This picture, taken in 1962, shows two female medicine students at the University of Kabul listening to their professor as they examine a plaster showing a human body part. At that time, women played an active role in Afghan society. They also had access to education and were able to take up work outside home.

Two young women dressed in Western-style outfits are seen in this picture taken in 1962 outside the building of Radio Kabul in the country's capital city, Kabul. After the fundamentalist Taliban took over power in the mid-1990s, women were required to wear an all-covering burqa when in public.

In the mid-1970s, female students were a common sight at Afghan education centers such as Kabul's Polytechnical University. But some 20 years later, women's access to education in the conflict-ridden country was completely shut down. And it changed only after the toppling of the Taliban regime in 2001. The right to education for both men and women was enshrined in the 2003 Afghan Constitution.

In this picture a Soviet instructor is seen teaching computing technology to Afghan students at Kabul's Polytechnical Institute. During the 10-year Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, a number of Soviet lecturers taught at Afghan universities.

This 1981 picture shows an informal gathering of female and male Afghan students in Kabul. In 1979, a Soviet invasion of land-locked Afghanistan led to a 10-year war. When the Soviets withdrew from the country in 1989, a civil war ensued which culminated in the Taliban's accession to power in 1996.

This picture shows Afghan girls at a secondary school in Kabul at the time of the Soviet occupation. During the Taliban regime that followed just a few years later, women and girls were barred from attending school and denied access to education. They were also banned from taking up employment outside home.

In this picture taken in 1981, a woman, unveiled and without a headscarf, is seen with her children. Scenes such as these have been rare ever since. Even almost 15 years after the collapse of the Taliban regime, women continue to struggle for equality in the male-dominated Afghan society. For instance, there is only one woman taxi driver in the entire country.

West Germany officially joined the trans-Atlantic alliance in 1955. However, it wasn't until after reunification in 1990 that the German government considered "out of area" missions led by NATO. From peacekeeping to deterrence, Germany's Bundeswehr has since been deployed in several countries across the globe in defense of its allies.

In 1995, Germany participated in its first "out of area" NATO mission as part of a UN-mandated peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the deployment, German soldiers joined other NATO member forces to provide security in the wake of the Bosnian War. The peacekeeping mission included more than 60,000 troops from NATO's member states and partners.

Since the beginning of the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, some 8,500 German soldiers have been deployed in the young country. In 1999, NATO launched an air assault against Serbian forces accused of carrying out a brutal crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists and their civilian supporters. Approximately 550 Bundeswehr troops are still stationed in Kosovo.

In 2016, Germany deployed its combat support ship "Bonn" to lead a NATO mission backed by the EU in the Aegean Sea. The mission included conducting "reconnaissance, monitoring and surveillance of illegal crossings" in Greek and Turkish territorial waters at the height of the migration crisis. Germany, Greece and Turkey had requested assistance from the trans-Atlantic alliance.

In 2003, Germany's parliament voted to send Bundeswehr troops to Afghanistan in support of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Germany became the third-largest contributor of troops and led the Regional Command North. More than 50 German troops were killed during the mission. Germany withdrew the last of its troops in June 2021 as part of the US-led exit from Afghanistan.

Forming part of NATO's "enhanced forward presence" in the Baltic states, 450 Bundeswehr soldiers have been deployed to Lithuania since 2017. The battalion-size battlegroups there are led by Germany, Canada, the UK and US to reinforce collective defense on the alliance's eastern flank. It forms the "biggest reinforcement of Alliance collective defense in a generation," according to NATO.