Description

The American betrayal of Afghanistan took twenty years Elliot Ackerman a participant and witness tells the story with unsparing honesty in this intensely personal chronicleGeorge Packer

A powerful and revelatory eyewitness account of the American collapse in Afghanistan its desperate endgame and the wars echoing legacy

Elliot Ackerman left the American military ten years ago but his time in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Marines and later as a CIA paramilitary officer marked him indeliblyWhen the Taliban began to close in on Kabul in August 2021 and the Afghan regime began its death spiral he found himself pulled back into the conflict Afghan nationals who had worked closely with the American military and intelligence communities for years now faced brutal reprisal and sought frantically to flee the country with their families The official US government evacuation effort was a bureaucratic failure that led to a humanitarian catastrophe With former colleagues and friends protecting the airport in Kabul Ackerman joined an impromptu effort by a group of journalists and other veterans to arrange flights and negotiate with both Taliban and American forces to secure the safe evacuation of hundredsThese were desperate measures taken during a desperate end to Americas longest war For Ackerman it also became a chance to reconcile his past with his present

The Fifth Act is an astonishing human document that brings the weight of twenty years of war to bear on a single week the week the war ended Using the dramatic rescue efforts in Kabul as his lattice Ackerman weaves a personal history of the wars long progression beginning with the initial invasion in the months after 9/11 It is a play in five acts the fifth act being the storys tragic denouement a prelude to Afghanistans dark futureAny reader who wants to understand what went wrong with the wars trajectory will find a trenchant account here But The Fifth Act also brings readers into close contact with a remarkable group of characters American and Afghan who fought the war with courage and dedication and at great personal cost Ackermans storyis a first draft of history that feels like a timeless classic