Switch to Desktop Site  Rebuilding Akokolacha  Why America must
get more involved - not less - in Afghanistan  About these ads
Former National Public Radio correspondent Sarah Chayes went to
Afghanistan in October 2001 to report on the war. When the
fighting - and the news assignment - was over, she sensed her
responsibility was just beginning. Feeling a growing need to
stop talking about conflict and start doing something about it,
she stayed to serve as field director of Afghans for Civil
Society, a non-profit group in Baltimore.  Engineer Abdullah and
I clambered about the wreckage of this parched village last
June, a knot of elders and a gaggle of children spilling over
the uneven ground. It quickly became clear that we would never
know what the village had once looked like.  "I had seven rooms
here," one turbaned elder with a wolf-like face asserted. "And a
bathroom adjoining every room."  Abdullah and I looked at each
other, then at the 10 square yards of mounded debris we were
standing on. The mansion