Photos: Two decades of war and daily life in Afghanistan

July 19, 2009 - Afghan National Army recruits listen to their instructor. The United States invaded Afghanistan along with allied forces in 2001 shortly after the 9/11 terror attacks and has been there ever since, before the impending withdrawal this year of the last American troops.

June 23, 2021 - Afghan militiamen join Afghan defense and security forces. AP photographers have also been there every step of the way, documenting for the outside world the protracted conflict and occupation over the course of two decades, and now the unexpectedly chaotic departure as the Taliban swiftly reassert control over the country.

February 17, 2010. As is the case with any war, many of the images that emerged were of death and destruction, pain and suffering.

February 17, 2010 - Aboard a helicopter on a medevac mission, two U.S. army soldiers treated a member of the Afghan National Army who was wounded by gunfire during an assault in the Taliban stronghold of Marjah.

April 2, 2007 - And in a village in the southern province of Zabul, a soldier of the 4th Infantry Regiment frisked an Afghan man in his house during a search operation. But other photos portrayed day-to-day human existence, as people tried to go on with their lives even as the gunfire and bomb blasts never ceased.

July 17, 2009 - On a hillside overlooking Kabul, boys chased each other and kicked a soccer ball across a dirt field.

April 11, 2013 - And at a store lined with dozens of blue burqas, a woman waited in a changing room to try out one of the head-to-toe-covering garments. There were also signs of attempts to strengthen society and weak governmental institutions.

April 20, 2005 - The hollowed-out shell of the Kabul Theater in the capital became a beacon of hope for more than 400 students, even though it still lacked electricity or running water. Two young girls, who would have been barred from going to school under the previous Taliban rule, sat awaiting class as sunlight streamed through windows without panes.

October 4, 2004 - Villager girls gazed at UN workers unloading ballot kits from a helicopter in a remote northeastern area where an airlift was the only way to deliver materials for the country's first direct presidential vote.

October 26, 2010 - Afghan policemen held out their arms to simulate weapons during a training session with US soldiers outside Kandahar. And newly trained female officers in crisp, dark uniforms sat at the front of their graduating class in a ceremony at the National Army's training center in Kabul.

July 13, 2009 - A village resident comforts her son. Such attempts to remake Afghanistan are now thrown into doubt with the ascendant Taliban again. The group says it will govern in a more moderate fashion than before, but many people fear a return to the harsh rule of the 1990s when women were largely confined to their homes, TV and music were banned and authorities mutilated or publicly executed people suspected of crimes.

June 24, 2010 - Afghan farmers harvest wheat outside Kabul. Journalists who covered the last 20 years in the country, both Afghans and foreigners, did so at considerable personal risk.

In the AP family, photographer Emilio Morenatti lost his left leg to a roadside bomb in 2009, and five years later, photographer Anja Niedringhaus was shot dead by a policeman in an attack that also seriously wounded correspondent Kathy Gannon.

November 24, 2001 - Defecting Taliban fighters maneuver a tank through the front line near the village of Amirabad, between Kunduz and Taloqan.

December 10, 2001 - Afghan anti-al-Qaida fighters rest at a former al-Qaida base in the White Mountains near Tora Bora, behind a string of ammunition found after the retreat of al-Qaida members from the area.

October 28, 2009 - An Afghan police officer carries an injured unidentified German national as smoke bellows from the site of an attack in Kabul, Afghanistan. Gunmen attacked a guest house used by U.N. staff in the Afghan capital of Kabul.