Courtesy Beth Murphy / Principle Pictuers

A chicken vendor in Kabul, Afghanistan expresses sympathy for Bostonians after the marathon attack.

KABUL – After more than three decades of war, you would think Afghans would be desensitized to violent attacks like the Boston Marathon explosion. A Boston-based documentary filmmaker found just the opposite.

Instead of disregard, she found empathy among Kabul's residents for the three killed and more than 170 injured in the twin bomb blasts at the center of Boston 6,500 miles away. And she has the images to prove it. 

In the wake of the attacks, Beth Murphy awakened Tuesday morning in Afghanistan to a confounding text message from her husband.

"I thought at first I was re-reading my own message to him saying, 'Yes, I'm OK'," said Beth Murphy. She was referring to a text message she had sent her husband about a large-scale Taliban attack in western Afghanistan on April 3 that left more than 40 people dead.

"But it said, 'It's OK, we're safe.' So I did a double-take.

Courtesy Beth Murphy / Principle Pictures

A man with a donkey carriage in Kabul, Afghanistan relates to the victims of violence in Boston.

"I immediately went online before I even got back to him and saw what was happening in Boston, and [got] that overwhelming feeling of helplessness and sadness and feeling so far away. I thought, 'I'd really like to be home right now.'"

Murphy's husband, Dennis, and 5-year-old daughter were fine. But as a runner who had felt the joy and pain of crossing the finish line of the Boston Marathon, she felt compelled to do something.

In an effort to show solidarity with the city she calls home, Murphy set off for her day's work on a documentary project in Kabul armed with a simple sign she made that read: "To Boston From Kabul With Love."

Courtesy Beth Murphy / Principle Pictures

A bookseller in Kabul, Afghanistan expresses sympathy for Bostonians after the violent marathon attack.

Her initial plan was to photograph herself holding the sign and post it online but reactions from Afghans to the unfolding tragedy in Boston prompted a change of plans.

"As I started to talk with people here about what was happening, I saw the expressions on their faces change," she said. "They experience things like this here all the time. You might expect that they'd be desensitized to it or talk about it with a lack of compassion, but it was the exact opposite. There was this shared experience of pain and suffering, and the way people expressed that to me was really beautiful."

Those expressions led Murphy to ask permission to photograph them holding her sign – a spontaneous idea that quickly spread around the world and went viral on the Internet.

Murphy published a series of black and white photos rich with the color of everyday life here: a bookseller crouched before his wares, a chicken vendor with a trio of whole fryer birds hanging over his shoulder, a little girl's largely expressionless face starkly contrasted by those of her shrouded female relatives in the distance.

Courtesy Beth Murphy / Principle Pictures

Beth Murphy, a Boston-based documentary film maker set out on the streets of Kabul after the Boston Marathon attacks with a simple sign that read: "To Boston From Kabul With Love." She was overwhelmed with the expressions of sympathy by Afghans for Bostonians.

And the common thread binding the images and the people in them is a collective nod of empathy for the people of Boston.

"I've been really overwhelmed by the response," Murphy said. "It certainly wasn't anything that I anticipated. I'm happy that the pictures resonated because I think they speak to a common humanity that we all share."

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Rahmat Gul/AP

U.S. Black Hawk helicopters arrive to the scene after a NATO helicopter crashed in a field killing two American service members, near Gerakhel, eastern Afghanistan, on April 9.

Two American service members were killed in a helicopter crash Tuesday in eastern Afghanistan, the military said.

A spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said Tuesday that there was no enemy activity in the area when the crash occurred and that the cause was under investigation.

The helicopter went down in the Pachir Agam district of Nangarhar province, Reuters quoted Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, a spokesman for the governor's office, as saying.

Family, friends and State Department colleagues on Sunday were mourning the first death of an American diplomat on duty since Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed in the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11 last year.

Anne Smedinghoff, 25, was one of five Americans killed in a car bomb attack on Saturday in Zabul Province, Afghanistan, Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday. Three of the dead were U.S. service members and the fifth a civilian employee of the Defense Department, Kerry said.

Atia Abawi / NBC News

They had not been named as of Sunday morning.

Several Afghans and four other State Department employees were injured, one critically.

A sixth American civilian working with the U.S. government was killed in a separate attack in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, ISAF said in a statement.

"It's a grim reminder to all of us, though we didn't need any reminders, of how important and also how risky carrying the future is with people who want to resist," Kerry told State Department employees on Sunday during a visit in Istanbul, Turkey.

Smedinghoff, whose business card read "Assistant Information Officer," and the other Americans were traveling in a convoy to southern Afghanistan to deliver textbooks to children in Qalat, Kerry said. 

He'd met the Illinois-native several weeks ago when she worked as his control officer during his recent trip to Afghanistan. He described her as "vivacious, smart, capable."

"There are no words for anyone to describe the extraordinary harsh contradiction for a young 25-year-old woman, with all of her future ahead of her, believing in the possibilities of diplomacy to improve people's lives, making a difference, having an impact" to be killed, Kerry said.

