sense of hopelessness they convey to many. "

    Attacks by Afghan soldiers or police — or insurgents disguised in their uniforms — have killed 52 American and other NATO troops so far this year.

    The so-called insider attacks are considered one of the most serious threats to the U.S. exit strategy from the country. In its latest incarnation, that strategy has focused on training Afghan forces to take over security nationwide — allowing most foreign troops to go home by the end of 2014.

    As American troops draw out of Afghanistan, officials say the removal plan is on track but that time is precious and the Taliban threat is worrisome. NBC's Lester Holt reports.

    Although Obama has pledged that most U.S. combat troops will leave by the end of 2014, American, NATO and allied troops are still dying in Afghanistan at a rate of one a day.

    Even with 33,000 American troops back home, the U.S.-led coalition will still have 108,000 troops — including 68,000 from the U.S. — fighting in Afghanistan at the end of this year. Many of those will be training the Afghan National Security Forces that are to replace them.

    "There is a challenge for the administration," O'Hanlon said, "to remind people in the face of such bad news why this campaign requires more perseverance."

    The Associated Press and NBC News' Courtney Kube and Atia Abawi, in Kabul, contributed to this report.

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  • For US soldiers, repeat deployments 'definitely take a toll'

    The Third Infantry Division is used to being deployed. Now, after multiple deployments to Iraq, the 3rd ID has been sent to Afghanistan for the first time. NBC's Lester Holt reports.

    By Lester Holt, NBC News

    KABUL – “How many deployments for you? Iraq, Afghanistan or both?”

    See our full coverage on international hot spots crucial to U.S. foreign policy ahead of elections in our At the Brink series here. And tune in today to special coverage on all NBC News platforms from NBC’s team of anchors and correspondents deployed in five countries across the region.

    In an army that’s been waging war in Afghanistan for 11 years, talking about past deployments is what amounts to small talk on the many bases I’ve visited this past week from Kabul to Kandahar, as well as along the Pakistan border in eastern Afghanistan. Soldiers rattle off the dates and locations of their deployments, and point out fellow soldiers with whom they served.

    The Army’s Third Infantry Division moved its headquarters recently from its home base at Fort Stewart, Ga., to Kandahar, Afghanistan. The move marked the division’s first deployment to Afghanistan, but it’s fifth to a war zone in the last 10 years. 

    The Third Infantry Division made history in 2003 when it kicked off the war in Iraq as the so-called “tip of the spear,” driving up from Kuwait straight into Baghdad in what veterans remember as the “Thunder Run.”

    Sgt. First Class Joseph Aiello says he couldn’t imagine back then that he would be in Afghanistan nine years later, still fighting a war.  When the Iraq war began, he was dating his sweetheart Terri. Today they are parents to three small children. Aiello has been on four of the division's five deployments since 2003.

    “It definitely takes a toll on family,” Aiello told me. He added, however, that worrying about home and family when you are in a war zone has its risks.

    “The minute you lose focus that’s when incidents can start to happen,” said Aiello. “You need to maintain focus while you’re here to do a job and that’s what we will get done.”

    The  Daily Rundown's Chuck Todd touches base with NBC reporters across the Mid-East including NBC's Atia Abawi in Kabul, Martin Fletcher in Tel Aviv, Ali Arouzi in Tehran and Ann Curry from the Syrian border.

    Serving on the home front, too
    Back in Georgia, Aiello’s wife, Terri, makes her own contribution to the war, as a physical therapist assistant helping wounded vets. At home she has become accustomed to living the life of a single mom.

    Photo Blog: Exploring home abroad: Afghan-Americans in Kabul

    “A bad day would be having a stressful day [at work] and then going home and the boys are fighting, Alyssa’s cranky and the homework’s not done,” she said about her three children.

    She’s learned to push ahead alone. “Nothing really changes. It’s just that he’s not there to experience everything with us.” 

    Her sacrifices are not lost on her husband.


    “A lot of people say that the soldiers got a hard job and everything like that. But the way I look at it, sir, is I definitely think the wives have the hardest job in the Army,” Aiello told me.

