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

The upheaval of the American occupation of Afghanistan is seen through the eyes of young people who endured, embraced, or fought it in this penetrating debut. Wall Street Journal reporter Rasmussen follows the contrasting stories of several Afghans who came of age after the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban regime. They include Fahim, an entrepreneur who got rich supplying the U.S. and Afghan militaries; Omari, a village lad radicalized by the sometimes brutal tactics of American soldiers into joining the Taliban insurgency; and Parasto, an ambitious young woman who got a college education and a position in the government, and then started a network of clandestine schools for girls after the Taliban reconquered the country in 2021. Rasmussen’s complex, nuanced panorama of the period shows the real opportunities and freedoms opened up by the American presence in Afghanistan; the book’s climax, with the Taliban taking over Kabul, strikes a note of chilling horror as a dour Islamic theocracy clamps down and women are fired from their jobs, consigned to burqas, and confined to their homes. But Rasmussen also conveys the dark side of the occupation: a pervasive corruption and insecurity that the Taliban credibly promised to eliminate and an American military keenly resented as a source of chaos and terror. It’s one of the best evocations yet of Afghanistan’s tragedy. (Aug.)