KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- More than a decade has passed since the start of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Every year, America pours billions of dollars into its military campaign, and overseas aid and investment continue to flow. But despite that, many Afghans feel they're being left behind.
Snow brings tranquility to Kabul, but makes being poor a matter of life and death, meters from the modernity of Coca-Cola's factory and a cellphone mast sits this icy skeleton of a kindergarten built by the Soviets.
In the center of a city into which wealth has poured in the last decade, these people have been left behind. And while America's spending over $100 billion a year on this war, these Afghans say life has never been so bad.
Agha Mohammad survived the Russians shooting him in the leg, fled Taliban torture in his village, but after 9 years now watches children wither around him. He says, "I've got through the Russians and the Taliban, but things have never been this bad. 8 of our children have been sick in the last month, and one died last year. Our men find it very hard to find even a day's work."
Urban poverty is prevalent enough this winter that the UN will distribute $3 million of emergency food aid, mostly in Kabul.
Here, trash is all they can afford to burn. Keeping warm isn't healthy. Kabul resident Toryal says, "We have no money - we are all jobless".
Toryal was born an Afghan refugee in Pakistan, but fled back to Afghanistan. He says, "Why did I leave Pakistan? Because there is no facility and they said you are Afghani and you are a terrorist". The reporter asks, "They called you a terrorist in Pakistan?" Toryal replied, "Yes".
For others, like Fahim, the war is a fresh horror, shattering his world. His village was in November caught in the crossfire between Taliban and the Afghan army. His father brought the family here, like everyone, hoping it's just for a month or so. He says, "The rockets hit our compound, then the window, then inside our house. The same day we fled to Kabul".
NATO's billions make lives no easier for children playing children here, growing up barefoot in the ice.
The sun's setting every day of this decade long war, its close, and night here, making their world even colder.