• Lessons learned in Afghanistan

    See our full coverage on international hot spots crucial to U.S. foreign policy ahead of elections in our At the Brink series here.

    NBC’s Richard Engel examines America’s progress after fighting for more than a decade in Afghanistan.

    Is there any evidence that the American plan to hand over a credible, stable Afghan government will work? 

    Engel reports from Kabul. 

     

     

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  • Death threats force Afghan actress into hiding

    Sahar Parniyan, 22, is Afghanistan’s most famous actress. She stars in the country’s number one comedy, “The Ministry,” an offshoot of the popular American TV show, “The Office.”

    See our full coverage on international hot spots crucial to U.S. foreign policy ahead of elections in our At the Brink series here. And tune in today to special coverage on all NBC News platforms from NBC’s team of anchors and correspondents deployed in five countries across the region.

    Her character on the show has also been outspoken about women’s rights. But now, after receiving death threats, she is now in hiding.

    NBC’s Atia Abawi reports from Kabul.

     

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  • NBC's Lester Holt answers your questions about Afghanistan

    Joint US-Afghan operations are becoming more common, and so are the risks. NBC's Lester Holt reports.

    See our full coverage on international hot spots crucial to U.S. foreign policy ahead of elections in our At the Brink series here. And tune in today to special coverage on all NBC News platforms from NBC’s team of anchors and correspondents deployed in five countries across the region.

    Lester Holt, NBC News' anchor, is in Afghanistan reporting on the state of the U.S. mission there 11 years after the start of the war. 

    What is the state of the war? Where are the Taliban?  How much longer will U.S. troops be there? What about all the repeat deployments for U.S. soldiers?

    Lester answered reader questions about Afghanistan earlier today.

    Please click on the box below to replay the informative chat. 

     From Lester Holt: For US soldiers, repeat deployments 'definitely take a toll'

     

  • For US soldiers, repeat deployments 'definitely take a toll'

    The Third Infantry Division is used to being deployed. Now, after multiple deployments to Iraq, the 3rd ID has been sent to Afghanistan for the first time. NBC's Lester Holt reports.

    By Lester Holt, NBC News

    KABUL – “How many deployments for you? Iraq, Afghanistan or both?”

    See our full coverage on international hot spots crucial to U.S. foreign policy ahead of elections in our At the Brink series here. And tune in today to special coverage on all NBC News platforms from NBC’s team of anchors and correspondents deployed in five countries across the region.

    In an army that’s been waging war in Afghanistan for 11 years, talking about past deployments is what amounts to small talk on the many bases I’ve visited this past week from Kabul to Kandahar, as well as along the Pakistan border in eastern Afghanistan. Soldiers rattle off the dates and locations of their deployments, and point out fellow soldiers with whom they served.

    The Army’s Third Infantry Division moved its headquarters recently from its home base at Fort Stewart, Ga., to Kandahar, Afghanistan. The move marked the division’s first deployment to Afghanistan, but it’s fifth to a war zone in the last 10 years. 

    The Third Infantry Division made history in 2003 when it kicked off the war in Iraq as the so-called “tip of the spear,” driving up from Kuwait straight into Baghdad in what veterans remember as the “Thunder Run.”

    Sgt. First Class Joseph Aiello says he couldn’t imagine back then that he would be in Afghanistan nine years later, still fighting a war.  When the Iraq war began, he was dating his sweetheart Terri. Today they are parents to three small children. Aiello has been on four of the division's five deployments since 2003.

    “It definitely takes a toll on family,” Aiello told me. He added, however, that worrying about home and family when you are in a war zone has its risks.

    “The minute you lose focus that’s when incidents can start to happen,” said Aiello. “You need to maintain focus while you’re here to do a job and that’s what we will get done.”

    The  Daily Rundown's Chuck Todd touches base with NBC reporters across the Mid-East including NBC's Atia Abawi in Kabul, Martin Fletcher in Tel Aviv, Ali Arouzi in Tehran and Ann Curry from the Syrian border.

    Serving on the home front, too
    Back in Georgia, Aiello’s wife, Terri, makes her own contribution to the war, as a physical therapist assistant helping wounded vets. At home she has become accustomed to living the life of a single mom.

