Afghanistan: Fighting In A "Hornet's Nest"

This story was first published on Oct. 19, 2008. It was updated on Sept. 3, 2009.

Last month was the deadliest month for American troops since the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001.

Responding to calls for more troops by U.S. commanders, President Obama has pledged to nearly double the number to 68,000 troops by this fall. What will they be facing?

We're going to tell you about a small group of American soldiers on the frontlines of the war. 60 Minutes lived with them for a month last September on a small forward operating base in eastern Afghanistan, not far from the Pakistani border. It's where the real fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda is happening - in canyon valleys and jagged mountain hideouts which are crawling with enemy fighters.

There is a reason the base 60 Minutes and correspondent Lara Logan traveled to is called "Wilderness." It's in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but desolate mountains stretching endlessly into the distance, until you drop onto a tiny patch of ground not much bigger than a football field in the heart of enemy territory.

"I thought it was gonna be a little bit quieter here. But we landed in a hornet's nest when we got here," explains Staff Sgt. Jake Schlereth.

When Schlereth, 27, and 33-year-old Sgt. First Class Anthony Barnes were sent to Afghanistan, they thought the fight was mostly over.

When he arrived in Afghanistan, Sgt. Schlereth didn't think he'd be landing in a hornet's nest. "I guess I really didn't know what to expect when I got here. I'd never been here before, I'd only been to Iraq. And you didn't hear too much about Afghanistan on the news. It was all about Iraq."

"Iraq, yeah. … Roles are reversed," Sgt. Barnes comments.

"Yeah. Reversed. And now it's all about here," Schlereth agrees.

It's all about "here" because the fight in Afghanistan is worse than ever. The tiny base has been hit by rockets and mortars at least 30 times since these soldiers arrived in March.

And that's only part of it: Barnes, Schlereth and their fellow soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division have survived 20 ambushes on their patrols.

American casualties are highest in the East, where they are fighting an Afghan warlord, Jalauddin Haqqani and his son, who are closely allied to al Qaeda and share al Qaeda's goal of driving America out of Afghanistan.

They've also publicly stated that targeting the base is one of their top priorities.

The base commander, 29-year-old Captain Thomas Kilbride, has seen more combat than any of his soldiers, constantly deployed since 9/11.

Asked if now, on his third tour in Afghanistan, things have changed in the country, Capt. Kilbride tells Logan, "In regards to enemy activity, I think it's increased. We need to deal with them deliberately, and, you know, immediately."

Their mission for 12 months is to protect a road, which is the only direct link between the East and the capital Kabul. "The road is a livelihood for everybody, it's a line that connects the rest of Afghanistan. It's a bloodline, an opportunity for all of Afghanistan to kind of develop," Kilbride explains.

Part of that development is a planned $121 million project to rebuild the road, paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

The enemy doesn't want to see that happen, so Kilbride is unrelenting about going after them. And doing that there means getting up every day to face these mountains, every inch of them enemy territory.

Asked how bad this area is, Kilbride says, "It's one of our worst areas. They have the advantage, they know this terrain more than we do."

It often takes eight hours or more of climbing to 10,000 feet, even if they don't find the enemy, just to let them know they're not out of reach.

"The first time I did it, I thought I was gonna die because I'm from the East Coast. I'm from the South. The highest mountain we got's 5,000 feet," Barnes recalls.

"The terrain here will kick your ass. I mean, it's not a joke. You can feel it in your lungs. Feel it, you get that feeling in your chest when you're like 'Wooh!'" Kilbride explains.

He says it's a daily experience.

On one mission, after a steep - at times vertical - climb to the top of the mountain to search for a weapons cache, they found nothing.

The terrain and the enemy are relentless.

Asked if he ever let his guard down, Schlereth says, "Can't. Security's a must around here. Don't take anything for granted."

"If they catch you slippin', they will definitely make your day hard," Barnes adds.

The 60 Minutes team found that out one night during our visit when an Apache helicopter pilot spotted a suspicious group of armed men.

Kilbride ordered the pilot to engage.

That started an intense battle, with Kilbride and his men right in the middle of a more deadly type of warfare, facing a new breed of fighter, strengthened by their ability to carry out sophisticated, conventional tactics.

As daylight came, the advancing soldiers had no idea they were heading straight into a close fight to the death, the type of close engagement hardly ever seen in this war.

Gunfire suddenly rang out, bullets coming at the soldiers out of nowhere, whizzing just over their heads and hitting the wall behind them.

Machine gunners fired from Humvees to clear the way forward.

Kilbride's men tossed hand grenades, and moved in after their enemy, pursuing them through thick cornfields.

The captain says moving through those cornfields wasn't easy. "You start losing, you know, you're sense of where everything is."

"You couldn't see," Schlereth remembers. "Just like walkin' through a forest. You know, big, thick foliage. They got cornstalks, and they were laying in the prone. And every once in a while, I had to get down on the ground and look and see if they were down there. 'Cause you knew they were in there, just you just couldn't see 'em."

