A Long Lens on Afghanistan's Wars We tend to think of the phrase "war in Afghanistan" mostly in present-day terms. But for Robert Nickelsberg, one of the region's longest-serving photojournalists, the current war is only the latest of four distinct periods of violence he's seen and documented in the country since 1988. On the Lens blog, Richard A. Oppel Jr. - who has been with Mr. Nickelsberg in Afghanistan quite a few times - writes about the photographer's new book-length project, "A Distant War," that outlines those four ages of war. Mr. Oppel writes: His first chapter encompasses the ending years of the Soviet occupation in the late 1980s and the fight for Kabul and other major cities that ensued. Read the post here.