A U.S. soldier stands in a muddy field in Zumar, Iraq as soldiers begin building a combined security checkpoint in Feb. 2010.
A father places his hand on his son's head as he is convinced to allow his child to be immunized for polio in Muzzafarnager, India in February 2005.
Ankur, 7, who does not know his last name, but knows he is different having been struck with polio at 6 months old, hides his face in embarrassment along a dusty street near Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh, India in Feb. 2005.
A man stands in the rubble of a building days after a devastating earthquake struck in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
A single tear streams down a young Haitian girl's cheek as she is treated at a small medic station in a refugee camp in Port-au-Prince after the devastating earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010.
Haitian children stand along a beach in Neply, Haiti as a U.S. Navy landing craft utility boat drops off supplies in the days following the devastating 2010 earthquake.
Children beg for small gifts that were handed out at an event where polio vaccines were distributed in Muzzafarnagar, a district in the polio endemic state of Uttar Pradesh, India during the countries National Immunization Days.
A police officer watches as protesters breach the barbed-wire fence barricade at the residence of chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, who is being held under house arrest in the judicial colony in Islamabad, Pakistan in February 2008. The nearly 300 protesters joined ranks to call for President Pervez Musharraf's ouster and for the judiciary to be restored.
A woman, displaced after a devastating earthquake destroyed her home, holds her newborn baby while she sits in her tent at a refugee camp just outside of the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in January 2010.
Rotarians Andrea Shields, 57, of Rancho Cucamunga, Calif., a clinical psychologist and Joseph Tafelski, 58, Toledo, Ohio a legal aid attorney help administer the oral polio vaccine to a child in Muzzafarnagar, a district in the polio endemic state of Uttar Pradesh, India during the countries National Immunization Days in February 2004.
A boy plays in the street of Muzzafarnager, India in February 2005.
Children run past a convoy of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne's humvees as they patrol in Seneky, a village in Afghanistan's Khost Province.
An Afghan National Police officer holds a rocket propelled grenade launcher as he stands watch on top of a hillside in Kutchyan, a small village in the Khost Province of Afghanistan, during a joint mission with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Divisions in May 2008.
Children sit in a madrassa, an Islamic religious school, in Islamabad, Pakistan in March 2009. Madrassas' often provide free religious education, boarding and lodging, and are often the only option for education for children from impoverished families.
Kids play in a street in a small village just outside of Islamabad, Pakistan in March 2009.
A girl runs though her village just outside of Islamabad, Pakistan in March 2009.
Adding to the military challenge are the extreme poverty and suspicious nature of a tribal society in which just 3 percent of women and 17 percent of men can read. These make economic and social development – keys to the regional strategy proposed by President Barack Obama in April 2009 – extraordinarily difficult. Some villages lack even the most basic of human needs, such as this young Pakistani girl who gets water from a broken pipe that runs through their colony in Islamabad.
A boy lays in a bed near his sister in a Christian colony in Islamabad, Pakistan in April 2009.
The wind blows an Afghan man's scarf as he stands in the village of Turqel in the Khost Province of Afghanistan in May 2008.
A police officer with the Afghanistan National Police (ANP) reaches out to shake the hand of a young child in a field while on patrol with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Divisions, in Legharah, a small village in the Khost Province of Afghanistan in May 2008.
A young boy stands in the burnt remains of an Egyptian Central Security Forces armored vehicle in Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt in January 2013. The vehicle was torched by protesters during continued clashes with security forces the previous evening.
A man walks by a billboard as Crimea votes on the referendum, to either join Russia or become an independent state connected to Ukraine, in Simferopol, Ukraine on March 16, 2014
Soldiers with the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division hold a reenlistment ceremony in an oil field in Kirkuk, Iraq.
Soldiers with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division lead a group of suspected Taliban fighters back to their humvees after a night raid on a home in Wum Khayal, a village in the Nadar Shah Kot District, in the Khost Province of Afghanistan in May 2008. Nine suspected Taliban where found sleeping outside the home and temporarily taken into custody, processed, and released after it was found that they did not have enough evidence to hold them.