Prof Peter Klein shares his thoughts on his latest documentary:
The head of NATO forces in Afghanistan is a prominent American general. The bulk of soldiers in that country are from the US. And this past year has seen the highest number of casualties since the invasion in 2001.
Yet you’d be hard-pressed to see a story about the war in Afghanistan on American television.
So at 60 Minutes we decided to spend some time on a remote combat outpost in eastern Afghanistan, near the Pakistani border, to bring this remote war to life for our viewers.
Our goal was to document the challenges — both dangerous and mundane — of working in that country. The piece, Combat in Afghanistan, aired on October 19.
My team stumbled upon a massive firefight with foreign fighters, and our cameraman was able to capture some rare footage of face-to-face combat.
During this battle, U.S. soldiers found a Sony DV camera that was abandoned in the cornfield where much of the fighting took place. We were able to see the video with the captain who runs the base. On it was about an hour of footage of militants training, fighting and doing surveillance on U.S. troops. 
All in all, we got a sense that the challenge from militants is greater than it has ever been since 9/11, and that the U.S.-led invasion of the country has become a magnet for anti-U.S. militants from all over the world.
I have to commend CBS for putting faith and financing behind this very challenging story. If we hadn’t come across this battle, our story would have shown just the frustrating aspects of military life such as climbing massive mountains with 50 pounds of gear, inspecting trucks, doing surveillance of villages. Covering war is always dangerous, not only because of personal safety but because of the unknown of what you’ll find.
We were all lucky this time, and hopefully have inspired other reporters to head over to Afghanistan to see for themselves how this war is going.
Watch the 60 Minutes report:
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