    Photo Blog: Exploring home abroad: Afghan-Americans in Kabul

    “A bad day would be having a stressful day [at work] and then going home and the boys are fighting, Alyssa’s cranky and the homework’s not done,” she said about her three children.

    She’s learned to push ahead alone. “Nothing really changes. It’s just that he’s not there to experience everything with us.” 

    Her sacrifices are not lost on her husband.


    “A lot of people say that the soldiers got a hard job and everything like that. But the way I look at it, sir, is I definitely think the wives have the hardest job in the Army,” Aiello told me.

    ‘No different’
    Aiello is one of only a handful of Third Infantry Division soldiers with the unit today who were part of the original march into Baghdad back in 2003. The division’s pace of deployments over the last 10 years is nothing short of remarkable, but no more remarkable than the multiple deployments that have become the norm for thousands of U.S. service members.

    Eleven years of war have left tens of thousands of service families, like the Aiellos, sharing the void of long and too frequent separations.

    Maj. Gen. Robert Abrams, commanding general of the Third Infantry Division and the International Security Assistance Force’s Regional Command-South, underscored the point.

    “There are others making equal sacrifices across the army, so we don’t see ourselves any different,” Abrams said.

    Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

    Anwarullah / Reuters

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

    Launch slideshow

    Aiello recalled the long wait for letters from home in those early days following the Iraq invasion. Now he does video chats with his family regularly via Skype, which didn’t exist in 2003.

    On the TODAY Show this weekend, dozens of service members crowded around our broadcast location here at the joint task force headquarters for ISAF in Kabul. Many of them carried signs with pictures of the children whose birthdays, and sweet-16 parties they are missing back home.

    A suicide bomber in Afghanistan kills at least 14 people, including 3 NATO service members, bringing the US death toll on the ground to 2,000 with 20 percent of American combat deaths stemming from insider attacks. NBC's Richard Engel reports.

    The international coalition has set the end of 2014 to withdraw most combat forces from Afghanistan. In the meantime, the United States will continue to ask a lot from so few. The troops and the families will wait for them to return one day and stay home for good.

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  • Three US soldiers among at least 14 killed by Afghan suicide bomber

    By NBC's Courtney Kube and wire reports

    A suicide bomber detonated a device in Afghanistan on Monday, killing three U.S. soldiers, one interpreter and four members of the Afghan National Police, a military official told NBC News.

    Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads

    Anwarullah / Reuters

    Launch slideshow

    The U.S. soldiers and Afghan police were on a dismounted partner patrol near the center of the Khost region in eastern Afghanistan. The attacker approached and detonated as they were preparing to get back in their vehicles.

    Six civilians also died in the attack, Reuters reported. 

    Despite reports that the bomber was riding a motorcycle, the official said there was no evidence of that. The official added that the dead interpreter is thought to be Afghan.

    More Afghanistan coverage from NBC News

    On Saturday night, an Afghan soldier approached Americans, killing a soldier and a contractor; with that, the number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan is around 2,100 in the United States' 11-year-war in the country. Insider attacks have become increasingly common – and no one seems to have a good answer about how to stop them. NBC's Lester Holt and Richard Engel report from Kabul.

    A witness told Reuters a suicide bomber was wearing a police uniform.

    The bombing followed the killing of two Americans on Sunday in an exchange of fire with Afghan forces.

    Insider attacks by members of the Afghan security forces against NATO allies have resulted in at least 52 deaths this year among foreign forces and this month prompted a tightening of rules for joint patrols between coalition and Afghan forces. 

    NBC's Richard Engel examines America's progress after fighting for more than a decade in Afghanistan. Is there any evidence that the American plan to hand over a credible, stable Afghan government will work?

    Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • Leaving the comfortable life in America to help Afghanistan

    Photojournalist Andrea Bruce writes: "After covering the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 10 years, I found it important to bring attention to the similarities in the cultures involved in these conflicts. I believe that getting people to relate to each other in different countries and from various religions is the first step to empathy during war. I hope photography can help cut down stereotypes and cliches." To this end, Bruce photographed Afghan-Americans who left comfortable lives in the U.S. to work in unstable Afghanistan.

