With today's deadly attack on American forces and the fatal downing of an Black Hawk helicopter, the nation again looks to Afghanistan and the troop withdrawal in 2014.

It's been a long 11 years, and the idea that we know anything more about the country where our military's fighting is as false as it is frustrating.

With that in mind, we look back at these pictures posted earlier in the year.

Peretz Partensky spent four months taking them while working as part of the Synergy Strike Force in Jalalabad, Afghanistan and wrote about his adventures on jalalagood.com.

As an independent contractor, Partensky traveled freely around Afghanistan with credentials that allowed him access to U.S. Army bases, but he also "had the local garb and faithful friends" to guide him around the interior of the country.