LIFE AFTER WAR
Monday, February 16 at 10PM ET/PT (1½ hr.)

Life After War is an engaging and revealing story of a woman who experiences first hand the powerful political obstacles to reconstruction in the devastated countryside of Afghanistan.  Sarah Chayes is a veteran war correspondent who for 10 years reported from war zones for American National Public Radio.  After witnessing the fall of the Taliban, she takes up a challenge to help to rebuild a bombed-out village only to find herself in a confrontation with the ruling warlord.

Chayes is certainly under no illusion that Afghanistan is a safe place, and the southern city of Kandahar, a former Taliban stronghold, there are constant reminders of just how dangerous and volatile it is. When she first meets Afghan President Karzai who is in Kandahar for a family wedding, he had just survived an assassination attempt in which three others died.  Here loyalty is to warlords, not to the central government in far off in the capital, Kabul.

Disturbed by the devastation she witnessed in the war, Chayes quits her job at NPR and decides to oversee the reconstruction of a small village near Kandahar.  Chayes says, "We still didn't know how it would turn out.  But being there, that was the right spot for me to be in."   The village itself is largely piles of rubble, having been hit hard by U.S. bombs during the last stand of the Taliban.  Chayes was determined to rebuild the destroyed homes, 13 in all, and is thrown into the daily lives of the local villagers.

Control of this region is increasingly uncertain.  Members of the Taliban are back in their former stronghold, killing construction crews and ambushing international aid workers.  And by far the biggest problem is the rule of local warlords.  It is their power that Chayes must confront if her modest project is to be completed. "There is murder.  There is greed.  There is corruption," observes Chayes.  "There are people with a lot of different agendas."   Neither her never-say-die attitude, nor her strong personality quite prepare her for the roadblocks that she encounters in her efforts to help the village residents restore  their lives.

Life After War's producer and cinematographer is Brian Knappenberger.  The executive producer is Larry Hart.