UW to aid Afghan legal rebirth

The University of Washington's law school has won a $2 million State Department grant to help war-ravaged Afghanistan rebuild its legal profession.

The school's Asian Law Center, which has vast experience working with Islamic countries, beat out six other law schools to operate the three-year program.

In a country where the rule of law has essentially vanished, this kind of help is desperately needed, U.S. government and Afghan legal experts agree.

Under the program, the UW will bring as many as 20 Afghan scholars and master's-degree candidates to the Seattle campus to study and research aspects of international and American law.

The faculty members — most of whom will be linked to Kabul University — will return home after a year to help train the Asian country's next generation of legal minds.

"This potentially could be very significant for the future of Afghanistan," said Jon Eddy, program manager.

Afghanistan had endured more than a quarter-century of war before the United States invaded it after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In December, a group of senior Afghan lawyers and judges, speaking before the U.S. Institute of Peace, characterized the condition of the country's legal system as bleak.

Many of the courts don't have buildings in which to operate, they complained. Afghan legal experts consider many judges to be unqualified, and defense attorneys are rare.

Virtually nothing has been done to establish and apply qualifications for judicial personnel, develop court administration, or address deep-rooted corruption in the government.

The law center's Eddy, who met with Kabul University officials and faculty in January, said post-war Afghanistan is still a tough place.

"The infrastructure in Kabul has not recovered," Eddy said.

Under Taliban rule, university faculty members were isolated, unable to travel outside the country or to remain in contact with the broader legal community, he said.

Supplies are scarce and there's no access to modern equipment. Legal educators say much of their research is lost because it is handwritten and cannot be disseminated.

But, Eddy said, "there's a strong commitment by the people I met to improve the legal education and recover from the destruction of the last 25 years or so."

State Department officials say the Asian Law Center was chosen because of its extensive work over the past 40 years to establish legal systems in post-conflict countries throughout Asia.

Still, the Afghan Project poses its own set of challenges.

The $2 million grant for three years is meager, and with it the law center will be able to bring no more than 20 faculty members from Afghanistan for one-year stints beginning in January 2006.

There's no funding beyond year three. In parts of Afghanistan, security remains a concern for UW faculty members who will visit and be based there.

Communication also will be a challenge.

"Many young and midcareer professionals have not had a chance to have a formal education," pointed out Veronica Taylor, the law center's director. "So while they have some functional English, they lack the technical language necessary to perform in a professional setting."

Members of the civic and Sharia (Islamic) law faculty at Kabul are being invited now to apply for the UW program, and participants will be chosen in May. Officials hope to get as many women as possible involved, said Clark Lombardi, an assistant law professor at the UW.

The group will begin an aggressive course of study in English and culture that will prepare them for study in the U.S., said Lombardi.

From the initial group, about six senior scholars will be selected to travel to Seattle in January to pursue specialized work of their own choosing while helping the program fine-tune coursework for a master's of law program.

In September 2006, a larger group of 12 or more will arrive to pursue master's degrees.

Lombardi hopes to find additional funding sources starting in the program's second year.

Taylor said the law center will work with other law schools across the country, including those that competed for the grant, to help train Afghan legal educators and assist them in rebuilding the country's legal system.

"We're at the beginning of what is going to be a long-term process," she said.

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com