Somehow in the midst of all that, a soldier found a camera that would provide valuable intelligence later.

As First Sgt. Eddie Heater led his group of men out of a cornfield, they suddenly encountered a fighter hiding in a ditch. "He was right beside me. As we came over that berm the soldier to my left was shot," he recalls.

Asked what he did, Heater says, "I immediately you know turned and…killed the enemy."

The gunman was dead, his body slumped in the nook where he had been laying in wait.

A young sergeant, Marcus Vasquez, had been shot in the shoulder. Vasquez was lucky: the bullet passed straight through and he was quickly stabilized.

The MedEvac chopper arrived within minutes, and Vasquez was taken away to one of the main U.S. bases for surgery.

"That's the day we'll remember. It's the closest fight we've had," Barnes says. "They were pretty well armed. Most of the time when these guys hit, they hit from a position of advantage to them. They don't wanna fight you on even terms, because they'll lose."

At least 12 enemy fighters were killed that day.

"And what have you learned about the enemy that you're fighting from, you know, this attack and previous attacks?" Logan asks Kilbride.

"We're not fighting an inexperienced army," the captain replies.

Major General Jeffrey Schloesser says the enemy knows what they're doing. When Schloesser, Deputy Commander of all U.S. troops in Afghanistan, arrived at the base shortly after the battle, 60 Minutes pressed him on U.S. claims that the mission is succeeding.

"In 2005 I was told the same thing as 2006 and in 2007, 'Oh it's not that the enemy's stronger, it's that we're more successful,'" Logan remarks.

"Well, you know I'm not telling you that. I'm telling you that the enemy did increase from 20 to 30 percent this last year and you haven't asked yet but I'll tell you that they are doing more complex activities, which concerns me greatly. So I'm not here to blow smoke up anybody's dress. I'm not," Schloesser says.

A video Kilbride's men found in the cornfields shows an unscripted view of the enemy you never see, and it was surprising - from the enemy's discipline and organization to their many new weapons.

When Kilbride reviewed the tapes right after the battle, he counted over 50 heavily-armed fighters in the pictures. The gunmen had also filmed their own attacks and training.

Then, there was an eerie discovery: Kilbride found evidence the militants carried out video surveillance of U.S. troops on patrol, possibly even his own men.

"Seeing it is interesting - to see where they set up. Their vantage point," says Kilbride, who thinks the enemy is watching his troops every time they leave the gate.

More and more of the fighters they face are foreigners, Schloesser told 60 Minutes, coming over the border from Pakistan's tribal areas, where they have sanctuary.

Schloesser believes the fight against the enemy will remain difficult without access to the enemy's safe havens in Pakistan.

"That seems like an impossible task," Logan says.

"I think it makes it extraordinarily difficult. There's no doubt in my mind. Americans should know that we defend ourselves and we fire right back inside into Pakistan because it is a threat," the general says.

"Well you're right, they do need to know that because it's seven years on," Logan points out.

"And we didn't say this very much. I'm telling you the truth. We do," Schloesser replies.

Still, U.S. soldiers are not authorized to operate at will on Pakistani soil.

Asked if he would like to be able to conduct raids across the Afghan-Pakistani border, Schloesser says, "There's a lot of things I'd like to be able to do in life, Lara, but I'm a professional soldier after 32 years. I do what is legally permissible under the laws, and so here I am."

"But it's got to be frustrating though. I mean I know it's frustrating for the soldiers," Logan says.

"It is," Schloesser agrees. "There's no doubt. There is no doubt."

Asked how under-resourced he is, Schloesser says, "I've been very clear that I need more resources, more soldiers and more assets."

Those assets can't come soon enough for Capt. Kilbride and his men, as 60 Minutes found out on a mission in search of a reported roadside bomb.

They didn't find it that day. But the morning after the 60 Minutes team left, a U.S. Humvee hit a roadside bomb in the same area. Photographs from the scene show the vehicle was obliterated, killing everyone inside - an Afghan interpreter and four of Kilbride's soldiers. For the captain, who was putting out the flames moments after the blast, it was the bloodiest day so far.

"Nothing's easy," he says. "It's gonna be a long fight. I'm not telling you that it's gonna happen tomorrow. I'm not gonna tell you it's gonna happen next year. But, you know, it might be 12, 15 years from now and we're still in Afghanistan."

Asked how he sees the purpose of his mission in Afghanistan, Sgt. Barnes says, "I tell you like I told my daughter when I left. She asked my why was I leavin' again. And I told her, I said, 'I gotta go over, and I'm gonna help the good people. I'm gonna help their army. And I'm gonna try to get, you know, put their bad people away.' And she was like, 'Okay.' And that's my goal, to help as many good people as I can help, to get rid of as many bad people as I can get rid of, and to take as many of mine back home with me as I can take."

Produced by Jeff Newton and Peter Klein