Sarah Chayes (born March 5, 1962) is a former senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former reporter for National Public Radio, she also served as special advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

[1] 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.

[9][10] 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.

[11] Since leaving full-time radio reporting, she has been a frequent contributor to the print media, writing for Foreign Policy Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post, among other outlets.

[19] 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 .

"[20] In another 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 Amendment free speech guarantees.

[21][22][23] During the October 6, 2021 episode of the BBC's Thinking Allowed (on post-occupation Afghanistan), Chayes was highly critical of the corrupt example of "democracy" set by the US for Afghans and others to follow.