A01=Sune Engel Rasmussen
Afghan war
Afghanistan
American diplomacy
Author_Sune Engel Rasmussen
Category=DNB
Category=JBSL1
Category=JP
Category=NHWR9
central asia
conflicts
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
geopolitics
international relations
middle east
political science
September 11 2001
terrorism
war on terror
world history
Product details
- ISBN 9781250390486
- Weight: 389g
- Dimensions: 146 x 224mm
- Publication Date: 22 Sep 2025
- Publisher: St Martin's Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The United States and its allies responded to al-Qaeda’s attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, by toppling the Taliban regime and installing a new government under Hamid Karzai, and an entire generation of Afghans grew up amid the upheavals that followed. As a foreign correspondent for The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal, Sune Engel Rasmussen spent more than a decade in the company of this new generation, and in Twenty Years he tells its story. His vibrant cast of young Afghans includes Zahra, who returns from abroad with high hopes for her liberated country but then must escape a brutal marriage and rebuild her life, and Omari, who joins the Taliban at the age of fourteen to protect the honor of his village and nation and winds up wrestling with doubt and the trauma of war after achieving victory. We also encounter Parasto, who risks her life running clandestine girls’ schools under the new Taliban regime, and Fahim, a rags-to-riches tycoon who is forced to flee.
Through the eyes of these and other young people, we see the United States and its coalition bring new opportunities and wealth while also permitting and presiding over the corruption, warlordism, and social division that led to the Taliban’s return to power. The result is a searing narrative of how Afghans intimately experienced the initial promise of freedom, democracy, and safety; fought with one another over its meaning; and then witnessed its collapse. Written with flair and compassion, Twenty Years offers deep insight into a country betrayed by the West and the Taliban alike.
Sune Engel Rasmussen has reported in Afghanistan extensively for The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal, where he is now a correspondent who covers Afghanistan, Iran, and North European affairs. The author of a 2019 Danish-language book on the country, he now lives in London. His work has also appeared in Harper's, The Economist, National Geographic, GQ, Newsweek, and Time.
