Chayes began her reporting career freelancing from Paris for The Christian Science Monitor Radio and other outlets. From 1996 to 2002, she served as Paris reporter for National Public Radio, covering France, the European Union, North Africa, and the Balkans. She earned 1999 Foreign Press Club and Sigma Delta Chi awards for her reporting on the Kosovo War. After covering the fall of the Taliban and the early weeks of post-Taliban Afghanistan, in 2002 Chayes decided to leave reporting and stay behind to try to contribute to the rebuilding of the war-torn country. Chayes lived in Kandahar, Afghanistan from 2002 to 2009. Having learned to speak Pashto, she helped rebuild homes and set up a dairy cooperative. In May 2005, she established the Arghand Cooperative, a venture that encourages local Afghan farmers to produce flowers, fruits, and herbs instead of opium poppies. The cooperative buys their almonds, pomegranate seeds, cumin and anise and artemisia and root dyes, extracts oils, essential oils, and tinctures from them, with which it produces soaps and other scented products for export. The cooperative is an associate member of the Natural Perfumers Guild. Chayes wrote an article detailing the story of the Arghand cooperative and her difficulties with the American aid establishment, which appeared in the December 2007 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Since leaving full-time radio reporting, she has been a frequent contributor to the print media, contributing to Foreign Policy Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post, among other outlets. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace maintains an archive of her writings. Chayes has been a guest on PBS's Bill Moyers Journal WHYY-FM's Terri Gross, WNYC's Leonard Lopate, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, PBS's Charlie Rose, and others have also interviewed her.
Sarah Chayes is a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Democracy and Rule of Law program. At Carnegie, Chayes has launched a corruption and security initiative, which analyzes the structure of kleptocratic governments around the world, the other risk factors with which public corruption is interacting in specific countries, the likelihood of a significant security event resulting, and potential approaches available to different local and international actors. She conducts significant field research on this topic, hosts speakers and workshops, both in the U.S. and in relevant countries, and speaks and writes frequently.
Books and other works
Chayes is the author of The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban and Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security In January 2009, Chayes wrote Comprehensive Action Plan for Afghanistan, an analysis of the dilemma in Afghanistan ca. 2009 and a plan for its resolution. In a 2011 op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times, Chayes decried the "rampant public corruption" in Afghanistan, asserting that the country "is controlled by a structured, mafiaesque system, in which money flows upward via purchase of office, kickbacks or 'sweets' in return for permission to extract resources... and protection." In a 2012 op-ed piece published in the Los Angeles Times, Chayes argued that the controversial Innocence of Muslims video may not be protected under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendmentfree speech guarantees. Her op-ed argued that speech deliberately tailored in content and manner to provoke a violent reaction differs from speech that is merely offensive.
