Iraq & Afganistan Wars

New Yorker writer Dexter Filkins finds an increasingly authoritarian prime minister — Nouri al-Maliki — sectarian violence, and concern for the future. Iraq holds parliamentary elections Wednesday.

In a new book, New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall offers new information about how Pakistan has helped the Taliban in Afghanistan and may have helped hide Osama bin Laden.

Kayla Williams and Brian McGough met in Iraq in 2003. Williams' new memoir, Plenty of Time When We Get Home, describes their homecoming after McGough suffered physical and cognitive injuries in an IED explosion.

Roy Scranton and Jacob Siegel edited and contributed to the collection of short stories by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They tell Fresh Air about how soldiers cope with the fear of death, and why many soldiers feel conflicted about sharing their experience with a larger audience.

In a new documentary premiering on HBO, the journalist explores the life of his friend, the war photographer Tim Hetherington. The two collaborated on the 2010 documentary Restrepo, and Junger was profoundly changed after Hetherington was killed by shrapnel in Libya in 2011.

On the 10-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, journalist Aaron Glantz talks about the challenges American service members face in accessing disability and other benefits. Glantz says there is a backlog of 900,000 claims and that the average waiting period is 273 days.

In a new book, the CNN anchor tells the story of Combat Outpost Keating. The ill-fated American military base was in a remote Afghan valley, and on Oct. 3 , 2009, it became the site of one of the deadliest attacks against U.S. troops in the history of the war in Afghanistan.

In a new book about Gen. David Petraeus, author and journalist Fred Kaplan looks at how theories of counterinsurgency have shaped U.S. military policy in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Michelle Shephard has traveled to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, more than two dozen times and has been following the stories of men who've been released from the U.S. detention center. She's the author of Guantanamo's Child and Decade of Fear: Reporting From Terrorism's Grey Zone.

In the early days of the Iraq War, during a firefight in Baghdad, Lu Lobello's Marine unit mistakenly opened fire on a family of civilians, killing three. Years later, and after enlisting the help of reporter Dexter Filkins, Lobello reached out to that family for forgiveness.

New Yorker reporter Dexter Filkins just returned from his latest reporting trip to Afghanistan. "The United States is leaving: mission not accomplished," he writes.

Brian Castner commanded two Explosive Ordnance Disposal units in Iraq, where his team disabled roadside IEDs and investigated the aftermath of roadside car bombings. He returned home a completely different man, which he details in his memoir, The Long Walk.

New York Times chief Washington correspondent David Sanger details how President Obama accelerated the use of innovative weapons to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and sped up a wave of cyberattacks against Iran to destroy its nuclear centrifuges.

Journalist Peter Bergen outlines the decade-long search for the al-Qaida leader in his new book Manhunt. Bergen is the only journalist to gain access to bin Laden's Abbottabad compound before it was razed by the Pakastani government.

Tim Arango, the Baghdad bureau chief for The New York Times, shares personal stories from his time covering the war, including how he tracked down the subject of a famous photograph. He also talks about what the U.S. troop withdrawal means for the future of Iraq -- and what will happen after the troops are gone.

More soldiers are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with wounds that would have been fatal a decade ago. The injuries have led to advances in combat medicine but have challenged the health care systems meant to help veterans back home. War reporter David Wood talks with Fresh Air about the hurdles facing these troops and their families.

The Haqqani Network operates in eastern Afghanistan, where it carries out bombings and kidnappings. It was also blamed for the recent bombing at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. New York Times reporter Mark Mazzetti says the network finances its activities partially through extortion money it receives from U.S.-funded contractors in Afghanistan.

In 2009, Peter Van Buren joined a team working to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and economy. For the next year, he encountered comically misguided projects, greedy contractors and oblivious bureaucrats. In his new book, We Meant Well, he recounts the ground-level waste and corruption he saw.

NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel details what it's like to report from some of the more dangerous war zones on the planet. He also discusses his recent dispatches from Egypt and Libya, where he was subject to tear gas attacks and artillery fire.

Journalist Alissa J. Rubin has spent most of the past 10 years reporting on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. On Thursday's Fresh Air, Rubin talks about the growing corruption and violence in Afghanistan, from which 33,000 U.S. troops are expected to withdraw by the summer of 2012.