The Kalashnikov case

Davis described the cases as "running the usual gamut of crimes-robbery, murder, fraud, petty thefts, but also alcoholism and adultery." Using an LAA case as an example, she asserted that Afghan clients are not so different from their American counterparts.

" 'The Kalashnikov [a rifle] was under the bed,' " said Davis, parroting an LAA client. " 'And it somehow misfired.' Somehow it shot his wife five times. Just like here, there are truly bad guys and there are people who make mistakes."

They've had only one major drug case. "But the major push on counter-narcotics has yet to come," Davis said.

LAA lawyers' relatively light caseload-10 to 15 cases each-has allowed for intensive mentoring. Three other Legal Aid lawyers-a private New York criminal defense lawyer, a former executive director of the New Hampshire public defender's office, Michael Skibble, and a London barrister-have each come to Kabul with new insights.

"The Afghan lawyers know who the audience is-we don't," Rea said. "We just want to give them the tools to . . . adapt our skills to the audience, transfer our skills of analysis."

While the Afghan lawyers were trained at Kabul University or The Shariat, a small Islamic university in Kabul, in a French-like civil system, an inquisitorial model, what they hadn't learned was skepticism, Rea explained.

"When they started out they never questioned anything in the file," Rea said. "If a file said their client was married and the client said no, the assumption was the file was correct. We had to say, there are two versions."

And they didn't grasp the concept of independent investigation, Davis said. For example, when a vehicle was stolen from the ministry of foreign affairs and found abandoned, an employee of the ministry was arrested, although he denied involvement.

"We found out they taped the comings and goings [at the ministry]," Davis said. " 'We have to get hold of the tape,' I said. It was a completely new idea to them-the potential for investigation-what that means." They got the tape and the man was acquitted.

An ancient culture

While the country's modern law is in flux, its customary law is ancient.

Rea thought it critical to understand the culture before proceeding, in part due to a miscalculation she'd made in Rwanda in 1998. With 125,000 prisoners, four international and no Rwandan lawyers, Rea decided it might be best "to do what we do best-plea bargain," she said. "But what we didn't understand was that a Rwandan would never admit to something just to get a shorter sentence-they would be shunned by the communities that they returned to."

In 2001, ILF undertook the first-ever compilation of the customary laws of Afghanistan, a report researched by Karim Khuram, then a professor at Peshawar, Pakistan's Afghan University Law School, who now directs LAA's Kabul office.

According to the report, under customary law, which varies somewhat regionally, for most crimes, tribal courts-jirgas-award women (for marriage purposes), animals, money and apologies to those who were wronged in proportion to the wrong. The system is generally intended to be restorative as opposed to punitive.

The preparation of the report was initially funded by New York painter Eric Fischl, who also supported Rea's work in Rwanda. But the Open Society Institute, the hub of the Soros foundations, has provided the bulk of ILF's funding for LAA-$30,000 for a six-month grant that will soon run out and $80,000 for a one-year grant that will begin in April 2005.

>>> more ...