Driving through the crowded streets of Kabul, you will find that the number of working traffic lights in the city of roughly five million people can be counted on one hand.
It is not what one might call the "front lines" in the battle on terror, but in many ways it absolutely is. In the past five years, 45,000 of the regions security forces have been killed, according to the Afghan government.
"Crime exists all over the world, and criminals are everywhere. But we are controlling the assaults, and the terrorist attacks and keeping other criminal acts under control," said Colonel Najibullah Sarter, the deputy chief of the Afghan National Police.
But for all his positive, promising words, the war on terror is not going well in Afghanistan. Security has never been tighter. Massive concrete blast walls to lessen the severity of a car bomb attack are all over, and kilometer after kilometer of razor wire threads its way through the city.
A resident of Kabul walks by towering blast walls erected throughout the city. /CGTN Photo
Perhaps the greatest concentration of security remains around the so-called Ring of Steel, a tight police barricade to make sure insurgents don't sneak into the heart of the capital.
Not far away, Hanifa Fatah goes through the motions of sweeping to keep a mountain of dust from forming in the courtyard of her modest Kabul home. It is very hard for her and her husband Abdul Fatah to ever feel completely safe.
"They are working on making the security better, but we do feel panicked, We can no longer walk around the city and feel secure. We fear suicide bombers and are afraid," said Hanifa about the police.
Hanifa Fatah said it's very hard for her and her husband Abdul Fatah to ever feel completely safe. /CGTN Photo
In late May of 2017, a large truck carrying hundreds of kilograms of explosives blew up just outside the German Embassy in Kabul, becoming the single most deadly insurgent attack in the country with more than 400 people injured and more than 150 killed.
Abdul and Hanifa's oldest son, who was driving his taxi at the time, was killed.
The explosion sent shock waves throughout Kabul.
"We all heard the explosion. My son did not return. We tried calling his phone, but no one answered. We checked all the hospitals, and everywhere we could think of, but no one could find him," said Hanifa.
They later learned their son and his taxi were vaporized in the powerful explosion.
Mohammad Selah holds up a photo of his father, a taxi driver, who was killed in an insurgent attack near the German Embassy in Kabul. /CGTN Photo
Shortly thereafter, their daughter-in-law abandoned the family and moved back in with her relatives, leaving Abdul and Hanifa to raise their three young grandchildren.
Despondent, Hanifa said, "My grandsons are asking for things that we cannot afford, and I tell them how can we get it without money. We lost your father."
2018 saw more civilian deaths in Afghanistan in nearly a decade, and 2019 is following a similar pattern.
Former President Hamid Karzai believes it is time to bring peace to the nation, which means sitting down with the Taliban to negotiate a way forward.
He called the U.S.-Afghan partnership a failure, saying, "The U.S. came to Afghanistan to defeat extremism and bring security. None of that has happened. Rather, we lost thousands and thousands of lives."
Former President Hamid Karzai called the U.S.-Afghan partnership a failure. /CGTN Photo
Sadly, there are so many cases that mirror what Abdul and Hanifa are suffering through.
"When they make peace, they have to keep it. And stop the war so people like us won't suffer the loss of their sons and are left in sorrow,”said Abdul.
Sorrow and a bleak future is a recurring theme in Afghanistan, where the cycle of misery seems to just churn forward.
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