Tyler Hicks captured troops in battle, the deaths of civilians and the struggles of ordinary Afghans
The Afghan War: A Photographer's Journal Since 2001 |
One of the first things the New York Times photographer Tyler Hicks witnessed after arriving in Afghanistan in late 2001, soon after U.S. airstrikes on Oct. 7 opened the invasion, was the execution of a wounded Taliban fighter. The scene shocked him, upending everything he thought he knew about war and about the Afghan Northern Alliance — the U.S.-aligned fighters who had been his guides and protectors, and the Talib's killers. |
 | | A Northern Alliance fighter on the mountainous front line in the Salang Pass in 2001.Tyler Hicks for The New York Times |
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It was one fleeting episode in a rapid series of events that unfolded as Mr. Hicks accompanied Northern Alliance fighters, who soon drove the Taliban from Kabul with the help of American airstrikes and Special Operations forces. |
 | | Soldiers digging through the rubble after a bomb destroyed an outpost in Kandahar Province in December 2010. Six Americans were killed.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times |
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Mr. Hicks returned to Afghanistan more than 30 times over the next two decades, chronicling almost every chapter of a war that dragged on nearly 20 years. He photographed American troops in battle, the deaths of Afghan civilians in Taliban bombings, the disputed Afghan elections, schoolgirls attending classes, and the struggles of ordinary Afghans to survive violence, hunger and a conflict that often seemed endless and intractable. |
His most recent assignment to Afghanistan, in July, brought Mr. Hicks full circle. He found himself near Bagram Air Base, where he had photographed the Northern Alliance's execution of the Taliban fighter nearly 20 years earlier. |
 | | Militia fighters gathering in Mazar-i-Sharif in July to receive instructions to defend the city against a Taliban attack. The city, once a stronghold of the Northern Alliance, was overrun by the Taliban only a few weeks later.Tyler Hicks/The New York Times |
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The Bagram photos were among the last Mr. Hicks took before leaving Afghanistan just before the Taliban swept into Kabul in mid-August, ending the war and the costly and conflicted American era. |
Those photographs, along with other striking images taken over two decades, are here in a piece compiled to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan on Oct. 7. |
David Zucchino is a contributing writer for The New York Times. |
| SEE ALL OF TYLER'S PHOTOGRAPHS HERE. | | |
Here are four stories you might have missed this week. |
 | | Members of the Taliban 313 Badri unit, with American weapons, patrolling a former C.I.A. base in Kabul last month. Victor J. Blue for The New York Times |
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"It's hard to overstate the amount of resources that were committed to look for someone who was lost." When the U.S. left Afghanistan, there were no American troops reported missing in action. It is a stunning change from previous wars that ended with thousands of troops forever lost, their families left to wonder what had happened to them. [Read the article.] |
"We can't just sit back, especially since we're either refugees or children of refugees." About 64,000 Afghans have landed in the U.S. since the Taliban seized Kabul. They are now rebuilding their lives, just as so many Vietnamese people did decades ago. [Read the article.] |
"American-made weapons are in great demand, as they work very well and people know how to use them." $1,200 for a U.S.-service handgun. $4,000 for M4 carbines — especially if equipped with a laser sight. In the chaos of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban seized American-made weapons and gear. They're now being openly sold in shops by gun dealers. [Read the article.] |
"No one at the end of the day is being held responsible when things go south with an agent." A top-secret cable warned every C.I.A. base last week about troubling numbers of foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or turned into double agents. Intelligence services in Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have been hunting down C.I.A. sources. [Read the article.] |
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