    Andrea Bruce / Alicia Patterson Foundation - NOOR

    Aman Mojadidi, 41, artist.

    "Afghanistan definitely didn’t seem like home per se but it was very much this place where my family was from, and I still had this very strong kind of sense of having an Afghan identity … it makes me kind of understand more my American identity. It's funny ... [it took] growing up in the U.S. to feel Afghan and it took living in Afghanistan to feel American.

    "I think probably by far one of my favorite ones [art projects], yeah, was the pay back, which was basically a fake checkpoint set up on the street in Kabul where we offered money back to some vehicles rather than asking for bribes … trying to take something that a lot of people spoke about all the time, which was the corruption, the bribes that they have to pay and all this kind of stuff and turn it into, you know, an art work and kind of flip it on its head."

    Andrea Bruce / Alicia Patterson Foundation - NOOR

    Hassina Sherjan, 51, girls' school founder and administrator.

    "I really believe in what I’m doing, and when you really believe in what you do, you hardly get frustrated. I started clandestine girls schools in '90s. We have 3900 students in nine provinces. I don’t really see it as an Afghan thing or an American thing. You just do what you need to do.

    "As the elite who left when everything became rough, we have a responsibility to come back and do something here. Not to just be comfortable and make money but to do something. To really make a difference. And a lot of us can. There are a lot of Afghans abroad who are educated, who have done a lot of work, who understand education building, who understand governments ... but nobody is coming."

    Andrea Bruce / Alicia Patterson Foundation - NOOR

    Koukaba Mojadidi, 35, an architect for International Organization for Migration in Afghanistan working on building a womens' center and police training facilities.

    "I grew up in Jacksonville, Fla. Which was really boring, most of the time. Very safe, very quiet. We never struggled. Upper middle class, living on a river. Pretty fortunate. 

    "Both of my parents are from Afghanistan. The minute I came into my house, I was living in a different set of rules, a different context. And the minute I left my house, I was living in the real world. Having to consider both cultures at the same time, all the time. For instance, we couldn’t socialize with a lot of Americans. My parents were really into keeping our heritage alive, our culture alive. There are are more differences than similarities, in my parents' minds.

    "Everything in your life before you are 18 revolves around how you fit in in school, and learning how to establish yourself as an individual ... and at the same time you are balancing western ideas of your culture. Individualism (in the US) contrasts deeply to the idea of Afghan culture which is all about being a collective and being together and being close and feeling what that other person is feeling, and being emotionally enmeshed in everyone’s problems."

    Andrea Bruce / Alicia Patterson Foundation - NOOR

    Mustafa Ali Nouri, 44, an architect for the International Organization for Migration in Afghanistan working to build a womens' center and police training facilities.

    "In the end, home for me will always be Washington [DC]. The longest period of time in my life was there. I will always consider it my hometown. But I feel I have roots here. Emotions that I don’t know how to explain. You feel connected to the land. Doesn’t matter how dusty it is, or how terrible it might be in some ways. Even as an architect, the environmental mess, but at the same time there is something beautiful about this place.

    "Because I am Afghan American, I feel I can see it better. I can see it in the eyes of the young people. They are craving to be a part of the world society. How can they go back to before 2001? You can not drag them. Either push them out or exterminate. But it is in their brain now. You can not kill that. They know now. They know what is out there in the world. They want to be. They want to have a society for themselves and for their children where they can have opportunities. They are the ones that give me a lot of hope."

    Andrea Bruce / Alicia Patterson Foundation - NOOR

    Tooba Mayel, 38, Gender Justice Advisor with International Development Law Organization. She monitors protection centers who work on legal and mediation cases. IDLO's work is currently supporting the work of lawyers and training programs for prosecutors who defend victims of violence, since violence and protection laws are vague or not implemented. Training and working with local authorities is vital during this time in Afghanistan, Mayel believes.

    "Being an Afghan-American to me means that I am able to unite two different worlds under one frame of thought, mind and heart that exceeds boundaries and distances. As an individual that was raised under two cultures, where experiences and circumstances have taken me from conflict to freedom, from a poor nation to a rich one, from deep rooted traditions to new and modern ideologies, but more importantly the courage and the compassion to come back where vulnerable peoples fight for human liberties. 