He described Smedinghoff as "a selfless, idealistic woman who woke up yesterday morning and set out to bring textbooks to school children, to bring them knowledge."

Smedinghoff previously served in Venezuela.

In an email to the Washington Post, Smedinghoff's parents said their daughter "was always looking for opportunities to reach out and help to make a difference in the lives of those living in a country ravaged by war."

They added: "We are consoled knowing that she was doing what she loved, and that she was serving her country by helping to make a positive difference in the world."

Smedinghoff's parents, who live near Chicago, said in a statement published by the Chicago Sun-Times that she joined the Foreign Service after college.

"She particularly enjoyed the opportunity to work directly with the Afghan people and was always looking for opportunities to reach out and help to make a difference in the lives of those living in a country ravaged by war," her parents, Tom and Mary Beth Smedinghoff, said.

In comments posted on the newspaper's website, former friends and colleagues expressed grief and disbelief.

"I am a friend and colleague of Anne. We were in Spanish class and served in Venezuela together. Anne was a light in an otherwise dark world. She made a difference to everyone she met," one commenter identified as David C. Grier, said.

Smedinghoff recently helped NBC News coordinate a report on "Buzkashi Boys," the short film nominated for an Oscar starring an Afghan boy who was discovered on the streets of Kabul.

Local Afghan producer Khyber Shinwari described her as "a lovely lady, charming – smiling on her face."

"She was very open and so helpful. So kind," he said. "She was here to help Afghans."

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the Zabul attack in a text message Saturday. The assault came just three days after 54 people were killed in another Taliban attack on a courtroom in the western Farah province of Afghanistan.

The United Nations has said civilians are increasingly being targeted this year.

On his first day in office, Kerry said the safety of State Department employees was a top priority, in the wake of the attack that killed Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi. No one has been convicted as of yet.

NBC News' Jamieson Lesko, Kiko Itsaka and Catherine Chomiak, and The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

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54 killed, 90 wounded in attack on Afghan compound

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This story was originally published on Sun Apr 7, 2013 6:04 PM EDT

KABUL, Afghanistan -- As tens of thousands of American troops prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan in time for the 2014 deadline set by the White House, another exodus is gathering pace: Afghans fleeing their country’s violence and economic uncertainty.

“The international community is leaving and we are right behind them,” Khalid Gul, a 23-year-old university student, said in a trendy Kabul café. “Ninety percent of Afghans, they want to leave Afghanistan for the same reason: education and instability.” 

He and his friends frequently discuss how they would leave and where they would go. Their top choices are America, Canada and Europe.

“If Americans – the soldiers and the troops – leave here we will have no proper security and we will have the Taliban here again,” Shorab Shinwari, a 21-year-old IT expert, said.

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

The threat of political upheaval is another worry, with the presidential election scheduled for April next year.

And as international funding dries up and with many international companies due to shut down after the departure of foreign troops, Afghanistan’s economy is set to shrink dramatically. Foreign embassies are also being scaled down. 

“Fear of instability in 2014 is driving emigration of the very people and money that could prevent instability,” STATT, an NGO that does research and polling, said in its January 2013 Afghan Migration in Flux report. “Most foresee a future of conflict, instability and chaos as fait accompli for the country.”

Some Afghans scrambling to get out any way they can are paying $30,000 to 50,000 on the black market for fake passports and passage to another country, an exorbitant sum in a country where average annual income is estimated to be under the $500 a year. A recent Afghan police raid picked up dozens of false Canadian, Pakistani and Afghan passports and numerous forged visas. 

Meanwhile the rural poor – farmers and laborers – have fewer options. If they are forced to move because of violence, they often end up unemployed in refugee camps, which many find shameful.

Muhammed Muheisen / AP

Afghan refugee Abdulkareem Khan, 80, smokes a cigarette while watching his sheep, not pictured, feeding in a field on the on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, on April 3. Abdulkareem, a shepherd from Afghanistan's north-eastern city of Kunduz, fled the violence in his hometown in 2007 along with 22 members of his family and 60 sheep and took refuge in Pakistan.

Ali, a herder from Ghanzi province, has been in Kabul for three weeks living on handouts. He said he will probably return to the violent territory because “it is better than this life,” referring to living like a refugee. 

Afghans already make up the biggest refugee population in the world at almost 3 million, with waves having left during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and again during the country’s civil war a decade later, according to the UNHCR.

Some 5.7 million Afghans returned in the first few years after the 2001 U.S.-led intervention that toppled the Taliban regime, hopeful that living conditions in their country were improving.

With peace and prosperity remaining elusive, the tide of migrants shifted again.  In 2011, more people fled Afghanistan than in any other year since the start of the decade-long war, according to the latest statistics published by the UNHCR in January 2012.

 Nearly 36,000 Afghans applied for political asylum worldwide, but the true number is likely higher because so many are smuggled out and impossible to count. 

“This last 10 years was an extraordinary period ... [which saw] an extraordinary amount of focus and support for Afghanistan, which is not going to happen again,” said Loftullah Najafizada, head of current affairs at the Afghan news channel, TOLO TV.

