US Marines raise the Stars and Stripes during a ceremony in the American Embassy in Kabul on December 17, 2001. The United States re-established a diplomatic presence in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Monday for the first time since its diplomats fled the city shortly before the end of the Soviet occupation in 1989. On a cold and drizzly afternoon, two US Marines hoisted the same Stars and Stripes on the same flagpole from which it was taken down on January 30, 1989. —REUTERS