Ahmed Wali Karzai: Rumors are swirling about the president's younger half-brother and his mafia-like grip on Kandahar and involvement in the opium trade. He is also accused of fabricating ballots through the use of ghost polling stations, which never opened but somehow reported massive majorities for Karzai in this year's presidential election. A recent New York Times story said he has received regular CIA payments for the past eight years for activities that include involvement with a paramilitary force operating outside Kandahar. The relationship points to the tangled nature of the corruption surrounding President Karzai, which seems to enable him to rule and undermine his government at the same time. Above, Ahmed Wali Karzai talks on a cell phone as he celebrates his brother's reelection in Kandahar on Nov. 3, 2009.

BANARAS KHAN/AFP/Getty Images

Muhammad Qasim Fahim: The alliance between Karzai and Fahim, whom Karzai tapped as his first vice president, is an example of the lengths the Afghan leader has gone to patch up old feuds: Fahim once arrested and beat Karzai in the 1990s, on suspicions that he was a spy for Pakistan. Today, Fahim has leveraged his previous role as a leading military commander in the Northern Alliance to wield prominent influence in the new Afghan government. According to a 2003 Human Rights Watch report, Fahim was able to do this by threatening the members of several nascent political parties following the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Der Spiegel also reported that Fahim "head[s] up the country's lucrative kidnapping industry." Above Fahim (R) walks with Karzai (C) and former Afghan King Muhammad Zahir Shah (L) on Nov. 3, 2003 in Kabul.

SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images

General Abdul Rashid Dostum: One of the country's most infamous warlords, Dostum serves as the political and military leader of Afghanistan's Uzbek minority. Following an incident in early 2008 in which Dostum allegedly threatened and beat a political rival at gunpoint, he was stripped of his title as chief of staff of the Afghan Army and went into a brief, self-imposed exile in Turkey. But the general returned just before the election to deliver the Uzbek vote to Karzai, winning back his post in the process. Dostum is responsible for one of the most significant mass killings in Afghanistan post-American invasion. Thousands of Taliban militants, who surrendered to his forces, part of the American allied Northern Forces in 2001, were packed into closed metal shipping containers, where many -- a State Department report mentions 1,500 -- suffocated while being transported to prison. Despite rumors of a mass grave, U.S. officials discouraged an investigation of the case. Above, Karzai and Dostum during a ceremony at Rosa Sharif Azrat Ali shrine March 21, 2002.

 HOANG DINH NAM/AFP/Getty Images

Asadullah Khalid: Karzai appointed Khalid the governor of Kandahar province, where he served from 2005 to 2008. During his tenure, Canada's government learned that he was "personally involved in torture and abuse of detainees," according to an article in the Globe and Mail. Khalid was accused of running a network of secret prisons which he visited himself to torture prisoners. In April 2008, Canadian foreign minister Maxime Bernier caused a stir in both Canada and Afghanistan by publicly suggested that Khalid should be removed from his post. Above, Khalid empties a ballot box to count votes in Kandahar, Sept. 20, 2005.

 BANARAS KHAN/AFP/Getty Images

Mohammad Ibrahim Adel: Adel was appointed the minister of mines in 2006, when the ministry was evaluating bids to privatize the country's only functioning cement plant. Karzai's brother Mahmoud was awarded the factory, after allegedly arriving in Adel's office with a cardboard box carrying a $25 million cash guarantee. The Washington Post reported that, according to a U.S. official, Adel also accepted a $30 million bribe to award a massive copper extraction project to the Chinese state-run Metallurgical Group Corp. Now Adel gets to pick a company to extract iron ore from another big deposit. Guess who's a front-runner for that deal...