    "I have not only helped a country I call my motherland in its rehabilitation and progress, but also that same country has taught me to be sensitive to issues of human rights and not to take for granted the liberties that America has raised me with."

    Photographer Bruce continues: "In the process of covering Afghanistan, I met many Afghan-Americans who said they sometimes feel caught between two different worlds. And they have felt the events of the past 20 years most harshly. When Sept. 11 happened, many saw great possibilities in combining their two homelands. Since then, some have wrestled with their identity. Others have become disillusioned. Regardless, all of them have spent a lot of time thinking about their two countries, and what dual-citizenship means to them in a time of war."

    See more images from Afghanistan's current events in this slideshow, and more Afghanistan images in PhotoBlog. 

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  • Afghan 'insider' attack marks grim milestone for US troop deaths

    In light of recent attacks, troops are told to "build trust, but make sure you have a bodyguard present." NBC's Richard Engel reports.

    By NBC News staff and wire reports

    Updated at 5:54 p.m. ET: An apparent insider attack by Afghan forces has killed a U.S. service member and a contractor, officials said Sunday – bringing the total number of U.S. troops killed inside Afghanistan to 2,000 according to some measures.

    A U.S. official confirmed the latest death in the 11-year-old conflict on Sunday.

    The American service member killed was a soldier. The American contractor was working as a trainer for either the Afghan army or police, according to NBC News.

    On Saturday night, an Afghan soldier approached Americans, killing a soldier and a contractor; with that, the number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan is around 2,100 in the United States' 11-year-war in the country. Insider attacks have become increasingly common – and no one seems to have a good answer about how to stop them. NBC's Lester Holt and Richard Engel report from Kabul.

    The attack happened Saturday at a checkpoint on a highway in Wardak Province, a defense official said. Two Afghan National Army soldiers approached the checkpoint and had a brief conversation with the troops there. One of the ANA soldiers then shot and killed the American service members and the contractor, officials told NBC News.

    With a suspected "insider" attack at a checkpoint. the US military has suffered its 2,000th death in the war in Afghanistan.  NBC's Atia Abawi and Mike Viqueira report.

    A brief firefight ensued, and left at least three Afghan Army soldiers dead - including the initial shooter, officials said.

    The Afghan military claimed the Americans were killed by a mortar attack, but the American military insisted that is not true, that the Afghan soldier opened fire and they returned fire.

    The dead U.S. soldier was identified as Sgt. 1st Class Riley G. Stephens, 39, of Tolar, Texas. Stephens was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne), based at Fort Bragg, N.C.

     

    The U.S. toll in Afghanistan has climbed steadily in recent months with a spate of attacks by Afghan army and police against American and NATO troops, and questions about whether allied countries will achieve their aim of helping the Afghan government and its forces stand on their own after most foreign troops depart in little more than two years. The U.S. is preparing to withdraw most of its combat forces by the end of 2014.

    The Associated Press reported Sunday that the latest death was the 2,000th member of the U.S. armed services killed inside Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion on Oct. 7, 2001.  However, that AP figure did not include those who died after sustaining injuries in Afghanistan or those killed in other countries as part of the same campaign against al-Qaida and the Taliban.

    TODAY's Lester Holt heads down the road to Sangasar, the physical and spiritual heart of the Taliban. He speaks with American and Afghan soldiers along the way.

    According to icasualties.org, an independent monitoring organization which uses the wider definition, the latest death brings the toll of U.S. service members to 2035. At least a further 1,190 coalition troops have also died in the Afghanistan war, it says.

    The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based research center, said 40.2 percent of the deaths were caused by improvised explosive devices, with the majority of those after 2009 when President Barack Obama ordered a surge of 33,000 troops to combat heightened Taliban activity. According to the Washington-based research center, the second highest cause, 30.6 percent, was hostile fire.

    Tracking civilian deaths is much more difficult. According to the U.N., 13,431 civilians were killed in the Afghan conflict between 2007, when the U.N. began keeping statistics, and the end of August. Going back to the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, most estimates put the number of Afghan deaths in the war at more than 20,000.

