Fascinating insights | The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban

Pulitzer! | The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban | Sarah Chayes

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	• The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban Sarah Chayes Penguin Press HC, The, 2006 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 28 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A gripping narrative of intrigue, assassination, personal dedication and courage

Sarah Chayes' instinctive compassion builds friendships in Afghanistan that take her on a remarkable journey. Her insights illuminate the political currents affecting Afghanistan with exceptional clarity. This book is a must read for anyone seeking to understand the region.

Fascinating insights

Sarah Chayes, an NPR journalist and an historical scholar in her own right, provides an insider's look at Afghanistan before, during, and after the Taliban regime. Many provocative parallels can be drawn by the reader to the foreign policy problems facing the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan today, for example: the primacy of tribal loyalties which supercede any national political identity, the misuse of American power to prop up questionable puppet governments, humanitarian aid which gets diverted by tribal elders to form their own militias, and the desperate economic instability which makes plundering and subsidy a way of life. In short, there appears to be an almost complete lack of cultural and anthropological understanding of the Middle East by U.S. policy makers. Whether you support or oppose the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, this treatise provides many fascinating insights into the Middle Eastern mind-set which could and should be applied by our government to the current conflicts. Highly recommended.

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Pulitzer!

Starting and ending with the death of an honest Afgan, his friend Sarah Chayes, NPR reporter-turned Afgan activist, gives a well written, often warm, and often shocking account of the warlords, friends of Pakistan, and some-time friends of the US that made up Afganistan after the Taliban fled and before they had fully returned. The fact that a woman reporter could become friend and advisor to so many people in power in Afganistan - including, the president, several governors, several warlords, a chief of police (the murdered one), AND US Military Officers-helped to show the depth of leadership vacuum that existed. Nobody knew what to do, really, except the Warlords, and their occupation was making themselves rich and getting rid of their enemies, often with the help of the conned US Military, and usually with the help of Pakistan, who played both ends against the middle - the most shocking revelation. Well worth reading, and if as true and well-supported as it seems, worth a Pulitzer!

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Great Insight

"The Punishment of Virtue" gives the reader great insight into the political conflicts that went on in Afghanistan during the early years of US occupation. It has much relevence to what is going on today. The book also provides a brief history of the country as well as some cultural background, good book!

A National Public Radio reporter covering the last stand of the Taliban in their home base of Kandahar in Afghanistan's southern borderland, Sarah Chayes became deeply immersed in the unfolding drama of the attempt to rebuild a broken nation at the crossroads of the world's destiny. Her NPR tour up in early 2002, she left reporting to help turn the country's fortunes, accepting a job running a nonprofit founded by President Hamid Karzai's brother. With remarkable access to leading players in the postwar government, Chayes witnessed a tragic story unfold-the perverse turn of events whereby the U.S. government and armed forces allowed and abetted the return to power of corrupt militia commanders to the country, as well as the reinfiltration of bands of Taliban forces supported by U.S. ally Pakistan. In this gripping and dramatic account of her four years on the ground, working with Afghanis in the battle to restore their country to order and establish democracy, Chayes opens Americans' eyes to the sobering realities of this vital front in the war on terror.

She forged unparalleled relationships with the Karzai family, tribal leaders, U.S. military and diplomatic brass, and such leading figures in the Kandahar government as the imposing and highly effective chief of police-an incorruptible supporter of the Karzai regime whose brutal assassination in June 2005 serves as the opening of the book. Chayes lived in an Afghan home, gaining rich insights into the country's culture and politics and researching the history of Afghanistan's legendary resistance to foreign interference. She takes us into meetings with Hamid Karzai and the corrupt Kandahar governor, Gul Agha Shirzai, into the homes of tribal elders and onto the U.S. military base. Unveiling the complexities and traumas of Afghanistan's postwar struggles, she reveals how the tribal strongmen who have regained power-after years of being displaced by the Taliban-have visited a renewed plague of corruption and violence on the Afghan people, under the complicit eyes of U.S. forces and officials.

The story Chayes tells is a powerful, disturbing revelation of misguided U.S. policy and of the deeply entrenched traditions of tribal warlordism that have ruled Afghanistan through the centuries.

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