 MASSOUD HOSSAINI/AFP/Getty Images

Haji Mohammad Muhaqiq: Muhaqiq, who served as minister of planning in the transition government, is a leader of the ethnic Hazara community. In return for delivering Hazara votes to Karzai, Muhaqiq was reportedly promised five cabinet posts for his party, Hezb-e-Wahdat, in the next government. According to Human Rights Watch, troops under Muhaqiq's command were guilty of crimes including rape and widespread looting and violence in provinces under their control in 2001-2002, specifically against Pashtun villagers. In one village, his troops killed 37 residents, the largest intentional killing of civilians in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

SARDAR AHMAD/AFP/Getty Images

Abdul Rasul Sayyaf: Sayyaf is one of the most notable Pashtun leaders who fought with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban in the 1990s. He remains a pillar of Karzai's support in the Pashtun community, throwing his support behind the president during his re-election campaign. He is also a staunch Islamist with past ties to some of the world's most notorious terrorists.  According to the 9/11 Commission Report, Sayyaf gave future 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed his first introduction to the Afghan jihad in 1987.  Sayyaf would become his mentor, and provide him with military training and connections to other jihadists until the late 1990s. Sayyaf also maintained a close relationship with Osama bin Laden, who funneled him money to continue the insurgency against the Soviets.

STR/AFP/Getty Images

Karim Khalili: Khalili is an ethnic Hazara warlord who led one of the largest anti-Taliban militias during the 1990s. Selected by Karzai as his second vice president in both the 2004 and 2009 elections, he has helped Karzai expand his appeal beyond Afghanistan's Pashtun community.  In 2003, Human Rights Watch quoted witnesses who reported that soldiers under Khalili's command continued to rape, kidnap, and forcibly recruit.

MASSOUD HOSSAINI/AFP/Getty Images

Busted: Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is being tried on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, during which 150,000 to 200,000 people, mostly Muslims, died. He is accused of ethnic cleansing in eastern Bosnia, driving hundreds of thousands from their homes; a 44-month siege of the capital, Sarajevo, which left 10,000 dead; a massacre at Srebrenica, where about 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed; and the hostage-taking of 200 U.N. peacekeepers. Even as the trial proceeds, Bosnians and others in the region continue to struggle with his legacy. Above, a woman walks past a fallen bust of Karadzic in Belgrade on Oct. 26.

ALEXA STANKOVIC/AFP/Getty Images

Having his day in court: Karadzic is on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), in The Hague. Karadzic is representing himself, but boycotted the trial's start last month, arguing he needed more time to prepare a defense. Countering that 14 months of custody, not to mention the 14 years since the 1995 indictment, is more than enough, the court appointed a defense lawyer for when Karadzic decides to skip the proceedings. The trial has been postponed until March to allow the lawyer time to prepare. Above, Karadzic is pictured in the ICTY courtroom on Nov. 3.

MICHAEL KOOREN/AFP/Getty Images 

Bones of contention: Bosnia continues to face ghosts and scars from the past. Above, a forensic team examines a mass grave site in Koricanske Stijene, near Travnik, on July 23. They are preparing to lower themselves into an abyss, in search of the remains of about 200 Bosnian Muslim and Croat civilians massacred in 1992. The victims were held in a detention camp and were told they would be part of a prisoner exchange. Instead, "The civilians were ordered to kneel by the edge of a road turned towards the ravine and then were shot with automatic weapons," reads the indictment of two police officers accused of participating.

ELVIS BARUKCIC/AFP/Getty Images

Still in fashion: The fragility of the 1995 Dayton Accords -- which negotiated peace between Bosnia's ethnic groups by subdividing the country into a Croat-Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) federation and a Serb republic -- shows on the streets. Extremist memorabilia is common in Serb areas of Bosnia and Serbia. Above on Oct. 14 in Banja Luka, a vendor displays a T-shirt supporting Karadzic and his right-hand man Ratko Mladic, who is still missing. The shirt reads "Serb Heroes" across the top and asks at the bottom, "Is It a Crime to Defend Serb People?"

MILAN RADULOVIC/AFP/Getty Images

Hiding behind hair: Fleeing after the war ended, Karadzic assumed a new identity, that of New Age faith healer "Dragan Dabic." He was found last year in Belgrade, hiding behind a bushy beard, ponytail, and thick glasses. Above, he is pictured in disguise, alongside "bioenergy expert" Mina Minic. After his capture, Austrian papers reported he had also practiced alternative medicine in Vienna. 