    The 2001 invasion targeted al-Qaida and its Taliban allies after the Sept. 11 attacks, which claimed nearly 3,000 lives in the United States.

    "The tally is modest by the standards of war historically, but every fatality is a tragedy and 11 years is too long," Michael O'Hanlon, a fellow at the Brookings, told the AP. "All that is internalized, however, in an American public that has been watching this campaign for a long time. More newsworthy right now are the insider attacks and the sense of hopelessness they convey to many. "

    Attacks by Afghan soldiers or police — or insurgents disguised in their uniforms — have killed 52 American and other NATO troops so far this year.

    The so-called insider attacks are considered one of the most serious threats to the U.S. exit strategy from the country. In its latest incarnation, that strategy has focused on training Afghan forces to take over security nationwide — allowing most foreign troops to go home by the end of 2014.

    As American troops draw out of Afghanistan, officials say the removal plan is on track but that time is precious and the Taliban threat is worrisome. NBC's Lester Holt reports.

    Although Obama has pledged that most U.S. combat troops will leave by the end of 2014, American, NATO and allied troops are still dying in Afghanistan at a rate of one a day.

    Even with 33,000 American troops back home, the U.S.-led coalition will still have 108,000 troops — including 68,000 from the U.S. — fighting in Afghanistan at the end of this year. Many of those will be training the Afghan National Security Forces that are to replace them.

    "There is a challenge for the administration," O'Hanlon said, "to remind people in the face of such bad news why this campaign requires more perseverance."

    The Associated Press and NBC News' Courtney Kube and Atia Abawi, in Kabul, contributed to this report.

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  • Israelis are prepared -- or not -- for an Iran attack

    Bernat Armangue / AP

    An Israeli woman talks on the phone after collecting gas masks for her family in a shopping mall in Jerusalem in this Aug. 22 photo.

    By Martin Fletcher, NBC News correspondent

    TEL AVIV – Did you know:

    See our full coverage on international hot spots crucial to U.S. foreign policy ahead of elections in our At the Brink series here. And on Sunday, Sept. 30, and Monday, Oct. 1, tune into special coverage on all NBC News platforms from NBC's team of anchors and correspondents deployed in five countries across the region.
    • If a bomb explodes near you with a little bang, that's a sign it is carrying chemical or biological weapons? A loud bang means a conventional warhead.
    • If an attack is chemical, you will know right away? But if it's biological you'll only find out after a few days.
    • If it is nuclear, you should lie down and cover your head? And don't get up when the first blast wave passes over you because it will be followed by a second wave.

    Useful, eh?

    All these facts are good to know if you are in Israel and war with Iran, and its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas, were to break out around you.

    Report: Iran mulls 'pre-emptive attack' against Israel; commander warns of 'World War III'

    Or if something happened with Syria, Iran's ally, which has large stockpiles of biological and conventional weapons.

    With the latest opinion polls showing that half of Israelis fear for the continued existence of their state if war breaks out with Iran, and with more than half rating the chance of such a war within a year as "medium" or "high,” the more you know about what the war would entail, the better.

    Here are some more facts:

    • If you suck a bead made of castor oil, it could kill you. It contains ricin, a lethal poison.
    • After Chernobyl, it took 25 years before Welsh sheep could be eaten because the nuclear radiation settled over Wales as it drifted most of the way round the world.
    • And cigarettes contain polonium 210, the poison used to murder the Soviet ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko.

    Probably no country in the world is as prepared as Israel for such an attack, with every home built in the last 21 years possessing a mandatory bomb shelter. City centers have vast public shelters with special rooms set up for non-conventional attacks. And citizens are instructed in how to protect their bomb shelters against chemical and biological warfare.

    Mistakes happen
    But mistakes can happen, as I can personally attest. 

    One evening in the winter of 1991 during the first Gulf War, with Iraqi Scud missiles rocketing over Jordan toward Israel, the bomb alarm sounded. My family quickly locked themselves in our bomb shelter, and I raced through the dark, silent streets to broadcast from our NBC News studio.

