Green on Blue: Tour de Force Novel on War-Torn Afghanistan - By Elliot Ackerman

Green on Blue, a stunning debut novel by decorated veteran Elliot Ackerman, conveys not only the contradictions and duplicity of the war in Afghanistan, but of war itself. In this tragic yet beautifully rendered vision, friend and foe, right and wrong, good and evil, blur into a viscous cycle of survival, vengeance, and profiteering -- all exacerbated by a cynical American military policy.

Aziz, the young Afghan narrator, describes a cultural theme that perpetuates conflict in Afghanistan, the Pashtun custom of restoring honor ("nang") through vengeance ("badal"). He feels compelled to join an American-backed military unit, not only to secure indispensable medical care for his ailing brother, but to avenge the marketplace bombing that has robbed his only immediate kin of both his leg and manhood.

But Aziz himself later observes how the same code of vengeance that gnaws at him has already unleashed a seemingly endless exchange of deadly retribution in the local conflict between Taliban militia and American-backed forces.

And as the narrator gradually earns the reader's trust, it becomes implicit that the thirst for vengeance has not only overtly destabilized Afghanistan, but subliminally, has perpetuated many "civilized" conflicts around the world over the course of history.

Indeed, Ackerman's spare narrative style implies that his characters speak and think in the omniscient diction of an ancient culture that effuses a timeless wisdom despite its brutal code of ethics. Even the novel's most unseemly Afghan character, Commander Sabir, a profiteer willing to allow both his own men and innocent civilians to die for his financial ambitions, expresses himself in a seasoned brevity full of insight. "War," he claims, "only ends for those who allow others to fight for them, but there is always fighting."

This simple style also allows Ackerman to succinctly capture the absurdities of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan: "The militants fought to protect us from the Americans," recounts the narrator, "and the Americans fought to protect us from the militants, and being so protected, life was very dangerous."

Despite its military setting, Green on Blue defies expectations of a story penned by a former Marine, Special Operations Officer, and CIA Paramilitary Case Officer, one who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ominous power of the author's topographical descriptions alone, not action scenes, draws readers into a mysteriously intensifying drama. In the mountains of Afghanistan, just negotiating the unforgiving terrain, for example, seems to require submission to a man-eating beast:  Read More at Green on Blue: - Huffingtonpost

Green on Blue: Tour de Force Novel on War-Torn Afghanistan