Anja Niedringhaus / AP

Prisoners in their cell at Badam Bagh, Afghanistan's central women's prison, in Kabul. A total of 202 women are imprisoned in the six-year-old jail, the majority of them in connection to so-called "moral" crimes.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

A prisoner with her child.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

Mariam, who shot the man who raped her, has spent the past three months in Badam Bagh prison without any idea of why she was imprisoned, what charges she faces or when she can leave.

Lost and alone in a strange city Mariam called the only person she knew, her husband's cousin. She had left her home in Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province, fleeing her husband's relentless and increasingly vicious beatings. The man promised to help, but too busy to come himself he sent a friend who took her to a house, held a gun to her head and raped her.

Finished with her he settled in front of a TV set, the gun on a table by his side. Choosing her moment, Mariam picked up the gun, shot her assailant in the head and turned the gun on herself.

"Three days later I woke up in the hospital," she said, shyly removing a scarf from her head to reveal a partially shaved head and a long jagged scar that ran almost the length of her head where the bullet grazed her scalp.

From the hospital Mariam was sent to a police station and from there to Badam Bagh, Afghanistan's central women's prison, where she told her story to The Associated Press. For the past three months Mariam has been waiting to find out what charges she faces.

Mariam is one of 202 women living in the six-year-old jail. The majority are serving sentences of up to seven years for leaving their husbands, refusing to accept a marriage arranged by their parents, or choosing to leave their parents' home with a man of their choice — all so-called "moral" crimes, says the prison's director general Zaref Jan Naebi. Read the full story.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

Adia, 27, left her husband, a drug addict, seeking shelter with her parents. They told her to go home to her husband, who had followed her demanding she return. She went to court to seek help but instead they sentenced her to six years in prison. Seven months pregnant, Adia will have her baby in jail.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

A prisoner hanging up laundry on a small patch of open space surrounded by a razor-topped fence.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

A prisoner outside her cell.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

Prisoner Nuria with her infant son. "When I went to court for the divorce, instead of giving me a divorce, they charged me with running away," Nuria said. The man she wanted to marry was also charged and is now serving time in Afghanistan's notorious Pul-e-Charkhi prison.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

Children walking through the prison. 62 children live with their imprisoned mothers in the jail.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

Fauzia is the oldest woman in the jail and has already served seven years. She will serve a 17 year sentence for killing her husband and her daughter-in-law. "I was in one room. I came into the next room and they were there having sexual relations. I found a big knife and killed them both," she said in a voice empty of emotion.

Editor's note: Pictures taken on March 28, 2013 and made available to NBC News today.

Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Rahmat Gul / AP

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

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Related:

Newlywed Afghan beheaded for her refusal to become prostitute

Afghanistan's female powerhouses: a rapper, a colonel and 'mother' to hundreds

Afghan artists use graffiti to depict violence and injustice of women's lives

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

Men peer through the former window of a destroyed school in the village of Budyali, Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, on March 19, 2013. Taliban militants attacked the nearby district headquarters in July 2011, then took refuge in the school. The Afghan National Army requested help from coalition forces, who responded with drones, fighter jets and rockets, leaving the school destroyed, according to village elders.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

Ahmed Shah, 12, center, recalls the attack on his village in the yard of a house where he and his family found refuge in the village of Khalis, Nangarhar province, on March 20, 2013.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

Ghulam Rasool sits in the yard of his house in Khalis on March 20, 2013.

Barely able to walk even with a cane, Ghulam Rasool says he padlocked his front door, handed over the keys and his three cows to a neighbor and fled his mountain home in the middle of the night to escape relentless airstrikes from U.S. drones targeting militants in a remote corner of Afghanistan.

Rasool and other Afghan villagers have their own name for Predator drones. They call them benghai, which in the Pashto language means the "buzzing of flies." When they explain the noise, they scrunch their faces and try to make a sound that resembles an army of flies.

"They are evil things that fly so high you don't see them but all the time you hear them," said Rasool, whose body is stooped and shrunken with age and his voice barely louder than a whisper. "Night and day we hear this sound and then the bombardment starts." Read the full story.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

Boys study in a makeshift school in the village of Budyali, Nangarhar province, on March 19, 2013.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

Papers and schoolbooks lie among the debris of a destroyed school in the village of Budyali, Nangarhar province, on March 19, 2013.