    Israel's Netanyahu: Draw 'clear red line' to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons

    This had become routine. I spent all night in the studio, responding to the many alarms, and went home around 5a.m. I didn't check on the family because I knew where the Scuds had fallen and none were near my home.

    This one time, however, with 30 minutes to go before my next live broadcast hit, I had a sense that something was wrong. For the first time after an attack, I called home to see how my wife and my three sons, all aged below six, were faring.

    In an attempt to convey what he sees as a threat to Israel's existence, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a cartoon to illustrate how close he says Iran is to developing a nuclear weapon. In a speech at the United Nations General Assembly he asked the world to help stop them. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.

    No answer. I called again. No answer. Twenty-five minutes to go before my next “live hit” on TV with Tom Brokaw. I felt sick with worry. What could have happened?

    I ran downstairs, jumped into my car and raced home. I figured a 10-minute drive, five minutes at home and 10 minutes back, I'd be in the studio with seconds to spare.

    Life-saving decision
    Ends up, because of that calculation, I saved my family's lives.

    When the all-clear sounded, my wife, our three sons, my sister-in-law and the dog, a schnauzer called Tofi, couldn't get out of the shelter.

    The heavy steel lock would not budge. They hung on it and pulled and tried and tried but could not open the door. When I arrived home, about two hours after they had entered the bomb shelter, I heard faint cries of "help, help."

    Instead of pushing the handle up, they had been pulling it down, locking it instead of opening it.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells the UN general assembly Thursday that sanctions are not stopping Iran's nuclear program.

    I was able to open the door from the outside and all was well.

    But if I had stuck to my usual routine and not called home and just returned at 5 a.m., after leaving them at 8 p.m. the night before, they would have been dead.

    It's simple math: An adult breathes about one cubic meter of air per hour, children more. Five people in a small room of about nine cubic meters would begin to lose air after two hours. Seven hours? They'd have all been dead.

    A miracle? Sixth sense? Whatever, it's a warning of what can go wrong in times of stress. And however prepared Israelis are for what awaits them, accidents happen. When Iraq attacked Israel in 1991, far more people died of heart attacks than Scud rockets.

    Country on edge
    Since that time, every apartment built in Israel must have a blast-proof room that protects citizens from conventional blasts and also, with plastic and tape, can protect against chemical and biological weapons too. Walls and doors are approximately 8-12 inches thick and doors and windows are airtight.

    Every citizen has, in theory, a gas mask. In practice, there aren't enough to go around.

    Everybody asks, do you think there will be war with Iran? Nobody knows, and if you see Israel’s crowded cafes, the bustling streets, the crammed beaches, you may think that nobody cares.

    Yet Israel is a country on edge. Most seem to have bought Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s line that the price to pay to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb is much lower than the price to be paid if Iran has the bomb.

    Fueling those thoughts are memories of what happened when the Nazis killed 6 million Jews. Today, there are approximately 6 million Jews in Israel. Few Israelis can argue against Netanyahu's insistence of: Never again.

    And yet, I don't know anyone here who has prepared their bomb shelter. They're all a mess, used to store boxes, suitcases, footballs and wine. They are used as computer rooms, bicycle storage, play rooms. The attitude is, for the most part, we'll worry about it when the time comes.

    Until then, live life.

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  • More details on video showing dramatic firefight in Afghanistan

    Video captures an American soldier getting caught in gunfire with the Taliban in Afghanistan. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

    By Eric Zuckerman, NBC News

     

    A dramatic video posted Wednesday on YouTube shows a U.S. soldier surviving a firefight with the Taliban in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province.


    The video, which was captured by a camera mounted to the soldier’s helmet, shows the cameraman pinned down by machine gun fire, getting shot several times and yelling, “I’m hit! I’m hit!”

    “I got hit a total of four times,” the cameraman wrote in his description of the video, which was provided to NBC News by the curator of a YouTube channel originally started to share about 100 videos from his own tour in Afghanistan and which now posts videos submitted by other combat veterans. The video was also posted on the Facebook page for Military Minds, an organization that aims to raise awareness of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

    The source was unable to provide any other details beyond the cameraman’s own description of the event:

    “I was heading down the face of the hill when we got hit. The rest of the squad was pinned down by machine gun fire. I didn’t start the video until a few minutes into the firefight for obvious reasons. I came out into the open to draw fire so my squad could get to safety. I was hit in the side of my helmet and my eye [protection] was shot off of my face.”

