IN A LAND OF DISORDER, CHAOS, AND LAWLESSNESS THERE MAY BE HOPE

KABUL (AINA), June 7, 2006— Afghanistan’s history is one of war, violent uprising, chaos, and lawlessness. In a country where only one city, Kabul, is truly under control of the central government, and even that is sometimes in question, law is an elusive theory a best.

Afghan courts are permeated with corruption and bribery, 4,000 prosecutors work for payoffs, not justice, the police can be bought off in the drop of hat, or in their case, by dropping a few thousand Afghani, roughly $40. Murder your neighbor and pay the police $250 to write a report that says self defense. Car accident? It will cost you $20 if it’s the other guys fault and $40 if it is your fault. Either way, you pay. If you don’t have money to pay, your case goes from the police department to the prosecutor’s office. Add another zero to justice, because now even a simple crime will cost a $100 plus.

Murder, narcotics trafficking, kidnapping, and other violent crimes will cost you $500 to $1000. Everyone needs a slice of the pie; police, prosecutors, and the, judges. Families that cannot afford a bag of rice sell all they can, from jewelry to daughters, to raise the money to buy a son or husband out of prison.

In Afghanistan, crime is a business, not just for the criminals, but for the police, the judges, and most of all, the prosecutors. And it isn’t just actual crime; it’s the allegation of crime. If you have money, or someone thinks you have money, plan on being arrested at some point. Hopefully you have the money to buy your way out. Police make $40 per month salary, barely enough to feed a single man, no less a family of five, and most have more depending on them, from mothers, sisters, wives, and children, lots of children. A cop doesn’t have much of a choice. Food, house rent, medicine, all of it funded by how adept you will be at finding a patsy, fabricating a criminal charge, making the offer, and collecting the money.

The justice system is broke, the prison system broke, the administration is broke, and the whole country is broke. Five years after US Army Special Forces teams and Northern Alliance soldiers liberated Afghanistan from the grip of terror and oppression by Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists, the entire country still remains neglected, pitifully poor, and in a vicious state of disrepair and disorder.

Few of President George W. Bush’s promises to the Afghan people have been met. Fewer of President Hamid Karzai’s promises have been even attempted. With more than 6 billion US dollars going into an imploding Iraq every month, the Afghans are lucky to be able to scrap up a few million in international donations each month. Britain just promised $71 million dollars in aid. Not to the country of Afghanistan, but to a province partially, if not principally, controlled by the Taliban insurgency, which is growing daily. In a way, it could be construed as a British bribe. The theory being that if you throw money at areas of insurgency, the insurgency will diminish. It is a long standing theory of appeasement, one which has not worked anywhere else, so the question remains why do western diplomats still consider it a viable option?

More than 400 people have been killed in the last month, thousands wounded, and the situation is deteriorating so fast that it is not an unlikely possibility that the country may eventually fall back into the hands of the Taliban, or a Taliban inspired faction. Some experts say Kandahar, the birth region of Hamid Karzai, is already under the Taliban’s control, especially during the darkness that descends over a country with inadequate and limited electricity. Yesterday the Taliban attempted to assassinate the governor with a car bomb that killed and wounded civilians and US military bodyguards in the core of the city. Hardly what could be considered an improving security situation.

These are just some of the problems, but what are the answers? Experts and diplomats believe that studies, reports, and surveys can determine those answers, but the reports usually spend their words identifying the problems, which seem obvious to everyone reading the analyses.

The answers seem obvious to anyone that has lived in Afghanistan among the people for any period of time, traveled in the outer regions, or walked the streets of Kabul. Raise the salaries of the police by double, still a pittance in the scheme of things— a top police general only earns $85 per month. Set up an anti-corruption task force with the power to indict and try officials who take bribes. Cast off the Islamic tribunal styled justice system, putting in place juries instead of judges to hear cases. Impanel those juries for months at a time—unlike western countries it is not likely a jury would complain about missing their jobs. To combat terrorism, form special military units from the old and experienced militias—now jobless—to act as border police and provincial national guards.

