Iranian school girls show their hands with pro-government slogans and an anti-Israeli slogan which reads in Farsi: “Death to Israel”, during a rally in front of the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, marking 44th anniversary of the seizure of the embassy by militant Iranian students, Saturday, November 4, 2023. (Photo by Vahid Salemi/AP Photo)

Artists from the Beijing Dance Academy perform to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year in Budapest, capital of Hungary, February 6, 2019. (Photo by Attila Volgyi/Xinhua News Agency/Barcroft Media)

A Sukhoi Su-35S jet fighter of the Russian Knights aerobatic team performs during the International Maritime Defence Show “Fleet-2024” in Kronstadt, outside St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, June 21, 2024. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

Volunteers use flour to clean birds following an oil spill caused by an incident involving two tankers damaged in a storm in the Kerch Strait, in the village of Vityazevo near the Black Sea resort of Anapa, Russia on December 20, 2024. (Photo by Sergey Pivovarov/Reuters)

Throughout the course of the long war in Afghanistan, Coalition troops have relied on thousands of military working dogs to help keep them safe, and make their jobs easier. The dogs are trained to detect explosives, to find illegal drugs, to search for missing comrades, or target enemy combatants. Not only are they active on the front lines, but behind the lines they serve as therapy dogs, service dogs, and loyal companions. They also share the same risks as the ground troops, suffering injuries and sometimes death on the battlefields. Gathered here are images of these dogs and their handlers in Afghanistan and back home, from over the past several years, part of the ongoing series here on Afghanistan.

A Ugandan soldier, part of the 9,000-strong African Union Mission in Somalia, (AMISOM) walks through the Banadir soccer stadium on August 15, 2011 in Mogadishu, Somalia. The stadium, Somalia's largest soccer facility, had been under control by Islamic extremist Shabab militants for the past two years until they withdrew from the capital more than a week ago. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Models of Cold War-era Allied (L) and Soviet Bloc weaponry face one another at the new Bundeswehr Military History Museum (Militaerhistorisches Museum der Bundeswehr, or MHM) on October 11, 2011 in Dresden, Germany. The museum, redesigned by star architect Daniel Libeskind, traces Germany military history from 1300 to the present, including during the Nazi period and the Cold War, and also examines the influence of the military on popular culture. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

A boy holds the remains of a mortar shell which hit a residential building in the village of Staromikhailovka, outside the separatist-held city of Donetsk, Ukraine, May 24, 2016. (Photo by Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)