    At  another point in the video, a round of ammunition knocks the soldier’s rifle out of his hands.

    “When I picked the rifle back up, it was still functional, but the grenade launcher tube had a nice-sized 7.62-calliber bullet hole in it,” he wrote.

    The soldier said that none of the rounds penetrated his body armor and that he made it home with no permanent injuries.

    Special Series: At the brink


  • NBC's Ali Arouzi answers reader questions from Iran

    While Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traded verbal jabs at the United Nations General Assembly this week over the threat of Iran’s nuclear capability, one thing is for sure: international economic sanctions against Iran are having an impact. 

    See our full coverage on international hot spots crucial to U.S. foreign policy ahead of elections in our At the Brink series here. And on Sunday, Sept. 30, and Monday, Oct. 1, tune into special coverage on all NBC News platforms from NBC’s team of anchors and correspondents deployed in five countries across the region.

    The United States, European Union and the U.N. have imposed tough economic sanctions against Iran, blocking access to the international banking system and curbing sales of Iranian crude oil as a way to persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear program.

    As Ali Arouzi, NBC News Tehran Correspondent, reports today, the sanctions have had a real impact on Iranians as the value of their currency, the rial, continues to drop daily – affecting everything from basic food items to manufacturing.

    Iranian: 'Our money is becoming more and more worthless every day'

    Ali answered reader questions about the impact of the sanctions in Iran earlier today.

    REPLAY the informative chat below. 

  • Iranian: 'Our money is becoming more and more worthless every day'

    Raheb Homavandi / Reuters file

    A money changer holds Iranian rial banknotes as he waits for customers in Tehran's business district in this January 7, 2012 file photo.

    By Ali Arouzi, NBC News correspondent
    TEHRAN – Even though threats of war with Israel are almost a daily occurrence, what’s really on people's minds in this city is the economy.

    The United States, the European Union and the U.N. have imposed tough economic sanctions against Iran, blocking access to the international banking system and curbing sales of Iranian crude oil as a way to persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear program.

    See our full coverage on international hot spots crucial to U.S. foreign policy ahead of elections in our At the Brink series here. And on Sunday, Sept. 30, and Monday, Oct. 1, tune into special coverage on all NBC News platforms from NBC’s team of anchors and correspondents deployed in five countries across the region.

    As a result, Iran’s currency, the rial, is in a constant state of flux, but mostly on a downward trajectory. These days, it seems to fall in value against the dollar on an hourly basis. On Tuesday the currency hit an all-time low against the U.S. dollar, trading at 26,500 to the U.S. dollar on the open market, according to Persian-language currency tracking website Mazanex. 

    “Our money is becoming more and more worthless every day,” said Sarvenas Sadi, an elderly woman doing her daily shopping in Tehran earlier this week.

    She picked up a handful of limes and exclaimed, “These were 100 percent cheaper last year!”

    Asked whether she ever thought she would see the currency devalue so much, she replied, “Never! I remember before the [1979] revolution $1 was worth 70 rial, now it’s worth 26,000! Who would have ever have thought!”

    Iranians feel the pain of sanctions: 'Everything has doubled in price'

    Did she think things would ever balance out and the price of goods would come down to what they were before. “Unfortunately I don’t think so. The thing with Iran is that once the price of something goes up, it never comes down again.”

    So what’s the solution?  “Eat less limes,” she jokingly replied. 

    AP

    Two potential Iranian customers look at fabric bolts in Tehran's old main bazaar in this picture taken July 14, 2012.

    Manufacturing hit hard
    The financial situation is affecting people from all classes. Thousands of workers have been laid off and have not been paid back wages because companies have simply run out of money. Majid, a 32-year-old mechanic who used to work for a large car company was recently laid off and is owed six months’ salary.


    “They are laying off people left, right and center. I doubt there will be a company left by the New Year,” he said, giving just his first name because of the sensitivity of the issue in Iran. Persian New Year will be on March 21, 2013.

