The Punishment of Virtue

What happens when the War on Terror media circus packs up and leaves town? One brave foreign woman stayed behind in Afghanistan after the Taliban were initially defeated to find out. This is her extraordinary report back to the rest of the world.

Sarah Chayes has spent five years in Afghanistan dressing like a man and eschewing the expat world of hotels and parties in order to get closer to a people who fascinate her, and to one man in particular, the heroic Chief of Police, Akrem Khakrezwal. He shows Chayes how democracy is built brick by brick, how prone it is to structural faults, how much scaffolding it needs, how easily it can tumble… Living in the old capital Kandahar, studying original documents in Farsi and Arabic, delving deep into the past – recent and distant – to make clearer sense of the present, sharing meals with the wily president Karzai and his tenacious opponent Gul Agha Shirzai, she gains unparalleled access to tribal leaders, cunning warlords, jihadist insurgents and opium traders, as well as politicians, security chiefs and Pakistani Intelligence agents – all contending for power in this uniquely strategic place. What can be built here? What kind of person would try to build something solid on such hard land?

Unlocking its secret history in this mesmerizing work of history and reportage, Chayes lets us in to a new understanding of Afghanistan at a pivotal moment in its history. Hers is an urgent book, and an immensely readable story.