Documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy spent a year with Taliban recruiters and children who were training to become suicide bombers.

Her mission? To understand how the Taliban convert children into live ammunition, and why the children actively sign up to their cause.

Based on first-hand, up-close personal observation, Obaid-Chinoy believes the Taliban use a powerful five-step process

Twenty-two-year-old engineering student Ambreen Rahman knows what it takes to build strong bridges.

And it has nothing to do with steel or concrete.

"As long as you meet people with passion, compassion and understanding, you can make friends with them, and you can build a lot of bridges," she told me in a recent online interview.

Rahman should know, she’s been building bridges between

Susan notes: US journalist, author, blogger and self-confessed “dove” Sara Davidson is in Afghanistan researching the views of Afghan women on the US military presence in their country, and more. Her blog posts are fascinating. In this, the fifth to date, she documents some of the paradoxical views she and her colleagues have discovered. Links to Davidson's blog and website are at the end of this