"Ten Years. Troops from the United States and other coalition forces have now been in Afghanistan for a decade, following the initial bombing raids carried out by the U.S. on October 7, 2001. My father served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam, and I remember a conversation I had with him shortly after the attacks of September 11, where he said to me, "Son, I really hoped your generation wouldn't have to go through something like this." There are teenagers now who were just toddlers when their parents first deployed to Afghanistan. As a photo editor, I've been curating an entry about Afghanistan once a month for the past two years, and plan to continue to do so. The U.S. and some 35 other coalition nations currently have more than 130,000 soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, and it's important for us to see what they are dealing with, what we've asked them to do for so long -- and to see those who are so directly affected by this long conflict, the Afghan people themselves. Although the U.S. has been involved for a decade, the people of Afghanistan have known nothing but war for more than 30 years now."