Operation Pineapple Express

July 25, 2022
Mann, a retired army lieutenant colonel and Afghan War vet, makes the chaos and trauma of the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan palpable in this gripping account of Task Force Pineapple. Mann founded the task force in August 2021, initially to rescue one man he served with, a former member of the Afghan Army Special Forces, but it soon expanded to include “a loose confederation of American, Afghan, and allied men and women to rescue as many of their Afghan partners as they could after the fall of Kabul.” Modeled after the Underground Railroad, the task force saved more than a thousand Afghans before a suicide bombing at the Hamid Karzai International Airport disrupted its operations. Beyond delivering a real-life action thriller, the author provides yet another negative postmortem on the U.S. government’s handling of the crisis. Mann notes that the country that “had liberated Nazi concentration camps, pulled off the Berlin Airlift, and delivered aid to disaster-struck countries across the globe” left thousands of its allies behind who continue to be at risk of violence. This is a valuable addition to the growing literature on the ending of America’s longest war. Agent: Howard Yoon, Ross Yoon Agency.

August 1, 2022
A lively account of heroism after the tumultuous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Americans celebrated when the Soviet military evacuated Afghanistan in 1989, leaving the government and its supporters to the cruel mercies of the victorious Taliban. Few cheered when America did the same last year, as U.S. leaders failed to keep their promises that they would not abandon their allies. Among those caught up in the chaos of the final months were interpreters, civil servants, and elite members of Afghan Special Forces, who worked closely with their American counterparts. Mann, a retired Green Beret with more than 20 years of international combat experience, builds his story around Nezamuddin Nezami, an Afghan commando who found himself trapped in the increasing chaos. Frightened for his family's fate once the Taliban regained control of the country, he applied for a Special Immigrant Visa to the U.S., which never came. He appealed frantically to former comrades, including the author, all safely in America, often retired, and none highly placed. Stirred to action, they assembled an ad hoc collection of Afghan vets, CIA officers, USAID advisers, and congressional aides dubbed the Pineapple Express, and the group planned tactics, bypassed red tape to talk directly to overwhelmed officials under siege at the Kabul airport, and succeeded in extracting Nezami and his family. By this time, aware of appeals from other trapped Afghans, they managed to guide hundreds to safety before a terrorist bomb at the airport abruptly ended their work, leaving thousands behind. Mann delivers gripping accounts of a few successful rescues and admiring portraits of his Pineapple Express colleagues, but he is also careful to point out that America dishonored itself. In hastily abandoning Afghanistan, neither Presidents Trump nor Biden displayed more than token sympathy for the Afghan people. Particularly helpful for general readers are the timeline, cast of characters, and acronyms list. A worthy account of a valiant operation.

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