The Last Deployment: A Human History of the Withdrawal from Afghanistan

Provides an intimate, human account of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and its lasting impact on service members. A new, human history of the end of the Afghan War, told by those there at the end, this book discusses the withdrawal from Afghanistan and looks forward to the lasting effects of those final chaotic weeks on service members deployed there. Negotiations between the United States and the Taliban led to the 2020 Doha Agreement, which intended to end the American presence in the country and bring peace. Despite the failure of the Taliban to honor all aspects of the agreement, the Biden administration then determined to completely withdraw from the country, a withdrawal that would play out alongside Taliban advances into August 2021. After the Taliban took control of Kabul and declared victory on August 15, the next two weeks of August saw an increasingly chaotic non-combatant evacuation operation. Marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen were deployed to Afghanistan, to Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) to oversee the evacuation.