KABUL, Afghanistan - The women of Afghanistan are some of the strongest women I have ever met in the world.

Women have shown up at rallies for candidates hoping for more rights to be implemented by the government.

They have suffered subjugation and abuse, and faced inhumanities on a daily basis. Pain and memories live in their eyes; just one glance can shatter a person's naivete and send chills up your spine.

But there is the other side to real Afghan woman. She is like many other women in the world.

She loves her family, especially her children; they give her the strength to survive in the face of defeat. She is proud of her country no matter how many tears she has shed for it. And there is no one or nothing she loves more than her God; the only reason she believes that a change will come.

Beyond the burqa, the scars, and the remnants of three decades of war - 30 years that has crushed a country and the spirit of a people - it is the Afghan woman who has shaped Afghanistan.

And it is they who can shape a new future for a people who have been isolated and forgotten for decades.

"Young love! If you do not fall in the battle of Maiwand; By God, someone is saving you as a symbol of shame!" the Afghan heroine Malalai yelled as she ripped off her veil.

It was 1880, during the Second Anglo-Afghan war. The Afghan soldiers, who outnumbered the British, kept falling one by one. They could not handle the heavy artillery; they were exhausted and felt defeated. Bodies lay, some bloody and some bruised.

But it was Malalai's words that gave the Afghan soldiers the motivation and spirit to continue in battle and eventually defeat the Anglo-Indian army.

For over a century now, families in Afghanistan have named their daughters Malalai, hoping that they too can one day be as brave as Malalai of Maiwand.

Malalai Kakar of Kandahar lovingly prepared her six children for school every morning; clothing them, feeding them, and kissing them goodbye. She would then put on her police uniform in one of the most volatile southern provinces of Afghanistan - one still infested with a radical ideology. With her Kalashnikov and pistol at her side she was ready for another day at work.

Kakar, like her father, became an officer in Kandahar to help the people and bring justice. And after the fall of the Taliban she worked to help rescue women who needed help; ones who were being tortured and abused.

According to the United Nations Development Fund for Women, 87 percent of women in Afghanistan suffer from domestic violence. It's one of the most dangerous places to be a woman.

But thanks to the increase in female police officers who are constantly threatened and targeted, other women are feeling more comfortable to report abuses and step out of the black hole they have been living in.

Malalai of Maiwand died waving the flag of Afghanistan during battle, not able to see her country in its victory.

Malalai of Kandahar was shot and killed by the Taliban, leaving six children to grow up without a mother.

But to many, she died waving the spirit of a new Afghanistan - one that will lift itself beyond the rubble of a shattered nation - in hopes that maybe her children will see the victory she had been fighting for.

Hopefully, that victory will come soon.

WARDAK PROVINCE, Afghanistan - Riding along in a night convoy, just trying to get home, a simple drive is soon struck by the realities of war.

U.S. troops patrol Wardak Province, Afghanistan.

We had just spent a week with these men and women, covering the first part of a new influx of troops brought to Afghanistan as Washington shifts the focus of the war on terror from Iraq back to where it all began.

A tough task has been placed on these soldiers. It is their job to bring some sort of security and stability in an area that has felt the impact of a resurgent Taliban and foreign militants.

An enemy that has continued to fight in the snowy bitter winter and is expected to wreak havoc as that snow begins to melt.

The troops are strategically positioned to prevent infiltration into the capital. That infiltration was witnessed almost two weeks ago when eight suicide bombers made their way to the capital and spread fear into a city of 5.5 million people after they killed at least 19 civilians and injured several dozen more.

Living side-by-side with the troops, we went on patrols and got their feel of what was going on - all as they themselves were getting situated.

We were producing stories but had no way of sending them to Atlanta to make air.

Usually when a CNN team goes out on embed we have what is called a BGAN. A BGAN is our only form of satellite transmission. We use it for the Internet, for live shots and for sending in our stories for television. The day we left Kabul is the day we found out that our BGAN had stopped working.

The military tried to get us a flight out but everything was full. So, they offered a convoy near where we would needed to go.

I was sitting in a MRAP armored vehicle, in the seat closest to the gunner. These vehicles are necessary for military travel because of the increase of roadside IED (improvised explosive device) attacks.

Mark and I were chatting and riding along. Then we both turned on our iPods and got lost in the drive.

I found myself continuously looking up through the gunner's hole at a star-filled sky, admiring the beauty in a land that has seen so much devastation.

Suddenly, we heard gunshots from our vehicle. We soon found out that a car was speeding towards the convoy and would not stop after repeated warnings.

