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

by Sune Engel Rasmussen

Overview

Winner of the Overseas Press Club of America’s Cornelius Ryan book award

One of the Washington Post's 50 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024

An Economist Best Book of the Year | An Air Mail editor's pick

"Rasmussen combines social history with rigorous reporting . . . His ability to delve into [his characters'] lives lends his book the feeling of a novel . . . Trenchant . . . Superlative." —Martha Anne Toll, The Washington Post

"Devastating . . . Impressive . . . Haunting." —Suzy Hansen, The New York Review of Books

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250390486
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	08/05/2025
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Sune Engel Rasmussen has reported in Afghanistan extensively for The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal, where he now covers Afghanistan, Iran, and European security affairs. The author of a 2019 Danish-language book on Afghanistan, he lives in London. His work has also appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Economist, National Geographic, GQ, Newsweek, and Time.

Editorial Reviews

"Rasmussen combines social history with rigorous reporting . . . His ability to delve into [his characters'] lives lends his book the feeling of a novel . . . Trenchant . . . Superlative." —Martha Anne Toll, The Washington Post

"Devastating . . . [Twenty Years is] immersion journalism, [. . .] a form viewed by many journalists as the pinnacle of the craft, one that elevates mere reportage to literature . . . Impressive . . . Haunting." —Suzy Hansen, The New York Review of Books

"As Rasmussen interweaves the war and his subjects’ stories, he shows how historical events intrude on the quotidian, and examines a foreign intervention in which, he writes, 'lessons were rarely learned, mistakes often repeated.'" —The New Yorker

"As the canon of writing about this war grows, few authors have been able to connect the myriad political and military events of those decades to the personal accounts of Afghans who fought on both sides of the struggle to define a new country as Sune Engel Rasmussen has done." —Joe Stanek, Chicago Review of Books

"[Rasmussen] offers poignant explorations of Afghan lives over two tumultuous decades . . . A diligent, humane guide to the chaotic lives of ordinary citizens finding their way . . . Sharp [and] memorable." —Kirkus Reviews

"[Twenty Years] unfolds through the eyes and experiences of four main and several minor witnesses, ranging from a Taliban agent and fighter who grows disillusioned, to a hustler who parlays his mastery of English into a business empire supplying fuel to American armed forces . . . Compelling." —The Economist

"Rasmussen’s complex, nuanced panorama of the period shows the real opportunities and freedoms opened up by the American presence in Afghanistan . . . It’s one of the best evocations yet of Afghanistan’s tragedy." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“An unflinching, knowledgeable examination of betrayed hopes, broken fates, and damaged lives—the record of America’s failed experiment to remake Afghanistan. Sune Engel Rasmussen has crisscrossed the country and delivered a deeply empathetic book that illuminates the human toll exacted on the Afghans—those who had believed in American promises of a better future, and those who had fought America in the battlefield.” —Yaroslav Trofimov, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Our Enemies Will Vanish

"Sune Engel Rasmussen has crafted a rich narrative showing how America's longest war affected Afghans, from the women who bought into the idea that they could help chart their country's future to the men who were skeptical of the future that the West would actually deliver. He's managed to weave together all the faces of Afghanistan, and all the complexities, contradictions, surprises and tragedies lived over decades of conflict. His book manages to be both a lesson in empathy and a vital snapshot of history." —Kim Barker, author of The Taliban Shuffle

"Sune Engel Rasmussen's coverage of Afghanistan has long been superlative. Now comes his excellent book, which is deeply reported, well-written, and moving, telling the story of America's abandonment of the Afghan people. It's a somber story that he tells very well." —Peter Bergen, author of The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden

“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

"In Twenty Years, Sune Engel Rasmussen brings momentous times to life through the extraordinary stories of brave young Afghans, and riveting storytelling." —Lyse Doucet, chief international correspondent for the BBC

"Twenty Years is a model of courageous, hard-earned reporting and lucid, compelling writing. Not only one of the finest journalistic accounts of Afghanistan since 2001, it's a wise and moving work of literature about the transformative effect of war on families, nations, and history. Humbling, enlightening, and studded with moments of improbable hope and beauty." —Nick McDonell, author of The Bodies in Person and The Civilization of Perpetual Movement

"An epic and elegantly-woven tale of struggle, triumph and loss, of the young lives made and shattered by the West's misadventure in Afghanistan. Rasmussen is a careful and dedicated observer of Afghanistan's lost generation." —Matthieu Aikins, contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and author of The Naked Don't Fear the Water: An Underground Journey with Afghan Refugees

From the Publisher

2024-05-28
A reporter’s intensive interviews with a diverse generation of Afghans over the last 20 years.

Rasmussen, a London-based journalist who covers Afghanistan, Iran, and European security affairs for theWall Street Journal, offers poignant explorations of Afghan lives over two tumultuous decades. Since the fall of the first Taliban regime in 2001 after the U.S. invasion and occupation, there was a massive attempt at rebuilding the decimated country, bringing modernization efforts that began to include girls and women successfully into the education system. Many Afghans that had fled the first Taliban regime, such as Zahra’s and Saif’s families, migrating to Iran, returned by the early 2000s and attempted to rebuild their lives. Zahra was married off as a young teen and physically abused by her opium-addicted husband. Eventually, she was able to extricate herself from an oppressive tribal system and find education and employment. With her two children, she just managed to escape Kabul when the Americans evacuated in August 2021. Alex, a gay man who had spent his early years in Peshawar—where his family had moved to escape the Taliban—hoped to open the first gay bar in Kabul but had to abandon his dreams when the political situation grew more repressive by the 2010s. During that time, Omari became a Taliban soldier and witnessed an emergent Islamic State group before joining the triumphant Taliban entering the capital city in 2021. Parasto earned a university education and secured a good job with the Afghan government; after the fall of Kabul, she helped open schools for girls before she, too, was hounded into exile. Throughout, Rasmussen is a diligent, humane guide to the chaotic lives of ordinary citizens finding their way among the violence of extremism and war.

Sharp, memorable portraits of the myriad struggles of young people from Afghanistan.

Kirkus Reviews