Today I'm speaking with Sarah Chase, a senior fellow in Carnegie's Democracy and Rule of Law program.

Prior to joining Carnegie, Sarah spent a lot of time in Afghanistan in a number of different roles.

She covered the fall of the Taliban for NPR and then remained to help rebuild the country settling in Kandahar.

In 2005, Sarah founded a cooperative employing both men and women side by side to produce skin care products.

The company was designed to promote sustainable development while developing alternatives to the then booming opium business.

Sarah later served as special assistant to then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen,

and much of her experience of the region is woven through her second book, Thieves of State,

Why Corruption Threatens Global Security.

She's focused now on how severe corruption can fuel terrorism,

which is what we'll be discussing today. So thank you for joining me, Sarah. Pleasure.

What do you start by describing your interest in the region and what took you there and then

what compelled you to stay? It was so obviously a historical juncture,

right? One of those times when the fate of the planet, you know, seems maybe to be on a pivot

and that the fulcrum, if you will, was there. At least that's what it felt like at the time.

And it just seemed like if you were going to try to impact the way this shocking event of

9-11 was going to, you know, what its ramifications would be, then Afghanistan was the place to try

to do it.

You went there.

You spoke the language.

I didn't actually speak it when I got there.

I learned it on the fly.

I did speak Arabic, which is a grammatically completely different language, but it helped learn.

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