Three years ago, law professors Wali Mohammad Naseh, Mohammad Haroon Mutasem and Menhajuddin Hamed left their homes, jobs and families in Afghanistan to attend the University of Washington School of Law as part of the Afghan Legal Educators Program. The first and only one of its kind, the program is a $2 million U.S. State Department-funded program run by the U.W. Asian Law Center to assist legal educators in the rebuilding of their law schools and curricula.
Following decades of war, Afghanistan has been left isolated from much of the modern world and bereft of a solid legal infrastructure. Afghan university faculty and legal scholars have been victims of intellectual isolation and destruction of their university facilities. During 2005–06, the program had to supply a woodstove to fight off the winter cold in the classroom where Kabul faculty took English classes in preparation for their trip to Seattle. Reminders of the war scar the classroom walls where copper wiring was chiseled out and sold for scrap. Much of the country suffers from extreme poverty and resource deprivation, and life in Afghanistan is dangerous.
“It is a complex environment,” said Professor Jon Eddy, the program’s project manager. “That is one of the reasons this program was instituted. If there is going to be reconstruction of the legal system, which is, at present, disorganized, then it has to start with the law schools that will train the next generation.”
For the visiting Afghan scholars and ALC staff, the task to build a solid, new legal system in Afghanistan may be long and difficult, but necessary. The U.W. is doing its part, according to Director Veronica Taylor, because it is important and “consistent with the public interest priorities of the U.W. Law School.”
As U.W. law students, the faculty from Afghanistan shared similar experiences with their classmates: They attended classes and social functions, wrote papers and studied for exams. But they also had to expand their English skills at a staggering pace to keep up with the program’s curriculum. They were exposed to foreign legal theory and practice, some of which had never been applied in their home country. And, because of the nature of their visas, the three scholars could not return home for a visit during their entire stay.
“These scholars have sacrificed so much,” said Eddy, “more than most of us will ever comprehend.”
In spite of the challenges, the visiting scholars found unexpected connections in the Northwest. In the spring of 2007, they visited the Tulalip tribal headquarters in Marysville for training on the tribe’s justice system and culture, as well as to learn how the Tulalip struggled with the challenge of maintaining traditional tribal law values in a modern court system. They were greeted by a Tulalip police officer carrying an urn of tea. It turned out that the officer’s father was Afghan and one of the Afghans knew the officer’s family back in Afghanistan.
If Marysville and Kabul seem worlds apart, law school professors Ron Whitener and Eddy say the Tulalip Tribe and Afghan scholars actually share quite a bit in common.
“The Afghans not only learned about tribal law, but also about how to merge elements of traditional culture into a national judicial system with Western components,” said Whitener, director of the Law School’s Tribal Law Clinic and a member of the Squaxin Island Tribe.
Faculty working with both programs are optimistic that Native American tribal justice systems can provide innovative models to accommodate tribal customs within a larger democratic system in Afghanistan.
“The Afghan professors tend to think their problems are unique, given the country’s recent troubled history,” said Eddy. “Afghanistan is facing issues of pluralism and the need to deal with strongly held local or tribal values.”
With the experience and education they received after three long years, Naseh, Mutasem and Hamed were rewarded for their sacrifice and hard work by receiving LL.M. degrees from the law school. The degrees have been certified by the Afghan Embassy and are currently awaiting certification by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Higher Education. If all goes as planned, Afghan President Hamid Karzai will officially award them their diplomas.
Mutasem, the youngest of the scholars, has returned to the law faculty at Kabul University, works with the Afghan Supreme Court and prepares training materials for new judges. He will start teaching at the recently founded American University of Afghanistan in Kabul this fall. He barely concealed his excitement when he talked about returning to teach and rebuild his university’s curriculum and his country.
“Many of the subjects taught at the [Kabul] law school were very old and not so important anymore,” he said. “I want to bring back to Afghanistan new subjects and methods of legal research.”
Naseh is also back to teaching law classes at Kabul University, as well as working as a legal advisor for Afghanistan’s Ministry of Commerce. Hamed has returned to his post on the Shari’a (or Islamic law) faculty at Balkh University.
For Hamed particularly, the journey to the U.S. was a tremendous leap of faith. He said his family warned him that Americans were unfriendly and cold, that he would be lonely and have no friends. After three years, Hamed said he was happy to go home and tell them they were wrong.
“I have made so many friends here in Seattle, at the university and law school. I will always remember their kindness and hospitality,” he said.
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