Sean Carberry

It seems almost trivial at first: the latest Human Rights Watch report on Afghanistan says female police officers need their own toilets. Sure, who's going to argue with that. But why is it a big deal?

Here's how it unfolds.

Female police officers are experiencing high levels of ...

The Taliban will launch their annual spring offensive on Sun., April 28, the group said Saturday.

In a press release, the Taliban said that the offensive will target "America, NATO and their backers for the gratification of Allah Almighty, independence of Afghanistan and establishing in it an Islamic government while ...

Death comes with the territory when you work in conflict zones. On sometimes a daily basis, those of us who have worked in Iraq and Afghanistan in particular have filed stories with headlines like, "Four troops killed during insurgent attack," or "IED kills 10 civilians and wounds six."

It's a ...

Much has changed since last November, when Afghans were praising Pakistan for saying it would no longer support the Taliban and would instead work for peace.

"We believe that relations between the two countries are deteriorating," says Aimal Faizi, spokesman for President Hamid Karzai.

Faizi says the downward slide started ...

Despite Afghanistan's fierce winter, it's rare to find a house with insulation or a modern heating system. So Afghans rely on bukharis, stoves that look like an oil drum with a big rusty pipe growing out of the top that bends off into a hole in the wall.

That fact ...

The NATO campaign is now in a new phase. After years of fighting the Taliban and bolstering anemic local governance, NATO troops are handing those responsibilities over to the Afghans. NPR's Sean Carberry recently embedded with U.S. troops in the southern province of Kandahar as they worked on this new ...

Lucy is a stereotypically giddy black labradoodle. She's not what you picture when you think of a military dog serving on the front lines in Afghanistan. She wiggles around the room chasing her tennis ball and thinks my microphone cover is a chew toy.

But her handler, Spc. Heath Garcia, ...

Despite more than a decade of international efforts to support women in Afghanistan, female entrepreneurs remain relatively rare. But one Afghan woman is trying to show the men a thin...

When you see a U.S. soldier standing next to an Afghan one, the difference is striking. U.S. troops are saddled down with much more high-tech equipment. But many say handing over bett...

Reporting from Afghanistan is challenging in more than just a security sense. While NATO sources tend to give out minimal information, local officials often give inaccurate initial ac...

Refugees continue to flee the ongoing violence in Syria. Nearly 12,000 are living in camps in southern Turkey; several thousand more live outside the camps. They've started setting up...

For many U.S. troops leaving Iraq, a U.S. base south of Baghdad, is the last stop they make before rolling into Kuwait and heading home. As the Dec. 31 deadline for the U.S. withdrawa...