Twenty Years

Hope, War, and the Betrayal of an Afghan Generation

Sune Engel Rasmussen

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Hardback

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English

Farrar Straus Giroux
11 February 2025

History; Afghan War

An intimate history of the Afghan war-and the young Afghans whose dreams it enabled and dashed.

No country was more deeply affected by 9/11 than Afghanistan: an entire generation grew up amid the upheaval that began that day. Young Afghans knew the promise of freedom, democracy, and safety, fought with each other over its meaning-and then witnessed its collapse. In Twenty Years, the Wall Street Journal correspondent Sune Engel Rasmussen draws on more than a decade of reporting from the country to tell Afghanistan's story from a new angle. Through the eyes of newly empowered women, skilled entrepreneurs, driven insurgents, and abandoned Western allies, we see the United States and its partners bring new freedoms and wealth, only to preside over the corruption, war-lordism, and social division that led to the Taliban's return to power.

Rasmussen relates this history via two main characters: Zahra, who returns from abroad with high hopes for her liberated county, where she must fight to escape a brutal marriage and rebuild her life; and Omari, who joins the Taliban to protect the honor of his village and country and winds up wrestling with doubt and the trauma of war after achieving victory. We also meet 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. With intimate access to these and other characters, Rasmussen offers deep insight into a country betrayed by the West and Taliban alike.

By: Sune Engel Rasmussen
Imprint: Farrar Straus Giroux
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 161mm, Spine: 32mm
Weight: 540g
ISBN: 9780374609948
ISBN 10: 0374609942
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 11 February 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

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.

Reviews for Twenty Years: Hope, War, and the Betrayal of an Afghan Generation

"""The war in Afghanistan was a strategic calamity for America and a catastrophic tragedy for the people of that country. We have yet to fully understand that conflict and come to terms with its impact on the people of Afghanistan. Twenty Years is a rare account of what the war did to Afghanistan, tracing the rise and fall of hopes for a nation, and the despair that became its fate. Relying on his extensive reporting during the war, Sune Engel Rasmussen looks at what happened to the country through the eyes of its people, showing how they experienced the promise of change, and faced the daily horrors of war. This is at once an empathetic human story and an insightful history of the Afghan war. The lessons Rasmussen draws are urgent and poignant, ones that we would do well to heed."" --Vali Nasr, professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat"