Afghanistan

George Crile is a veteran producer for CBS's 60 Minutes and 60 Minutes II. He's the author of the new book, Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History. It's about the CIA's secret war in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s, and its support of the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet Union. Ammunitions and weapons were smuggled across the border and at one point over 300,000 fundamentalist Afghan warriors carried weapons provided by the CIA.

Charlie Wilson is a retired congressman and the subject of the book Charlie Wilson's War. It's about the secret CIA operation arming the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet Union. Wilson left office in 1996 after 24 years in office. He is now a lobbyist and one of his main clients is Pakistan.

A Marine Sergeant and a war correspondent reflect on the physical and psychic cost of war. Marine sergeant TJ Brennan was hit by the blast from a rocket-propelled grenade and suffered traumatic brain injury. Photographer Finbarr O'Reilly was embedded with Brennan's unit in Afghanistan.

America's war in Afghanistan is the longest war the U.S. has ever fought. Beginning a month after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the initial mission was to remove the Taliban from power and destroy the al-Qaida terror network. Now, nearly 17 years later, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll points out that the war's goals have changed.

For more than two decades, trauma surgeon David Nott spent several weeks each year volunteering in some of the world's most dangerous conflict zones, including Syria, Afghanistan, Congo, Iraq, Yemen and Sarajevo. Now he's in London, applying some of what he learned in war zones and disaster areas as he treats patients with COVID-19.

Afghanistan deserved better, says New Yorker staff writer Steve Coll. "We're a democracy," he says. "We decided to go over there and do this — and look what we've got."

Journalist CLARISSA WARD is CNN’s Chief International Correspondent. She recently reported from the streets of Kabul as thousands of people tried to get into the secure part of the airport, fly out of the country, and escape the rule of the Taliban. She flew out of Afghanistan on Saturday with her crew.

Journalist Peter Bergen talks about bin Laden's path to mass murder and reflects on the consequences of the recent U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Originally broadcast Aug. 4, 2021.

Afghan British journalist Najibullah Quraishi has had trouble sleeping for more than two hours a stretch ever since the U.S. withdrew troops from Afghanistan in August and the Taliban came back into power. Quraishi grew up in Afghanistan under Soviet and Taliban rule, and began reporting on the Taliban before the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks and the onset of the U.S. Afghan war. He's currently in Kabul reporting for his upcoming PBS Frontline documentary, Taliban Takeover, (airing Oct. 12) which details life in Afghanistan now.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff served two tours in Afghanistan in the Marines, and is now a New York Times reporter and Kabul bureau chief. He recently interviewed a high-level Taliban commander about a battle they had both been engaged in.

Journalist Matthieu Aikins shed his own identity and traveled with his Afghan interpreter along smugglers' routes to reach Europe and escape the Taliban. His book is The Naked Don't Fear the Water.

Filmmaker Ramita Navai Navai chronicles the Taliban's treatment of women in the new PBS Frontline documentary, Afghanistan Undercover, which she started researching in early 2020.

Jere Van Dyk has spent years in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he got to know leaders of the Haqqani network, responsible for many suicide bombings and kidnappings. His new book is Without Borders.