February 2012
1 post
A Call for Unity
A guest post by Mohammad Fahim Barmaki War, invasions, and political instability throughout Afghanistan’s history have inflicted unique challenges on ordinary people and the Afghan way of life. Some of the most detrimental byproducts of these fleeting conflicts have been sustained linguistic, religious, and ethnic defragmentation. As a land-locked state, the safety and stability of Afghanistan is...
November 2011
1 post
4 tags
A Guide to Legal Education in Afghanistan
A guest post by Mohammad Fahim Barmaki
Over the past ten years, entry into state law schools for the pursuit of legal education in Afghanistan has become increasingly difficult. Public demand has grown tremendously while the job market has not expanded as much. Students pursue a university education in hope of seizing upon economic opportunities that may be available. The legal profession and...
October 2011
1 post
How Students Can Fight Corruption
A guest post by Mohammad Mojtaba Salem
What lies ahead for Afghanistan, now that the international community has decided to transfer state-building responsibilities to the Afghan government? However frightening this transfer might look, it forces us to think about a fundamental crisis, which is going to be present today and for the years to come: namely, corruption. Admitting that the government...
June 2011
1 post
First Graduates from the American University of...
Students at the American University are not shy about expressing their frustration with corruption and poor governance in Afghanistan. Many are very pessimistic that the current crop of politicians and judges in office will ever reform themselves, despite all the Western training and other rule of law efforts. However, they are not so pessimistic about the future of Afghanistan. When asked about...
March 2011
1 post
Young Afghans Interpreting Their Constitution
One of the most difficult topics in a standard course on international law is the interaction between international law and domestic legal systems. When a state legally binds itself to a treaty on the international stage, how should its domestic courts respond? Should they apply the treaty immediately and vindicate the treaty rights of litigants? Should they ignore the treaty and wait for the...
February 2011
1 post
Welcome to the Land of the Brave
Welcome to the reboot of Stanford Law’s Afghanistan Legal Education Project (ALEP) blog and my inaugural post. I have been in Afghanistan for just over a month now serving as ALEP’s “man in Kabul” and as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF). This semester I am using ALEP’s latest textbook to teach the first-ever International Law course offered at AUAF....
April 2010
2 posts
The Changing Face of the Enemy
Poverty and violence are usually portrayed as the biggest challenges confronting Afghanistan. But ask Afghans themselves, and you get a different answer: corruption is their biggest worry. This past January, the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime released a comprehensive study on corruption on Afghanistan. The results could not be more sobering. Based on interviews with 7,600 Afghans in...
The Rift Heard 'Round the World
Last week, what started out as a clash of constitutional interpretations between President Karzai and the Lower House of the National Assembly of Afghanistan, the Wolesi Jirga, soon spilled into an all-out event bordering on a crisis between the international community and Afghanistan’s current government. But rather than recount the finger-pointing between the White House, UN and the Karzai...
March 2010
5 posts
A Constitutional Loop de Loop
Last week, Afghanistan’s government confirmed for the first time it had enacted the controversial National Reconciliation, General Amnesty and National Stability Law. While there are many substantive points to consider, it might be worth analyzing how exactly the law was passed.
It can be safely said that before last week, the Reconciliation Law was in a legal limbo even through the law had been...
Ambiguity's Pleasures
There is no god, but God and Muhammad is His Prophet. It is the central unambiguous creed of the Islamic faith. And can be found emblazoned on Afghanistan’s flag, (only Saudi Arabia shares the distinction). Of greater interest, however, is the fact the religious creed is required to be on the flag by the Afghan Constitution.
Consider, however, of the more than 28 million people currently living...
A Path to Solutions
Thirty years of war. When one thinks about it, it is an almost unparalleled experience in modern history. And if one can stomach the gross oversimplification, it can be said Afghanistan’s decades of war can largely be reduced to the issues of legitimacy, law and governance, whether in the hands of a monarch or mullah, politburo or president. Perhaps of greater significance, during each of these...
February 2010
2 posts
The Walls To Winning
As an American in Kabul, one is immediately confronted by presence of walls. Perhaps strangely, the most robust are not the ones involving culture, language or even religion, but those very physical walls that pervade this city. If one can get past these walls, one can find ornate homes, restaurants of every stripe (including a simple, but superb French bakery), but also government ministries,...
Why I Am Here...
The air was clean but evidently thin, cold and brisk, tinged with wood smoke and dust. The mountain views were spectacular even for a person raised in the shadows of America’s Rocky Mountains. My gaze, however, reflexively shifted to the small mixed crowd exiting our plane (which had inexplicably sat crookedly upon the rather badly cracked tarmac). A short distance away plastered on the side of...
December 2009
1 post
Hypothetical: Introduction to the Law of...
The president has just appointed you to a new criminal justice task force. The task force must recommend that the president choose one theory of punishment around which to build a new crime reduction strategy. The goal of the strategy is to reduce all types of crime in Kabul, from street crime to corruption. Which theory of punishment should the task force recommend? Why?