STR/AFP/Getty Images

Duck and cover: After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Yugoslavia began to unravel. A majority of Bosnians (Croats and Muslims) voted for independence in a 1992 referendum boycotted by Bosnian Serbs. In April of that year, Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian-Serbian party, severed ties from Bosnia and allied himself with Serbia, immediately launching a siege of Sarajevo. Above, civilians huddle for protection as a Bosnian soldier returns Serb sniper fire on April 6, 1992. In May of that year Karadzic became president of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and allied himself with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

MIKE PERSSON/AFP/Getty Images

Skin and bones: Photos from notorious Serbian prison camps, where Muslims were held, supposedly under investigation as fighters, shocked the world in 1992. Images of emaciated prisoners behind barbed wire conjured up memories of the Holocaust, along with horrifying stories of death and abuse. Above, prisoners in Trnopolje are visited by the Red Cross and journalists on Aug. 13, 1992. A horrified Bernard Kouchner (co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières), then French humanitarian affairs minister, called the camps "hell on earth."

ANDRE DURAND/AFP/Getty Images

Fleeing: Muslim refugees leaving besieged Srebrenica for Tuzla wave from a U.N. convoy truck on March 31, 1993. In 1995 Srebrenica was the site of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II: In July of that year, Serbian forces overwhelmed Dutch forces protecting the U.N. safe zone harboring tens of thousands of refugees. Boys and men between the ages of 12 and 77 were separated for "interrogation for suspected war crimes." About 8,000 males were subsequently killed, while more than 23,000 women and children were deported.

PASCAL GUYOT/AFP/Getty Images

Running for their lives: The war in Bosnia eventually led to the death of an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people, most of them Muslim. The Dayton Accords, hammered out in November 1995 by U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke, ended the fighting. Above, three Sarajevan girls run along "Sniper Avenue" in the capital on March 27, 1995.

ANJA NIEDRINGHAUS/AFP/Getty Images

Goodbye? Above, Karadzic waves on Feb. 4, 1993, as he arrives at the U.N. headquarters in New York with his wife Ljlijana. Some hope that Karadzic's trial will provide reconciliation in a deeply divided society, but as Timothy William Waters writes on ForeignPolicy.com, "So let his trial begin now, and let it end. But whatever happens to Karadzic, the dead will still be dead, the living unreconciled."

MARK D. PHILLIPS/AFP/Getty Images

Check out other FP photo essays:

•Falling Like It's 1989

•Planet Slum

•Bolivia's Lithium-Powered Future

•A Third Intifada?

•Vova and Dima 4eva?

The End of History: 1989 is a year of iconic images, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Tiananmen Square crackdown. A Soviet observer at the time noted an impression of general collapse, while other countries saw the year's events as part of the struggle for democracy. In hindsight, the wall seems to have fallen in a day, but a dizzyingly paced year shows that many symbolic moments led up to the wall's fall. Above, East Berliners perch on the wall, with the Brandenburg Gate in the background, on Nov. 11, 1989.

GERARD MALIE/AFP/Getty Images

Opening up: The month before his inauguration as U.S. president in January 1989, Bush joined then President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for a meeting at which the Americans expressed their support of perestroika, the political and economic reforms fostered by Gorbachev. This openness from the Soviet leadership would prove critical in the events that developed in Eastern Europe over the year. Above, Bush's mouth is checked with a flashlight by his granddaughter Ellie LeBlond at his inauguration on Jan. 18.

REUTERS/Str Old

The 49ers as 89ers: Far from the ferment in the communist world, the San Francisco 49ers won the Super Bowl on Jan. 22, defeating the Cincinnati Bengals. In the pop-culture world, Madonna caused a stir with the music video for "Like a Prayer." The video's images of burning crosses, stigmata, and risqué outfits in a church scandalized religious groups. Pepsi, which had featured the song in a major advertising campaign, faced boycott threats and hastily pulled the ad.

Mike Powell /Allsport

"Unfunny Valentine": Acclaimed author Salman Rushdie received what Christopher Hitchens called the "single worst review any novelist has ever had," and on Valentine's Day, too. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling for Muslims to kill Rushdie, author of the award-winning book, The Satanic Verses. Rushdie immediately went into hiding, saying, "It's very hard to be offended by The Satanic Verses -- it requires a long period of intense reading. It's a quarter of a million words." Above, a sign at Teheran University reads, "The execution verdict of Salman Rushdie will be carried out."

REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

Empty tank: On Feb. 15, Soviet troops finished leaving Afghanistan, nine years after invading. Armored vehicles traveled 260 miles to the Soviet border, leaving Kabul under siege and with severe food shortages. An estimated 15,000 Soviet soldiers were killed in that decade, facing fierce opposition by U.S.-backed mujahideen forces. The mujahideen eventually overthrew the Afghan government, and in 1996 the Taliban took power, creating a hard-line Islamist state. Above, an Afghan soldier sits on a Soviet tank near the Salang Pass on Aug. 17, six months after the withdrawal.

GEORGES GOBET/AFP/Getty Images

Troubled waters: The Exxon Valdez, grounded upon Bligh Reef on March 24, spilled about 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's pristine Prince William Sound. About 1,300 miles of shoreline were damaged and hundreds of thousands of animals were killed, including an estimated 250,000 seabirds and 2,800 sea otters. Despite the massive cleanup operation -- costing more than $2 billion -- researchers estimated in 2006 that 100 tons of oil remained. The ship itself was repaired and renamed, though it is barred from the area. Above, the oil slick shines on the southwest part of the sound on April 1.

CHRIS WILKINS/AFP/Getty Images

Hungry for change: Reformist leader Hu Yaobang's April 15 death sparked seven weeks of protests in China. For many students he had represented change, and during the protests more than a million people took to the streets criticizing corruption and demanding more democracy. The government, surprisingly, did not initially retaliate with repression. Protesters thus occupied Tiananmen Square and intensified their demonstration. Students began a hunger strike in the square (seen above on May 19, with students resting atop buses), joined by sympathizers who flooded the area around a 10-meter-high replica of the Statue of Liberty, named the Goddess of Democracy.

CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP/Getty Images

Calling for change: The tide turned against protesters when angry party leaders declared martial law on May 20. Hundreds of thousands of protesters attempted to block the troop advance into Beijing, supporting the still-fasting students. But by June 3 less than 10,000 protesters remained in the square. An accident in which a police van killed three bicyclists reignited popular anger against the Army, and people poured back into the streets. The resulting crackdown on June 4 left hundreds dead and thousands more wounded. Above, a student yells at soldiers on June 3, the day before the massacre.

CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP/Getty Images

Supreme death: More than 2 million people came out for Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's funeral, which was held a week after his June 3 death (contrary to custom) due to the complexities of the event. A fire brigade hosed down mourners to prevent fainting, and the corpse had to be helicoptered into the cemetery because the crowd could not be penetrated. There, mourners broke through the cordon surrounding the coffin and fought for pieces of the shroud. More than 10,000 people were injured and a dozen died. Above, a million mourners in Tehran on June 5 surround the glass box containing Khomeini.

SIMO/AFP/Getty Images

Masters of their domain: The "show about nothing" -- Seinfeld -- debuted in mid-1989. In many ways the show, which continued for nine seasons, really was about nothing. Phrases and quirks from the show, such as "yada, yada, yada," remain to this day. The main cast, from left, Michael Richards, Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Jason Alexander, are pictured above after receiving an Emmy in 1993. "Nothingness" continued its invasion when the Nintendo Game Boy came to the market. For those who don't remember it, the screen was primitive and green, but it was still an amazing way to spend a day.

SCOTT FLYNN/AFP/Getty Images

Burmese days: Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Noble Peace Prize, was first placed under house arrest in July 1989 after the military dictatorship violently cracked down on a democracy movement. The daughter of Burma's independence hero, Aung San Suu Kyi has been a leader in the country's democracy movement and has modeled her campaign on the nonviolent movements of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. She has spent more than half of the last 20 years under some form of arrest.

REUTERS/STR New

Curtain call: The Berlin Wall fell quickly, but it was preceded by various breaks in the Iron Curtain earlier that year. The barrier's first breech came at the Austrian-Hungarian border, where reformist leaders began removing stretches of the fence in May. The decision owed much to economics: The Soviet Union cut maintenance funds for the border system, and Hungary was broke. East German refugees flocked to the area, trickling through during the summer. By September the government legitimized the exodus, saying it would recognize refugees' right to flee. Nearly 7,000 East Germans were camped out in Hungary awaiting exit by then. Above, East Germans run through a gate near Sopron, Hungary, on Aug. 19.

