"His phone finally rang. It was probably my 18th or 19th attempt," writes Kabul-based correspondent Anuj Chopra.  "I had nearly given up when the call finally went through...But to my dismay, when he answered, he refused to talk -- perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of shame. 'Your report won’t change anything,' he said over the scratchy line, before hanging up.

"Listening to the birds warbling in the trees, I came to a sobering realisation. I was trying to break through an invisible wall of silence. As a journalist I have never felt more alone in the quest of a story. A story that no one wants to talk about. A story shrouded in a miasma of shame.

But "the story had to be told."