Sarah Chayes

Sarah Chayes spent most of the decade from 2001 to 2011 in Afghanistan, much of the time in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar. She went on to work for two commanders of the international troops, and the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A Pashtu-speaker, she lived and worked among ordinary Kandahari men and women. From 1996, she was an award-winning foreign correspondent for National Public Radio. She is author of The Punishment of Virtue and Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security, and is senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.