KABUL — I was one of the hundreds of young photojournalists who came to this distant country in 2001 to photograph my first war; naïve, a little reckless, and mostly unprepared. At the time, the Taliban ruled most of the country. Only a thin slice of mountainous territory in the north, between Tajikistan and the Panjshir Valley, was controlled by the opposition, the Northern Alliance. My travel companions were Matthew McAllester, who was then a foreign correspondent for Newsday, and Tyler Hicks, a photographer for The New York Times.

Moises Saman

We rented a Soviet vehicle with four-wheel drive on the Tajikistan border, driven by an Afghan who was chain-smoking hashish, and journeyed south towards the front lines that were just north of Kabul. As we traversed this rugged country, we seemed to be traveling back in time. Small roads, deep gorges and ragtag people, one wearing sunglasses with a lens missing, others missing an arm or leg; homemade checkpoints of just a rope stretched across the road. No electricity, no telephones, no Internet. Pitch black at night, the stars the brightest I had ever seen.

Moises Saman

The Afghanistan I know is a land of clashing contrasts, of raw beauty; its landscape scarred by centuries of wars fought against foreign armies and with itself. Since 2001, I have returned over and over again, with the hope of documenting the promise of peace and prosperity made by the latest invading powers. I soon realized the fragility of this promise and found Afghanistan staring at a precipice, its free fall toward anarchy gaining strength throughout the country, no longer confined to the Pashto-speaking provinces where the Taliban was born and remains entrenched.

The deteriorating security situation is evident all around me on each subsequent visit. One less safe road to travel on, a labyrinth of blast walls surrounding Kabul, the hostile stare of an innocent child. For the local population, peace and stability have become a fleeting dream, not a sustainable promise in which their sense of hope finds refuge. Still, I continue to find myself drawn to this remarkable place and its people, to their unmatched sense of pride on being Afghan, and the hint of dignity and spirit that I find in most of the people I meet here, determined to carry on — however battered their existence.

Moises Saman

This series of photographs represents Moises Saman‘s personal journey through Afghanistan, witnessing the devastation of the country. Some of these pictures appeared in “Afghanistan: Broken Promise” (Charta, 2007), by Mr. Saman, with text by Rory Stewart.