    ‘No different’
    Aiello is one of only a handful of Third Infantry Division soldiers with the unit today who were part of the original march into Baghdad back in 2003. The division’s pace of deployments over the last 10 years is nothing short of remarkable, but no more remarkable than the multiple deployments that have become the norm for thousands of U.S. service members.

    Eleven years of war have left tens of thousands of service families, like the Aiellos, sharing the void of long and too frequent separations.

    Maj. Gen. Robert Abrams, commanding general of the Third Infantry Division and the International Security Assistance Force’s Regional Command-South, underscored the point.

    “There are others making equal sacrifices across the army, so we don’t see ourselves any different,” Abrams said.

    Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

    Anwarullah / Reuters

    More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

    Launch slideshow

    Aiello recalled the long wait for letters from home in those early days following the Iraq invasion. Now he does video chats with his family regularly via Skype, which didn’t exist in 2003.

    On the TODAY Show this weekend, dozens of service members crowded around our broadcast location here at the joint task force headquarters for ISAF in Kabul. Many of them carried signs with pictures of the children whose birthdays, and sweet-16 parties they are missing back home.

    A suicide bomber in Afghanistan kills at least 14 people, including 3 NATO service members, bringing the US death toll on the ground to 2,000 with 20 percent of American combat deaths stemming from insider attacks. NBC's Richard Engel reports.

    The international coalition has set the end of 2014 to withdraw most combat forces from Afghanistan. In the meantime, the United States will continue to ask a lot from so few. The troops and the families will wait for them to return one day and stay home for good.

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  • Three US soldiers among at least 14 killed by Afghan suicide bomber

    By NBC's Courtney Kube and wire reports

    A suicide bomber detonated a device in Afghanistan on Monday, killing three U.S. soldiers, one interpreter and four members of the Afghan National Police, a military official told NBC News.

    Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

    Anwarullah / Reuters

    Launch slideshow

    The U.S. soldiers and Afghan police were on a dismounted partner patrol near the center of the Khost region in eastern Afghanistan. The attacker approached and detonated as they were preparing to get back in their vehicles.

    Six civilians also died in the attack, Reuters reported. 

    Despite reports that the bomber was riding a motorcycle, the official said there was no evidence of that. The official added that the dead interpreter is thought to be Afghan.

    More Afghanistan coverage from NBC News

    On Saturday night, an Afghan soldier approached Americans, killing a soldier and a contractor; with that, the number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan is around 2,100 in the United States' 11-year-war in the country. Insider attacks have become increasingly common – and no one seems to have a good answer about how to stop them. NBC's Lester Holt and Richard Engel report from Kabul.

    A witness told Reuters a suicide bomber was wearing a police uniform.

    The bombing followed the killing of two Americans on Sunday in an exchange of fire with Afghan forces.

    Insider attacks by members of the Afghan security forces against NATO allies have resulted in at least 52 deaths this year among foreign forces and this month prompted a tightening of rules for joint patrols between coalition and Afghan forces. 

    NBC's Richard Engel examines America's progress after fighting for more than a decade in Afghanistan. Is there any evidence that the American plan to hand over a credible, stable Afghan government will work?

    Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • Leaving the comfortable life in America to help Afghanistan

    Photojournalist Andrea Bruce writes: "After covering the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 10 years, I found it important to bring attention to the similarities in the cultures involved in these conflicts. I believe that getting people to relate to each other in different countries and from various religions is the first step to empathy during war. I hope photography can help cut down stereotypes and cliches." To this end, Bruce photographed Afghan-Americans who left comfortable lives in the U.S. to work in unstable Afghanistan.

    Andrea Bruce / Alicia Patterson Foundation - NOOR

    Aman Mojadidi, 41, artist.

    "Afghanistan definitely didn’t seem like home per se but it was very much this place where my family was from, and I still had this very strong kind of sense of having an Afghan identity … it makes me kind of understand more my American identity. It's funny ... [it took] growing up in the U.S. to feel Afghan and it took living in Afghanistan to feel American.

    "I think probably by far one of my favorite ones [art projects], yeah, was the pay back, which was basically a fake checkpoint set up on the street in Kabul where we offered money back to some vehicles rather than asking for bribes … trying to take something that a lot of people spoke about all the time, which was the corruption, the bribes that they have to pay and all this kind of stuff and turn it into, you know, an art work and kind of flip it on its head."