The driver of the vehicle was shot through the hand but survived. We later learned he was a civilian. According to witnesses at the scene, he was racing past because he wanted to catch his son before he left for Iran and wanted to persuade him to stay.

Situations like this shows how hard it can be for units here to distinguish friend from foe.

And it is situations like these that deter some local support for coalition forces. Civilian casualties were at their highest in 2008. Both coalition forces and the militant insurgency are responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Afghans - the casualties of a so-called never-ending war.

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan – Once known as "Little America," Helmand Province in Afghanistan's southern region is now considered one of the most volatile provinces in the region. Before the Soviet invasion in the 1970s, the U.S. Agency for International Development poured in vast resources and projects to help the province prosper. It built dams and irrigation systems and was welcomed by Afghans in this fertile area.

Atia Abawi poses with farmers in Helmand Province.

Now Helmand is permeated with insurgents, warfare and opium poppies. Afghanistan is responsible for producing more than 90 percent of the world's opium, more than half of which comes from Helmand.

But Afghans who remember the old days have warm memories of the American presence in Helmand.

On the one-and-a-half hour flight from Kabul to Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, I was caught up in conversation with two middle-aged women who are part of the provincial council there. I asked them several questions trying to get their perspective on the situation. One of the women lived in the province through all the wars, the other left for Pakistan during the barbaric civil war that ravaged the country in the early 1990s and stayed there throughout the Taliban regime.

They told me anyone who remembers the 1960s and 1970s welcomes America's return to the province. It is expected that nearly a third of the anticipated 30,000 U.S. troops to come to Afghanistan this year will be based in the southern region where the Taliban and other insurgent groups have been gaining ground.

USAID is already there, fighting its own fight.

The organization is working to ensure the people and the province thrive once more, investing in old projects as well as the new. USAID helped the government of the province distribute to some 32,000 farmers about $400 worth of seeds and fertilizer each so they can grow something other than opium poppies.

It's a small step to fixing an enormous problem, but it's one that is welcomed by many.

"If you can just help the people of Afghanistan in this way, the fighting will go away," farmer Abdul Qadir told me to share with the world. "These Taliban and other enemies of the country will also disappear."

Qadir explained that building infrastructure and helping the people of Helmand will have more of an effect than any gun or bomb ever will.

CAIRO, Egypt - "Pop singer brutally murdered by a paid assassin."
 
A headline that can cause a media frenzy - and that's exactly what happened in Egypt and throughout the Middle East.

Egyptians have been captivated with the murder of singer Suzanne Tamim, pictured here in a photoshoot.

 
Egyptians are captivated with the murder of Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim. And the fascination grew when Egyptian billionaire businessman Hisham Talaat Mustafa was accused of paying a former police officer, Mohsen Al-Sukkary, to kill her.  
 
In our own Cairo offices we would dissect the details with CNN's office manager, Housam Ahmed, who could read the Arabic papers and share the sordid details.  
 
The rumors were flying from publication to publication: "She dumped him;"  "He paid for her plastic surgery;"  "He was angry she fell in love with another."
 
And it was hard not to speculate over the various theories of what really may have happened.
 
Housam told us that his wife and her friends can't get enough of the story and that it is the topic of conversation among many housewives and dinner tables throughout the country.  
 
But now, they are cut off from their media fix.
 
The head judge in the trial has placed a gag order on any reporting of the trial, stating that the sensationalism of some media organizations were affecting the proceedings, but yet he still considers the trial "open"?
 
Mohammed Radwan, the managing editor of the Independent newspaper Al-Masri Al-Youm told us that his reporters are still allowed to attend the trial but can't report anything until a verdict is reached.
 
"We're not allowed to publish any of the testimonies of the witnesses," Radwan said, "I think this is something very negative for the reader in general."
 
But what really concerns some is the belief that the order was placed to help Mustafa's case and his friendship with the son of President Hosni Mubarak played a role.  
 
"He is considered one of the most prominent businessmen in the country.  So we believe that the gag order was to protect him and not for the trial itself," Rawda Ahmed, a lawyer who is appealing the media blackout, told us.
 
Others in the country say that it is impossible that cronyism will factor into the case and that the ruling family can't save him now.
 
"What we have on hand here is someone who murdered a woman because she dumped him.  It's as simple as that.  So this is not something that the regime can easily defend," media analyst Hisham Kassem told CNN.
 
The trial will resume later this month with journalists forced to bite their tongue or risk jail time - another step back for the media in a country where press freedom often depends on the government's mood.