Foreign Policy: Afghanistan The Beautiful

A women reveals a high-heeled shoe on the roadside between Kunduz and Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan.

Thorne Anderson/Foreign Policy

For one year, journalist Anna Badkhen risked her life in Afghanistan, embedding not with U.S. forces or Afghan troops, but with the people of its endangered northern provinces. In Foreign Policy's new eBook, Afghanistan by Donkey, she chronicles first-hand the daily tribulations of this remote and once-peaceful region. As Peter Bergen writes in his preface to the book, "If you can't understand a country just from looking at the cities, you certainly can't understand a war just from reading about the battles." Here, photographer Thorne Anderson provides a visual tour of Afghanistan — beyond the battles — in one of the country's most haunting landscapes.

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