    Andrea Bruce / Alicia Patterson Foundation - NOOR

    Hassina Sherjan, 51, girls' school founder and administrator.

    "I really believe in what I’m doing, and when you really believe in what you do, you hardly get frustrated. I started clandestine girls schools in '90s. We have 3900 students in nine provinces. I don’t really see it as an Afghan thing or an American thing. You just do what you need to do.

    "As the elite who left when everything became rough, we have a responsibility to come back and do something here. Not to just be comfortable and make money but to do something. To really make a difference. And a lot of us can. There are a lot of Afghans abroad who are educated, who have done a lot of work, who understand education building, who understand governments ... but nobody is coming."

    Andrea Bruce / Alicia Patterson Foundation - NOOR

    Koukaba Mojadidi, 35, an architect for International Organization for Migration in Afghanistan working on building a womens' center and police training facilities.

    "I grew up in Jacksonville, Fla. Which was really boring, most of the time. Very safe, very quiet. We never struggled. Upper middle class, living on a river. Pretty fortunate. 

    "Both of my parents are from Afghanistan. The minute I came into my house, I was living in a different set of rules, a different context. And the minute I left my house, I was living in the real world. Having to consider both cultures at the same time, all the time. For instance, we couldn’t socialize with a lot of Americans. My parents were really into keeping our heritage alive, our culture alive. There are are more differences than similarities, in my parents' minds.

    "Everything in your life before you are 18 revolves around how you fit in in school, and learning how to establish yourself as an individual ... and at the same time you are balancing western ideas of your culture. Individualism (in the US) contrasts deeply to the idea of Afghan culture which is all about being a collective and being together and being close and feeling what that other person is feeling, and being emotionally enmeshed in everyone’s problems."

    Andrea Bruce / Alicia Patterson Foundation - NOOR

    Mustafa Ali Nouri, 44, an architect for the International Organization for Migration in Afghanistan working to build a womens' center and police training facilities.

    "In the end, home for me will always be Washington [DC]. The longest period of time in my life was there. I will always consider it my hometown. But I feel I have roots here. Emotions that I don’t know how to explain. You feel connected to the land. Doesn’t matter how dusty it is, or how terrible it might be in some ways. Even as an architect, the environmental mess, but at the same time there is something beautiful about this place.

    "Because I am Afghan American, I feel I can see it better. I can see it in the eyes of the young people. They are craving to be a part of the world society. How can they go back to before 2001? You can not drag them. Either push them out or exterminate. But it is in their brain now. You can not kill that. They know now. They know what is out there in the world. They want to be. They want to have a society for themselves and for their children where they can have opportunities. They are the ones that give me a lot of hope."

    Andrea Bruce / Alicia Patterson Foundation - NOOR

    Tooba Mayel, 38, Gender Justice Advisor with International Development Law Organization. She monitors protection centers who work on legal and mediation cases. IDLO's work is currently supporting the work of lawyers and training programs for prosecutors who defend victims of violence, since violence and protection laws are vague or not implemented. Training and working with local authorities is vital during this time in Afghanistan, Mayel believes.

    "Being an Afghan-American to me means that I am able to unite two different worlds under one frame of thought, mind and heart that exceeds boundaries and distances. As an individual that was raised under two cultures, where experiences and circumstances have taken me from conflict to freedom, from a poor nation to a rich one, from deep rooted traditions to new and modern ideologies, but more importantly the courage and the compassion to come back where vulnerable peoples fight for human liberties. 

    "I have not only helped a country I call my motherland in its rehabilitation and progress, but also that same country has taught me to be sensitive to issues of human rights and not to take for granted the liberties that America has raised me with."

    Photographer Bruce continues: "In the process of covering Afghanistan, I met many Afghan-Americans who said they sometimes feel caught between two different worlds. And they have felt the events of the past 20 years most harshly. When Sept. 11 happened, many saw great possibilities in combining their two homelands. Since then, some have wrestled with their identity. Others have become disillusioned. Regardless, all of them have spent a lot of time thinking about their two countries, and what dual-citizenship means to them in a time of war."

    See more images from Afghanistan's current events in this slideshow, and more Afghanistan images in PhotoBlog. 

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