Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.
—Jimmy Carter

In an interview on NPR shortly after September 11th, Steve McCurry revisited the story behind his portrait of the anonymous Afghan refugee girl:

Her look kind of summed up the horror, because her village had been bombed and her relatives had been killed, and she'd had to make this two-week trek through the mountains to the refugee camp.

Little did he know that six months later his story would be very different:

There was no question in my mind that this was the girl. The eyes were the same, she had the same distinctive scar on her nose. All the facial features matched up. I instantly knew that this was the girl.

He was referring to Sharbat Gula, mother of three and living with her family in remote Afghanistan. She is that haunting face from that arresting photograph taken some seventeen years previous. She is the story of the nation: defined by invasion, resistence, and constant waves of change. Perhaps this time, she will be a face of promise.

Find out how drastic changes are coming to the lives of Afghan women.

Rediscover the story that started it all.