A selection of the best images by Post photographers this year.

Featuring the best work by multimedia journalists and interactive designers at washingtonpost.com.

Five years after the Taliban fled Kabul under the cover of night, signs of fragile but real progress abound. Simple pleasures once prohibited -- song and dance, the flutter of kites -- have resumed. And for the first time, women and girls once repressed under Taliban rule are able to take better control of their lives and their futures.

The Aswan High Dam is the starting point for a 690-mile journey along the river, through Egypt, the Arab world's most populous country.

Alberto Korda was born Alberto Diaz Gutierrez in Havana in 1928, the same year as Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. Korda captured the celebrated photograph of Che during his work as personal photographer to Fidel Castro. In the book 'Cuba by Korda,' available Sept. 15, 2006, rare photos of Fidel Castro and Guevara, as well as the stories behind the photographs.

In the 25 years of the epidemic, treatment has improved, but the issues of social isolation, and, often, economic instability remain.