Muhammed Muheisen / AP

Afghan refugee children play with tires on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, on March 1. Pakistan hosts over 1.6 million registered Afghans, the largest and most protracted refugee population in the world.

“We have to understand that as a poor South Asian country we have to face some of these challenges which are pretty natural to a war-torn country coming out of decades of conflict. You cannot skip that challenge; you have to walk through it and it takes time,” he said.

Shorab Shinwari and his friends aren’t waiting.

“I thought our country was going to develop, I was hoping to live here and have a good future,” Shinwari said. “Nobody wants to live in such a country where there is war. Everyone wants to have a good life.”

“I can do nothing for Afghanistan so I have to leave Afghanistan,” his friend, Khalid Gul, agreed. “We have to go. That is the full and final answer.”

Related:

54 killed, 90 wounded in attack on Afghan compound

Afghan villagers flee their homes, blame US drones

War of words erupts in Afghanistan over 2014 US troop pullout

A U.S. military pilot was killed when his F-16 fighter jet crashed while on a night flight over mountainous terrain in Afghanistan, officials said Thursday.

There was no indication of enemy fire in the area at the time of the Wednesday’s crash, in the east of the country.

“While the cause of the crash is under investigation, initial reporting indicates there was no insurgent activity in the area at the time of the crash,” an official with the U.S.-led international coalition, ISAF, said in a statement.

While there have been F-16 accidents and even one deadly crash recently - one crashed into the Adriatic earlier this year- such an incident is very rare in Afghanistan, where helicopters are more at risk.

Meanwhile, officials in the country’s Ghazni province said 6 people were killed, including four local police force members, by a NATO airstrike on Wednesday evening.

The Afghan Local Police (ALP) were attacked while patrolling in the village of Sulaimanzai, in the district of Deh Yak.

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:

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• US Air Force stops reporting data on Afghanistan drone strikes
• Photos document alleged US drone strike victims in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan's intelligence agency has accused the Afghan government of supporting Taliban splinter groups.

In a report presented to Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, the ISI agency alleged President Hamid Karzai’s administration was in league with groups linked to the main Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan movement, known collectively as the TTS.

The report suggested the "recent nexus of TTS with Afghan government is likely to enhance the terrorist activities" in areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border such as Mohman, Bajaur, Dir, Swat and Chitral.

Jason Reed / Reuters

Secretary of State John Kerry, left, listens to Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai during their joint news conference at the presidential palace in Kabul on Thursday.

Anti-Pakistan elements, particularly from across the border in Afghanistan, had provided "strong support" in terms of money, logistics and training and this was “one of the main factors for increased militancy,” the report said.

However, it added that the Taliban’s ability to act "at will and to face security forces openly has been substantially curtailed." 

The report said that internal rifts within the main Pakistani Taliban group had led to the creation of splinter groups.

"TTS, after having been dislodged from area, has resorted to [suicide bomb and improvised explosive device] attacks" on law-enforcement agencies and other officials, the report said.

The court is considering a case involving seven people who are being kept in one of several internment centers in the border area, despite being acquitted by an anti-terrorism court because of lack of evidence against them.

The ISI report was submitted to justify the internment centers and military operations against militants more generally.

The ISI said it was not going to release people held at the internment centers, warning that the detainees included terrorists who could go to cities like Islamabad and Lahore and launch attacks.

It said that 3,871 Pakistani security personnel, more than 3,000 militants and more than 5,000 civilians had been killed in the border area in the last five years.

There had been 235 suicide attacks, 9,257 rocket attacks and 4,256 bombings during the same period, the report added.

Afghanistan and Pakistan have a difficult relationship.

Islamabad has accused Kabul of failing to stop anti-government militants from operating from mountain havens in Afghanistan, while Kabul has blamed Pakistan’s military for cross-border shelling.

In September, Afghanistan’s foreign minister told the United Nations Security Council that diplomatic ties with Pakistan were under threat.

The Afghan foreign ministry declined to comment on the ISI report.

Earlier this month, Karzai claimed that the Taliban was carrying out attacks in Afghanistan "in service of America."

On Monday, after a private meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry in Kabul, Karzai insisted he had not meant to suggest that the United States was colluding with the Taliban, Reuters reported.

"I never used the word 'collusion' between the Taliban and the U.S. Those were not my words. Those were the [words] picked up by the media," he said.

Kerry said the two men had discussed the matter but he played it down, Reuters reported. "I am confident that the president absolutely does not believe that the United States has any interest except to see the Taliban come to the table to make peace."

NBC News' Akbar Shinwari and Reuters contributed to this report.

Slideshow: Pakistan: A nation in turmoil

K.m. Chaudary / AP

Images of daily life, political pursuits, religious rites and deadly violence.

Launch slideshow

Related:

Taliban threat forces Pakistan's Musharraf to cancel welcome rally

Karzai accuses US and Taliban of conspiring to keep troops in Afghanistan