REUTERS/STR New

Passing through: Eastern European countries began to move away from the Soviet Union in other ways as well. Poles punished the Communist Party in the June elections when the trade union Solidarity took the entire Senate and all the contested parliament seats. Change happened quickly. Polish dissident Adam Michnik later said it was "a year of miracles.... What was not yet possible in January became reality in February, and by March it was possible to demand even more. None of us had a sense of what was happening." Above, an East German waves his new West German passport while crossing over the Austrian-Hungarian border on Sept 10.

REUTERS/Str Old

Falling stars: The momentum of dissatisfaction that had gathered in Eastern Europe over the summer continued. On Oct. 23, the People's Republic of Hungary quietly became the Republic of Hungary. Above, Oct. 26, the red stars of communism are removed from the Chinoin Pharmaceutical and Chemical Factory in Budapest. Meanwhile, Czechoslovakians celebrated their 71st independence day anniversary in October by rallying for democracy. The subsequent month of protests consolidated the democracy movement into the Civic Forum. On Nov. 24, a week of mass demonstrations forced the politburo to resign, and in December the Federal Assembly, still dominated by communists, elected dissident playwright Vaclav Havel as president.

P.E VARKONYI/AFP/Getty Images

On track: East German officials, angered by the exodus via Hungary, cut off travel there. Many East Germans wound up in Czechoslovakia, a transit stop on the way to Hungary. Furious negotiations between East and West German officials ended in an agreement to pack all the refugees into sealed trains and allow them to go through East Germany into the West. Four- to six-thousand people went from Czechoslovakia, including those in the train above leaving Prague on Nov. 4. As the trains passed from the East to the West, passengers threw out their suddenly useless cash, keys, and ID cards.

PASCAL GEORGE/AFP/Getty Images

The wall falls: Massive protests swept across East Germany in October. By this point thousands of people were leaving via the tears in the Iron Curtain, and a million-person march in the capital forced most of the politburo to resign. On Nov. 9 officials gave into popular demand for travel permissions and announced tourism to West Berlin would be permitted. That same night, hordes of people poured through checkpoints. In the next few days, the Berlin Wall began to be dismantled from both sides. Above, East German guards demolish the wall near Potsdamer Square on Nov. 11 as West Berliners rally around.

GERARD MALIE/AFP/Getty Images

The smoke clears: The fall of bloody dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was more violent than the crumbling of neighboring countries. Thousands of protesters, who gathered in the town of Timisoara to protect a human-rights-defending priest, rampaged through the streets. Ceausescu ordered army repression, which backfired as the unrest then spread to the capital, Bucharest. Three days later, on Dec. 20, the country was in chaos. When Ceausescu attempted to calm the crowds he was jeered and booed. Ceausescu and his wife were detained by the army after an attempted helicopter escape and on Christmas were executed by a firing squad. Above, soldiers guard the Central Committee headquarters on Dec. 26.

ROBINE - SIMON/AFP/Getty Images

Kissing communism goodbye: Above, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev embraces East German President Erich Honecker at a celebration of East Germany's 40th anniversary a mere month before the Berlin Wall fell. At that meeting he warned the hard-liner Honecker not to delay reform. When the wall fell, Gorbachev was reportedly unsurprised. His foreign-policy aide, Anatoly Chernyaev, wrote in his diary on Nov. 10: "The Berlin Wall has fallen. An entire era in the history of the 'socialist system' has come to an end.... This is no longer a matter of socialism, but of a change in the world balance of powers.... This is what Gorbachev has done!... [H]e sensed the footsteps of history and helped it to follow its natural course." That "natural course" went on to bring the end of the Soviet Union two years later.

AFP/DPA/Getty Images

Check out other FP photo essays:•

•Seeing Red

•Russia Leaves Eastern Europe Out in the Cold

•China Turns 60

•Planet Slum

•Bolivia's Lithium-Powered Future

•A Third Intifada?

