They grew up under U.S. occupation. What happens when the troops leave?

His hair in a bun, face shadowed by his hoodie, Jawad Sezdah raps with his “homies” about Afghanistan’s darkening future. “What will happen to our achievements?” says 16-year-old Khurshid Muhammadi, a player on the 10-year-old Afghan women’s national soccer team. “For the past 20 years, people have aspired to lives that are very different, but Taliban are cut off from this reality,” said Shaharzad Akbar, chairperson of Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission. “Some of my bullets might have hit the soldiers.” Living just a three-hour drive from the Afghan capital, Sangari, unmarried and devout, admitted that he’d never visited Kabul. “Who will bring change if people kill her generation?” her mother says, quietly adding one wish for the future: “Don’t bring back the dark times.” 1 / 4 Halima Sarwar, 62, weeps as she visits the grave of daughter Fatima, who was killed in a car bombing, in Kabul, Afghanistan.