Make all prosecutors answerable to the Attorney General, not in concept, but in reality. And give the Attorney General the power to follow the law, reprimand and fire judges, and investigate bribery and corruption.

To do all this you need a strong president, a competent Parliament, and honest ministers, none of which seem to be present in Afghanistan. According a United Nations Special Report on Crime, the laws are in place for an Attorney General, known as the Loy Saranwal, to carry out these duties and responsibilities.

The problem is that the current Loy Saranwal is uneducated, lacks experience, and doesn’t have the power to write, or dismiss, a jaywalking charge, no less reform the prosecutorial and justice systems. His retirement next month is bringing signs of relief from international justice observers.

In steps Abdul Rahim Karimi, the former Minister of Justice from 2001 to 2004. He was fired by Hamid Karzai in December 2004, but even Karzai now widely accepts that as a mistake. Within weeks after he left his position a shootout at the central prison left eight dead. Then came murders, riots, a series of escapes, and finally a full scale revolt, leaving more than a dozen dead, fifty wounded, and scores of women allegedly raped by prisoners. Since Karimi left the Ministry of Justice which was being reformed and rebuilt quickly, Sarwar Danish, a refugee returned from Iran, has driven it into the ground, with the help of another returning refugee, Mohammed Qasim Hashimzai— a barely educated man who claims to be a British trained attorney back to save his country. If only that were so.

Hashimzai was never trained or educated in law, although he did attempt to take a few courses twenty years ago at Oxford. A UN funded initiative known as the Return of Qualified Afghans Programme pays his salary of just $250 per month. Dr. Hashimzai, as his new title reads, is now the Deputy Minister of Justice. It makes a person wonder what job the “doctor” was performing in England before he left and what side benefits he might be getting from his new title. As Danish’s spokesman, Hashimzai has been less than truthful in statements related to conditions and events at Afghan prisons.

Abdul Karimi is not a wealthy man by Afghan standards; he is in fact, an average Afghan. He does not even own a house after three years as a top minister during a tenor under which the Ministry of Justice was considered incorruptible. Most ministers own several houses. Some earn more than $50,000 US dollars a month renting their “acquired” houses to foreign embassies. Karimi remains houseless by choice. He walks among his people at his apartment complex, talking about justice and democracy.

Karzai has now tapped Karimi as one of the primary candidates for Attorney General, the nation’s top law enforcement officer and lawyer. Opinions being expressed in coalition, United Nations, and foreign aid worker circles are highly supportive of Karimi, whose wit, charm, and common man speeches about “truth, justice, and liberty,” have set him apart from so many others, and juxtaposed him against fundamentalists, warlords, and zealots.

He earned his law degree in 1979, at a time when there actually was an education system in Afghanistan. He earned a masters degree from a Pakistan university in 1989, specializing in public affaires management, international relations, and international law. He is widely acknowledged by literati in the United Nations and Hague as the most educated legal mind in Afghanistan—in western jurisprudence, which differentiates him from Afghan legal scholars who read tea leaves, sentence adulteresses to stoning, whack off hands, and hang converts to Christianity.

As chairman of the Afghan Freedom Fighters delegation in 1996, Karimi proved he could fight for his country’s freedom, preferring the title of liberator over refugee. Shelving his degrees in Islamic jurisprudence, Islamic civics, law, history and social studies and picking up a Kalashnikov, Karimi joined the resistance and fought the Soviets during the 80’s, then the Taliban in the 90’s, and finally Osama bin Laden’s Arab terrorists. He speaks five languages—all of the Afghan languages—plus Arabic and Turkish, the language of diplomats in South West Asia.

With his gentle looks, tall stature, and wire rimmed glasses, Karimi was a moving force for a coalition peace during the 2001-2002 Bonn Conference while the Taliban were still falling. His speeches to the United Nations on Children, the International Institute of Criminal laws on transnational organized crime, and his address to the German Cross Border Crime Commission have identified him as a formidable and brilliant force in the arena of international law and crime-fighting.

