For Canada the stakes are unprecedented. More than a billion dollars in aid has been promised to Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime. And with more than 80 Canadian soldiers killed, the military mission in the war-torn country has exacted a considerable human toll.

Six years into the mammoth task of rebuilding Afghanistan, it's time to address a contentious question: is all of this effort making a difference to the lives of Afghans?

Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear takes viewers into the heart of a country that has been the subject of such intense debate and asks whether or not the lives of ordinary citizens are improving. In order to gain unique access to Afghans living in remote and particularly dangerous areas the CBC engaged local journalists and camera crews.

Through a series of intensely personal stories delving into a range of topics the program gauges whether Afghanistan is moving forwards or backwards. Is the country descending into further instability? Or is real progress being made?

Three stories from Afghanistan: Between Hope and Fear

Healthcare on the Mend: A Midwife's Story

Amina works marathon shifts at the Bamyan Hospital maternity ward, doing her bit to help improve the dire state of healthcare in her country. She got a job there as a midwife after graduating from a foreign-sponsored training program.

"My husband encouraged me to go back to school," says Amina. "I studied nursing for a year and then I decided to become a midwife."

Canada is among several countries that has spent millions training women like Amina. Boosting the number of females working on the frontlines of healthcare is crucial in Afghanistan. The reason: in most families it's a cultural taboo for females to be examined by a male doctor.

While training programs do make a difference, health statistics are bleak. Afghans still endure some of the worst conditions in the developing world. Maternal and child mortality rates are at unacceptable levels -- almost one in five children die before their fifth birthday.

But slowly, conditions are improving. Thanks to aid from countries like Canada, babies have better access to vaccinations. Now almost 50,000 more infants survive each year than during the Taliban regime.

New Face of Aid

Canadian Drew Gilmour operates in some of the most dangerous regions of the country. Gilmour is the director of Development Works Canada, a private company that has received five million dollars from the Canadian government.

With Gilmour's company, aid and entrepreneurship come together. Though he is fundamentally a businessman, his goals are the same as any aid organization – provide Afghans with much-needed infrastructure and services. Gilmour negotiates with villagers to build the projects they want – wells for instance, or irrigation and school repairs.

Gilmour believes the best security is economic recovery. 

"I think that if we provide income generation, that that in itself will enable the community to stand up on its own two feet, avoid the temptations of going to insurgents or participating in the poppy trade," says Gilmour.

Doing business in the insurgents' backyard means being on high alert 24/7. On the job, Gilmour tries to blend in by wearing traditional Afghan attire. He never goes anywhere without armed guards and always hits the road in an ordinary vehicle, rather than an armoured SUV.

Technically-savvy Taliban

The Taliban were notorious for destroying television sets and video machines on grounds that visual human representations are prohibited in Islamic law.

Today, the new generation of Taliban commanders has done an about turn. They have discarded the fatwa, or religious decree, against the use of videos and in cahoots with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, they have set up a well-oiled media production department.

"They deploy with videographers," says NATO spokesman, James Appathurai. "They have DVDs out in an hour."

A great deal of Taliban produced DVDs end up on YouTube attracting thousands of hits. Recognizing that YouTube has become the Taliban's new battleground, NATO was recently forced to declassify many top-secret combat videos, posting them on YouTube and other web platforms. 

In many of these slick Taliban videos, fighters sing Jihadi anthems and Taliban commanders give lengthy lectures on the merits of Jihad. According to Glen Jenvey, a UK-based specialist who tracks Jihadi content on the Web, the Taliban videos are the "lifeblood of terrorist recruiting campaigns." They are used to boost morale, win hearts and minds and raise badly needed funds from their sympathizers around the world.