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Air Force One, its windows blacked out to guard against attack, touched down in Afghanistan well after dark.

President Obamas war-zone visits are usually short and ceremonial. In his six hours on the ground, he appeared alongside Afghanistans leader, pinned Purple Hearts on the wounded and spoke to a hangar full of U.S. troops.

But Obama also made time for something else, something personal. Just after 2 a.m., the president slipped away for a meeting that he had deliberately kept off his public schedule.

In a small, private room, 15 mortuary affairs soldiers waited to greet him. These were the soldiers who prepared the bodies of troops killed in battle for their trip home. To blunt the overpowering stench of death, they wore masks when they worked, burned their uniforms regularly and dabbed Vicks VapoRub under their noses.

Now that they were about to meet Obama, members of a unit used to working in the isolation of wars grim aftermath all had the same question: Of all the soldiers in Afghanistan, why had the president asked to see them?

Obamas visit came in the spring of 2012, just months before his election to a second term, in which he had promised to speed Americas exit from its post-9/11 wars. Since then, a new war has erupted, while an old war continues. Today, the president faces mounting pressure to send more troops to Iraq to help in the battle against Islamic State extremists.

His decision will be influenced by the counsel of his generals. It will also be guided by more private moments in his wartime education at the bedside of wounded troops; on the tarmac of Dover Air Force Base, where the war dead return to American soil; and in that small room with the mortuary affairs soldiers one middle of the night in Afghanistan.

Discussions of war and peace in Washington often revolve around abstract questions of policy and national interest. Rarely mentioned are the human costs of war and how they weigh on a commander in chief. Its probably the least appreciated and most difficult part of leadership, said Michele Flournoy, who served at the top levels of Obamas Pentagon. Its not an abstraction, and, if you have any doubt, it eats at you, because the human costs are very real.

Every president experiences war differently. Some become consumed with its politics and special ability to unravel prized domestic agendas. Others see in war an opportunity to reshape the world, build a legacy, deter future enemies.

As a wartime commander, Obama has often focused his words on wars tragedies and his actions on ratcheting down risks to troops. We believe it is a national security objective not to be losing service members in wars, said Ben Rhodes, the presidents deputy national security adviser for strategic communications.

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Private moments helped shape Obamas education about war

Kabul, Afghanistan For most of Mohammed Tahirs 68 years, he lived on an unpaved strip of road in Afghanistans capital that had no drainage. Most winters he navigated the freezing mud barefoot rather than ruin his shoes in ankle-deep slush. He remembers when taxis refused to drive down the road to pick up family members duringmedical emergencies.

They all said the roads were too bumpy for their cars, Mr. Tahir recalls.

Yet about 10 months ago Tahirs street finally got paved, the result of a collaboration between the Afghan government and Japan. Like many Afghans, especially those in Kabul, Tahir has seen his life radically change thanks topaved roads.

In 2001, Afghanistan had less than 50 miles of paved roads. Today, 8,000 to 10,000 miles of Afghanistans roads have been rehabilitated or improved. In Kabul alone, the mayors office estimates some 575 miles roads have been paved in the greater metropolitan area, with plans for more in the coming year. The international community bankrolled much of the paving, with the US alone contributing $2.36 billion.

The roads, a legacy of the 13-year US-led war against the Taliban, have eliminated many longstanding problems that added a layer of misery to a country in conflict since the early 1980s.The paving efforts have not been perfect, even failing in some places.But theyhave connected and transformed a number of cities and their commerce. Major roadways like the Kabul-Kandahar highway turned what used to be overnight journeys into manageable day trips.

Despite these improvements, many roads built in the early phase of the war are now in disrepair with severe potholes, both from wear and tear, as well as from roadside bombs in insecure areas. The World Bank now estimates that 85 percent of Afghanistans roads are in poor shape and the majority cannot be used by motor vehicles.

Maintaining roads and highways has so far proven an unsustainable domestic challenge. Regulating the large, overloaded trucks that use the roads and wear them down has been difficult; today many of Kabuls streets are in dire need of mending.

Yet among those living on newly built roads in Kabul, the fresh pavement has changed lives.On Tahirs fresh street, new sewer and drainage systems were built along with the roads. They stop homes from flooding in the winter and eliminate pools of water that attract swarms of mosquitos in the summer.

Gulnama, an Afghan housewife, says that dirt roads were worse for women. Unlike men, women don't have the option to roll up their pants and take off their shoes to walk through the mud because of cultural restrictions. The markets and shops along the road used to be virtually off limits to them during rain and snowfall.

In the winter we would avoid going shopping there and many other women felt this way, because if we fell in the mud it would cause us great shame and people would laugh at us, says Gulnama, who like many Afghans only has one name.

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Paved roads a positive legacy of Afghan war. But who fixes potholes?

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