Things in Afghanistan are...not so good. The Secretary of Defense was up on Capitol Hill the other day slagging on the NATO Force we left in charge of the country so we could spend more time with our one true love, Iraq. The poppy crop was predictably gigantic this year and politically, the declining security situation makes it harder for Hamid Karzai to lead a somewhat splintered nation forward.

Culturally, Afghanistan remains a troubled nation. Earlier this year, release of the film adaptation of Khaled Hosseini's "Kite Runner" was delayed so visas and flights could be arranged to bring its two child stars out of the country safely, since it was feared that Taliban and other culturally sensitive types would seek to punish them for their participation in the film.

The much-discussed feel-good story of our invasion of Afghanistan more than six (!) years ago was the liberation of the women in the country. The Taliban had oppressed women in the country to such a degree that ever step toward liberation -- showing their faces, voting, serving in Parliament -- was heralded as a victory in the war on terror.

That progress hasn't reached all parts of Afghanistan, as the UNICEF photo of the year makes clear.

American freelance photographer Stephanie Sinclair took this picture. From the UNICEF page:

He’s forty, she’s eleven. And they are a couple – the Afghan man Mohammed F.* and the child Ghulam H.*. “We needed the money”, Ghulam’s parents said. Faiz claims he is going to send her to school. But the women of Damarda village in Afghanistan’s Ghor province know better: “Our men don’t want educated women.” They predict that Ghulam will be married within a few weeks after her engagement in 2006, so as to bear children for Faiz.

During her stay in Afghanistan, it consistently struck American photographer Stephanie Sinclair how many young girls are married to much older men. She decided to raise awareness about this topic with her pictures. Particularly as the official minimum age for brides in Afghanistan is sixteen and it is therefore illegal to marry children.