    The car industry, one of the biggest manufacturing sectors in Iran and a massive employer, has been affected dramatically; Iranian media have reported a 30 to 50 percent drop in car and component production in the past six months. Iran was the 13th-largest auto maker in the world in 2011, producing 1.6 million vehicles.

    The Iran Khodro Company, the country’s leading vehicle manufacturer, had become the largest vehicle manufacturer in the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa.  The company won the annual national prize for export activities in 2006 and 2007 with Russia, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Egypt, Algeria and Bulgaria among their key consumers.

    But higher prices, due to the soaring costs of components as a result of the sanctions, have caused a drop in demand.

    Israel's Netanyahu: Draw 'clear red line' to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons

    For instance, France's Peugeot Citroen halted shipments of vehicle kits for assembly in Iran earlier this year, saying international sanctions barring transactions with the country's banking system made it difficult to obtain sales financing.

    Sanctions have taken a toll on the Iranian economy. The government is reluctant to admit it. Inflation is high. The number of young unemployed is a growing concern. NBC's Ali Arouzi reports. 

    Majid, the mechanic, said he is looking for work elsewhere but it is proving very difficult. “There are not many jobs going and it is getting me more and more depressed.”

    Oil sales to travel - down
    The oil sector has been hit hard too.  The Iranian Labor News Agency reported that a letter on behalf of 20,000 oil workers from across the country was sent to Labor Minister Abdolreza Sheikholeslami complaining that they had not been paid in months. The letter demanded an increase to the worker’s salaries of $120 to $285 a month, adding that at the current rate they were "way below the poverty line.” 

    Mohammad Reza Bahonar, a prominent Iranian member of parliament, said oil exports in June-July had dropped to "around 800,000 barrels per day," according to a report by ISNA news agency. That’s a low not seen in more than two decades, and less than half the 2.3 million barrels per day exported just a year ago.

    But Minister of Petroleum Rostam Qasemi was quoted by ISNA saying that overall oil production this year "will be the same as last year."

    Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for a firm deadline for Iran to halt its nuclear program, using a simple drawing to warn the UN that Iran will soon reach the point of no return in its development of nuclear weapons. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.

    The strangling of the economy isn’t just affecting blue-collar workers.

    Middle-class Iranians had become accustomed to foreign travel – to Dubai, a playground for Iranians only an hour and half away, Turkey, one of only a few countries that does not require visa’s for Iranians, and Thailand. But the cost of travel to any of these destinations is prohibitive to many.

    More Iran coverage from NBC News

    Maryam, a travel agent in Tehran who also only gave her first name, estimated that the number of travelers has been halved in a year. “The price of tickets and organized tours increased almost a hundred fold. They say that this will boost domestic holidays, but I think that is even too expensive for most people.”

    This was evident to me last month flying back to Tehran from London via Dubai. Usually the flight from Dubai to Tehran is jammed, but not this time. Business and first class were full with the super-rich of Iran, but 70 percent of the plane which makes up the economy class was almost empty.

    As the American mission in Afghanistan winds down, dangers still abound for U.S. troops – the most recent incident involved a Taliban gunman who fired on a U.S. Marine outpost in Afghanistan's Helmand Province. NBC's Richard Engel reports.

    Expected to get worse
    Mehdi is a young entrepreneur who imports computers and accessories who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. He said people are just not buying in Iran right now. His biggest wish was that the value of the rial would just stay fixed against dollar – even if it was at an unfavorable rate – just so consumers would know how much things would cost in a weeks’ time, a day or even in the next few hours.

    While the sanctions have certainly taken a major bite out of the economy and are hurting people from all walks of life – it does not seem to be making the government authorities buckle. If anything it seems to have stiffened the government’s resolve and things are set to become even more difficult in the not too distant future.  

    Britain, France and Germany are urging their European Union partners "to further step up the pressure" on Iran. Further sanctions targeting the Islamic Republic's energy, finance, trade and transportation sectors are expected to be formally adopted on Oct. 15.

    Slideshow: Everyday life in Iran

    At schools, in shops, and on the streets of big cities and small towns, daily life plays out in Iran.

    Launch slideshow

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