Anja Niedringhaus / AP

Men walk through the debris of the destroyed school in the village of Budyali, Nangarhar province, on March 19, 2013.

Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Rahmat Gul / AP

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Launch slideshow

Related:

• Drone protesters arrested at Air Force base in Nevada
• US Air Force stops reporting data on Afghanistan drone strikes
• Photos document alleged US drone strike victims in Pakistan

Omar Sobhani / Reuters

Afghan security forces run on the roof of the Kabul traffic police headquarters as it is attacked by insurgents on Jan. 21, 2013.

Reuters reports — Suicide bombers and gunmen launched an eight-hour assault on the headquarters of the Kabul traffic police on Monday, Afghan officials said, in the second coordinated attack on a government building in less than a week.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the operation in which all five attackers and three traffic police officers were killed, interior ministry officials said.

The attack raised the possibility that insurgents were shifting tactics, testing Afghan security forces in Kabul after a series of high-profile attacks on Western targets last year. Read the full story.

Omar Sobhani / Reuters

Afghan police officers run to the Kabul traffic police headquarters as it is attacked by insurgents on Jan. 21, 2013.

Shah Marai / AFP - Getty Images

Black smoke billows from the Afghan police headquarters during an attack in Kabul on Jan. 21, 2013.

Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Aref Karimi / AFP - Getty Images

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

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Rahmat Gul / AP

Prayers are said at the graves of children killed by a mine explosion in Chaparhar, in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, on Dec. 17, 2012. An exploding bomb or land mine killed ten young girls as they were gathering firewood outside their village in the east of the country.

By NBC News staff and wire reports — A blast killed 10 Afghan girls Monday as they were collecting firewood in eastern Afghanistan, government officials said.

It was not immediately clear what caused the explosion in volatile Nangarhar province. It could have been a bomb planted by Taliban insurgents or a landmine left over from decades of conflict.

Slideshow: Nation at a crossroads

Meanwhile, a truck full of explosives blew up when it hit the offices of a U.S.-based company in the capital, Kabul, killing one person and wounding at least 15, Kabul Police Chief Gen. Ayoub Salangi said. Read the full story.

Musadeq Sadeq / AP

Security personnel of the Contrack company stand at the scene of an explosion in Kabul on Dec. 17, 2012. A car bomb exploded outside a compound housing a U.S. military contractor in the Afghan capital Monday, blowing apart an exterior wall and wounding dozens inside, company representatives and police said.

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Adnan Abidi / Reuters

Patients sit inside their ward at a mental hospital in Kabul on November 11, 2012. The war in Afghanistan is creating a generation of people mentally damaged by their exposure to incessant conflict, a buildup of problems which could undermine the country's reconstruction and development efforts.

Reuters reports — On a low bed in a quiet, all-female hospital ward, a depressed Afghan teenager huddles silently under blankets, her mother close by. In a nearby room are men suffering from schizophrenia, delusions of persecution and power, anxiety and panic disorders.

As Taliban regroup, victims battle for 'free' Afghanistan

Among them are some of the unseen victims of the war in Afghanistan: a generation of people mentally damaged by their exposure to incessant conflict.

Adnan Abidi / Reuters

Ghazia Sadid, 26, a patient suffering from depression, speaks during an interview with Reuters at a mental hospital in Kabul on November 14, 2012.

Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Aref Karimi / AFP - Getty Images

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

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Ghazia Sadid, a 26-year-old mother, endured depression for years after a family member was killed in a bomb attack, and she fled her home in fear of more violence.

"I still hear the sounds of explosions. I still remember the fighting, but since I have come here my behavior has changed," she said, speaking at the Kabul Mental Health Hospital, a green-walled building on the outskirts of the city.

"I was totally lost and my life was over. After two years of treatment, now I love my children," she said. "I loved them then too, but in my imagination I had done something wrong." Read the full story.

When the war comes home: Watch a video about U.S. soldiers' struggles with PTSD and other mental issues after returning from Afghanistan

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Adnan Abidi / Reuters

A patient scribbles on his hand as he sits inside his ward at a mental hospital in Kabul on November 11, 2012.

Adnan Abidi / Reuters

Patients sit inside their ward at a mental hospital in Kabul on November 11, 2012.

Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

U.S. and Afghan soldiers rest during a operation on a cold morning near the town of Walli Was in Paktika province, Afghanistan on November 2, 2012.

As the rigors of an Afghan winter started to take effect, soldiers wrapped themselves in blankets to protect against the cold on a rocky outcrop in the east of the country on Friday morning. 

Reuters photographer Goran Tomasevic, who won a Frontline Club award last week for the "unparalleled combat photography" he produced in a previous project, 18 days with the Syrian rebels, is currently documenting U.S. and Afghan troops in the country's Paktika province.

According to a report by The Associated Press last month, al-Qaida is attempting a comeback in Afghanistan's mountainous east as U.S. and allied forces wind down their combat mission and concede a small but steady toehold to the terrorist group. 

Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

U.S. and Afghan soldiers and a U.S. Army Chinook during an operation near the town of Walli Was in Paktika province on November 1, 2012.

Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

A soldier of B Troop, 1st squadron of the 4th US Cavalry Regiment works with a shovel next to a mired truck near COP (Combat Outpost) Sar Howza in Paktika province on October 29, 2012.

Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

An AK-47 rifle belonging to an Afghan policeman lies on the ground as other policemen grill meat during the celebration of the Muslim Eid Al Adha festival in COP Sar Howza in Paktika province on October 26, 2012.

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Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Aref Karimi / AFP - Getty Images

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Launch slideshow

GRAPHIC WARNING: This post contains graphic images which some viewers may find disturbing. 

Munir Uz Zaman / AFP - Getty Images

US Army soldiers attached to 2nd platoon, C troop, 1st Squadron (Airborne), 91st U.S Cavalry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team protect a wounded comrade, Private Ryan Thomas, from dust and smoke flares after an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast during a patrol near Baraki Barak base in Logar Province, Afghanistan on October 13, 2012.

Munir Uz Zaman / AFP - Getty Images

Private Ryan Thomas receives medical assistance after he was injured.

Munir Uz Zaman / AFP - Getty Images

US Army soldiers carry Private Ryan Thomas to a waiting helicopter.

Photographer Munir uz Zaman captured these photos on Saturday, October 13 after a U.S. soldier was injured by the blast from an Improvised Explosive Device during a patrol in eastern Afghanistan. The photos were made available to NBC News today.

21-year-old Private Ryan Thomas, an Oklahoman with the 173rd Airborne, suffered soft tissue damage and was scheduled to be evacuated to Germany after surgery in Afghanistan. Watch a video of the operation to extract him after he was injured. 

Slideshow — Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

After 11 years of war, 2,135 U.S. soldiers dead, their Afghan colleagues turning on them, and widespread predictions the conflict will end in failure, coalition forces could be forgiven for suffering a dip in morale, Agence France Presse reports. But commanders and soldiers on the ground insist the challenges are bringing them closer together, even if the outcome of the war is uncertain and the perception of what constitutes success has changed. 

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Roberto Schmidt / AFP - Getty Images

A man and child ride a donkey along a road leading into the small town of Baharak in Northeastern Afghanistan in the late afternoon on October 6, 2012.

The town is located in a fertile valley which is fed by the Kokcha river and is ringed by rugged arid mountains to the north and south. The province of Badakhshan, which shares borders with Tajikistan, China and Pakistan, is mostly inhabited by ethnic Tajik, Uzbek and Kyrgyz people.

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Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Aref Karimi / AFP - Getty Images

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

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Vyacheslav Oseledko / AFP - Getty Images

A hunter holds his golden eagle during the "Salburun" hunting festival in Bokonbayevo, Kyrgyzstan, Oct. 6.

Vyacheslav Oseledko / AFP - Getty Images

A hunter holds his golden eagle in Bokonbayevo, Kyrgyzstan, on Oct. 6.

Related content on PhotoBlog:

• Eagles soar when an ancient tradition comes to life
• The last stag hunt: 45 years of stalking deer in Scotland

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Massoud Hossaini / AFP - Getty Images

Afghan police officers listen during a police graduation ceremony at the interior ministry in Kabul on July 17, 2012. Five hundred and thirty five police officers graduated during the ceremony.

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Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

Ahmad Jamshid / AP

More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.

Launch slideshow