Afghanistan's accidental reporter: leaving California behind for two summers, Hyder Akbar, 18, sent riveting radio dispatches from his parents' homeland.

The first hint that Hyder Akbar is not Afghanistan's most seasoned radio reporter is his voice, the relaxed drawl of a California teenager, peppered with "all rights" and laced with laughs. It is a strange approach for the type of news he often reports--exhilarating exclusive stories that would be the envy of many reporters.

"I'm probably one of very few civilians to have witnessed a secret U.S. interrogation of a suspected terrorist," he says in a voice as bemused as any American 18-year-old's might be.

A SUMMER WITH DAD

Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Akbar was a high school student in Concord, a suburb of San Francisco where many Afghans settled during two decades of war in their country. Like second-generationers anywhere, he was both acutely aware of the land his parents had fled and far enough away that it felt like a dream.

Then in the fall of 2001 came the defeat of Afghanistan's Taliban government by U.S.-led forces. His father, who had once been director of Radio Kabul, sold his hip-hop clothing store in Oakland, Calif., and returned to join the new government of his friend President Hamid Karzai. Akbar decided to spend his summer vacation with his father, and almost as an afterthought brought along a tape recorder.

Akbar's radio dispatches from Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003 were broadcast nationally in the U.S. on the public radio program This American Life (www.thislife.org). He hopes to return soon for another round of reporting.

Akbar, now 18, rarely had to seek out good stories; they tended to find him, like the bomb that exploded in a market outside his hotel, or the time his convoy was ambushed, an event he calmly recorded while crouching to avoid the bullets.

Not all his stories are harrowing. In one segment, he describes the new government's first Loya Jirga, or grand assembly, in a way most American teenagers would understand.

"You have infamous warloads walking this way and famous ministers walking that way," he reports. "It was pretty exciting. I mean, it's like the equivalent, I think, of Lollapalooza or something; going backstage and getting to meet all these rock stars."

Although his parents remain in Afghanistan, Akbar is attending community college in Concord. He hopes to get a master's degree in business and one day return to Afghanistan to help rebuild the country.