Slum sanctuaries: For six weeks in 2005, photojournalist Jonas Bendiksen lived in a tiny sweltering room in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya. "I got interested to break some of my own stereotypes of these places," he says. "What I really wanted to focus on was not the extremities, the worst poverty, or the worst slums, but on how people manage to construct daily lives in the midst of such challenges." In Kibera, he visited churches assembled from the same makeshift material as many of the homes: tin plates and mud. Above, Sunday morning worship brings together the community.

Home sweet home: A family in Kibera relaxes on used sofas. In many of the homes he visited, Bendiksen took photos of the four walls and then stitched them together to create interior panoramas. (When he exhibits, he projects the images life-size onto four walls.) "I wanted to establish these people as individual human beings," he says. "Their living rooms have many of the same elements as [those of ] people in the West, but they improvise components."

Fires within: Lights in homes illuminate the barrios of Caracas, Venezuela, at dusk. In 2008, the number of people living in cities for the first time exceeded those in rural areas worldwide, a historic turning point. One-third of urban dwellers, approximately 1 billion people, live in slums. The United Nations predicts that number will double in the next 25 years.

Mental block: What is a slum? The definition is hazy. The United Nations' definition of a slum encompasses several factors, including the kind of building construction, the level of services provided by the municipality, land ownership, and the rates of crime and poverty. "With 1 billion people living in the slums worldwide, there's no way that they all relate to their surroundings in the same way," Bendiksen says. In the Caracas barrios, pictured above, "the building construction is more solid, but crime is much worse than in other slums; there is more lawlessness."

Pride and prejudice: A man named Ritze Silva lives in the Caracas barrios with his wife and three daughters. When Bendiksen visited them, Silva grew very animated talking about his family and his plans to paint his home. "Some people talk about their problems," the photojournalist recalls. "Some people talk about their hopes and ambitions. It's something journalists and photographers usually miss -- we overfocus on the negative. We depict an existence you can't even relate to. But there's a lot of ambition in the slums."

Mamas and the papas: Carpenter Santosh Lohar, his wife Meena, and their baby Sandhya live in Dharavi, the largest slum of Mumbai, India. "I wanted to show who lives in these slums. People think of them as mainly criminals and prostitutes," Bendiksen says. "But the people who live here are basically mommies and daddies, going about their normal daily lives, with a lot of challenges." Dharavi is also where Slumdog Millionaire was filmed, though Bendiksen has not seen the movie.

When I grow up: A child plays with colored lights hung for a wedding in Dharavi. Bendiksen's own inspiration for photographing the slums was the birth of his son in 2002. "When I became a father, I started thinking: What will the world look like when my son becomes my age?" he says. "Then I came across those statistics about urban slum-dwellers being the fastest growing segment of the global population. That really struck me."

Inside industry: A man peers out the window of a recycling facility in Dharavi. Inside the warehouse, residents gather and sort all manner of refuse collected from around the city: paint chips, oil cans, computer parts, jars, clothing, scrap metal, and more. Mumbai's slums are hives of small-scale economic activity. According to The Guardian, 250,000 people in Mumbai's slums make their living through sorting, delivering, and selling recycled materials.

View from her bench: Along the rail line that runs through central Jakarta, Indonesia, a woman named Subur and her then 9-month-old son, Subeki, live on a bench with a makeshift covering. "That's the one room I photographed that is not an interior setting," Bendiksen says. "That bench is her room. I tried to capture the view down the street from the bench where she lives."

Family portrait: In Jakarta's "kampongs," the homes were smaller than in other slums Bendiksen visited. One couple, with their three teenage daughters, lives here. There is space to sit upright, but not to stand. Although the room is extraordinarily small, it's also very tidy. "You see here the same elements as in your own house: framed family pictures, wallpaper improvised," Bendiksen says. "No matter what economic condition people are living in, not only do we need to create shelter over our head, but to create a home."

Check out other FP photo essays:

•India's Real-World Slumdogs

•Bolivia's Lithium-Powered Future

•A Third Intifada?

•Edward Burtynsky's Oil

•No Place to Hide