Starting with the Persian Gulf crisis of 1990 and the 1991 invasion of Iraq, Pelley has reported extensively from many war zones. In 1991, he accompanied the XVIII Airborne Corps on its invasion of Iraq to force the liberation of Kuwait. In 2001, Pelley and his team joined U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan. In 2003, Pelley and a "60 Minutes" team were the first to break the news of the second invasion of Iraq, reporting from an outpost they had created in the DMZ between Iraq and Kuwait. The team opted out of the Pentagon's embed system and covered the invasion of Iraq independently from the initial strike to the fall of Baghdad. Pelley returned to Iraq frequently to report on the insurgency. In 2006 and 2007 he filed reports on the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. In his 2007 report, Pelley enlisted the help of a rebel group to organize an armed reconnaissance into Darfur. The story revealed a village that had been destroyed by government forces in their campaign of genocide. The Darfur report was honored with an Emmy Award. In a review of the story, the "Washington Times" wrote, "The legacy of (Edward R.) Murrow lives at CBS in the daring, long-range investigations of Scott Pelley." In Afghanistan, Pelley has accompanied numerous units of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps in combat operations and has reported independently on the effects of the war on civilians. In 2011, The CBS Evening News was broadcast from Afghanistan for a series of reports on the 10th anniversary of the war.