A powerful and revelatory eyewitness account of the American collapse in Afghanistan, its desperate endgame, and the war\'s 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 indelibly.
Ackerman\'s story is a first draft of history that feels like a timeless classic..
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.
Any reader who wants to understand what went wrong with the war\'s trajectory will find a trenchant account here.
It is a play in five acts, the Fifth act being the story\'s tragic denouement, a prelude to Afghanistan\'s dark future.
Using the dramatic rescue efforts in Kabul as his lattice, Ackerman weaves a personal history of the war\'s long progression, beginning with the initial invasion in the months after 9/11.
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.
For Ackerman, it also became a chance to reconcile his past with his present.
These were desperate measures taken during a desperate end to America\'s longest war.
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 hundreds.
The official US government evacuation effort was a bureaucratic failure that led to a humanitarian catastrophe.
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.
When 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.
A powerful and revelatory eyewitness account of the American collapse in Afghanistan, its desperate endgame, and the war\'s 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 indelibly