If you had to compare him to an American prosecutor visions of Bobby Kennedy, Rudy Giuliani, and Elliot Spitzer would come to mind. He is that charismatic, powerful, and intelligent in his pursuit of justice and freedom for Afghans. It is no wonder why dozens of nations have had him speak at their legal seminars and events.

Ministry of Justice officers love to tell the story of how Karimi addressed a graduating class of justice police and evoked tears, applause, and awe at his vision of Afghanistan. He still holds more influence with top justice commanders and generals than any other man in Afghanistan, all from his diminutive apartment in a poor section of Kabul. Far too small to think this man ever accepted a bribe of any sort.

It would be a leap of faith that any one man could stop Afghanistan from tumbling into violence, unrest, and ultimately chaos, such as the days when Kabul was under siege by factional warlords and Gulbaddin Hekmatyar was raining Katucha rockets on Kabul every day. Even ISAF and the US Army were incapable of preventing two days of riots and bloodshed in the streets of Kabul after a US soldier had a car accident on May 29th. At least seven people were killed as a result of the uprising.

Afghanistan’s Parliament wants to try the US army convoy driver for the deaths which occurred during the riots. Afghan courts put a newspaper editor in prison last year for publishing an article on women’s rights. A Muslim man who converted to Christianity was sentenced to hang, until the Vatican bought him out of prison and spirited him away on an Italian military aircraft to Rome. Three Americans were imprisoned for ten years for arresting terrorists—one of the alleged terrorists was a Supreme Court judge— even the prosecutors admitted they stopped the assassination of a Karzai opponent now elected as the Chief of Parliament. Why they haven’t bribed their way out is a good question. Last January seven top Taliban terrorists bought their freedom and walked out the front gate of Afghanistan’s most secure prison. An American soldier traveling on military orders, but without a visa, was jailed for weeks before the US Embassy found and released him. An American aid worker was imprisoned for carrying a personal weapon—not unreasonable when you count the kidnappings, beheadings, and daily attacks on foreigners. He says his freedom cost $10,000—apparently foreign justice is a bit more expensive. Foreign property is regularly confiscated by police and held hostage until the appropriate bribes are paid. Legal rights, if there ever were any, have disappeared. The “Rule of Law” as Afghans call it, is governed by the power of bahkshesh, the “dollar bribe.”

On Saturday President Karzai sacked dozens of senior police commanders in what his office claimed was part of long-planned reforms.

UN Special Envoy for Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, said President Hamid Karzai must “introduce fast reforms of the police and judiciary.” Koenigs said the violence following last week’s truck crash had “caused immense damage to the reputation of Afghanistan as the international community works hard together with the government to improve the rule of law.”

In his statement, Koenigs added that the UN “regrets that the response of the police was very weak and disappointing.”

Care International, a nongovernmental aid group, had its offices destroyed and looted during the unrest. “There is no law in this country, there never will be,” a Care aid worker said. “Why are we even wasting our time here?” she asked as she made plans to return home to England the next day.

The possibility that Karzai might actually select a candidate intellectually qualified for a top position rather than politically qualified, brings great hope from most Afghans. The Afghan-American president would be wise to shorten up his short list of recommendations, push for Karimi’s nomination, and keep in mind an old adage, “take away a man’s hope is a dangerous thing, for all that man may have is hope.”

In Afghanistan, there is still no relief for the people, and improvements are far and few between. Justice and legal rights are intangible and obscure concepts, barely understood by Afghan judges, ignored by Afghan prosecutors, and for sale by all, especially the police. What Afghans still hold dear to them is their hope that peace and law will come one day.

Abdul Rahim Karimi, a fifty-year old farm boy from a tiny village who left his plow for a law book, traded that for a machinegun, and then picked up a gavel, might just be the man to bring the justice that Afghans are praying for five times a day.