A Trial on Tatooine: The Anatomy of an Afghan Court-Martial

Yesterday, a group of us went out to observe a court-martial of an Afghan brigadier general.  General Rasoul is the commander of Kabul Military Hospital #2, and he is accused of sexually harassing nurses.  When one of the nurses refused his advances, he chased her to a nearby office, where she barricaded herself behind the locked door.  He told one of the workers to get the door open, even if he had to break it down.  After a lot of banging and some confused shouting by the worker, the nurse foolishly opened the door—and General Romance rushed in.  The worker testified that he saw the general knock the nurse to the ground and hit her at least three times.  This differed slightly from the nurse herself, who testified that the general hit her just once.  Despite this inconsistency, you’d think there is uncontroverted evidence—at least by Afghan standards—that the general assaulted her.  However, the judges seemed to make a huge deal about this, with the chief judge screaming at the worker, “WHO IS LYING?  YOU OR HER?!!”  It was like Perry Mason, only just the opposite.

"No, no, I wasn't trying to rape her!
I was, um, trying to discipline her."

It was critical that this worker witnessed the assault since under Afghan law, one male witness counts as four females.  In other words, it’s not enough to convict somebody like General Rasoul if the sole evidence is the testimony of the female victim of an assault—there either needs to be three other female witnesses who corroborate her story, or one male witness.  So we had one male witness.  Sure, he is illiterate (he signed his in-court statement with his thumb print), he showed up to court in his work galoshes, and he couldn’t even speak Dari, but he’s got a wienie so he was the government’s key witness.  Throughout his testimony, the worker talked fast and his hands shook, and when he concluded his testimony, he told the court he got along well with everyone in Kabul and that if anything happened to him after the trial, well, it would be General Rasoul’s fault.  Our interpreter told us afterward that it’s not uncommon for witnesses—particularly lower-class workers like this guy—to be assaulted or even killed for testifying against powerful people like generals in the Afghan National Army.  Yay Rule of Law!

The nurse testified, but apparently her testimony came during a court hearing a few days ago.  A couple of other nurses testified as well, but hey, they’re just chicks, so the court didn’t seem all that impressed.  They don’t have juries in the Afghan system—instead, the factfinder is a three-judge panel, and the judges do most of the questioning.  It would be pretty good to be an Afghan prosecutor or defense counsel—these two guys spent most of the day sitting on their hands.  They each gave a sort of closing argument and that was about it.  The chief judge did most of the questioning and, at times, seemed to be testifying himself.  The judges also read into the record the prosecutor’s report of investigation, as if it were evidence.  Apparently, there’s no such thing in the Afghan system as hearsay.  General Rasoul made a few statements, including one at the end of the trial where he said it was “incredible” that someone like him could be on trial.  And really, it is—chances are, General Rasoul either doesn’t know the right people or couldn’t pony up the cash to make the charges go away.     



"Hey fellas, it's 3 p.m.!  Quittin' time!"



The chief judge announced at 3:10 p.m. that he and his colleagues had reached a decision, but as the duty day was already over, they would have to wait until the next morning to announce the verdict.  Unfortunately, we weren’t about to make it out to the court today, so we had to settle with getting the news from the prosecutor—General Rasoul was convicted of abuse of authority (for swearing at a subordinate doctor) and attempted rape.  The judges acquitted him of physical assault.  Sure, there was absolutely no evidence that he had actually tried to rape the nurse—and there were several eyewitnesses to the physical assault—but as my boss points out, we’re in Wonderland.  The court sentenced General Rasoul to four months’ confinement at his unit and he’ll forfeit half of his pay for the next four months.  On paper, this sounds like an OK sentence, but in reality, he’ll go back to his unit and everyone will pretend he was punished.  Maybe he’ll work slightly longer hours, like until 3:30 in the afternoon.  As for the forfeiture of pay, he’ll probably just supplement his income by sending some of his illiterate Army patients to his private clinic and charge their families for services the soldiers are supposed to receive for free.  The best part of it all is that General Rasoul was removed from command and transferred to the reserves, but we’ve seen in the past where people have been fired and sent to the reserves, only to resurface a few months later with a promotion.  And since Rasoul is a Tajik, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him back in uniform—Karzai’s vice presidents are Tajiks and they are incredibly powerful.  Mostly because they’re warlords who wear suits.

I’m not surprised by the verdict.  I had predicted six months’ confinement at the unit and a small fine, so I was only off by a little.  The writing was on the wall when the first witness who testified yesterday—the victim’s husband—recanted later that afternoon, and said in open court that he forgives General Rasoul.  Not only did General Rasoul accept the apology, but the court officially recognized it under Sharia law.  The prosecutor argued in his closing that by accepting the victim’s husband’s offer of forgiveness, General Rasoul implicitly admitted his crimes.  I thought it was a pretty good argument but the judges looked at the prosecutor like he had three eyeballs.

Until the Afghan army gets serious about punishing people like General Rasoul, this country will continue to experience anarchy—after all, when the army can’t even adequately punish itself for obvious crimes like Rasoul’s, how can it have any legitimacy with its own people?  Right now, as many as 40 percent of the Afghan army is AWOL—and a large number of them have left not because they don’t want to fight or be away from their families, but because they have been abused by commanders who go unpunished.  But given the networks of patronage and the prevalence of bribes, it is extremely rare for the perpetuators of this misconduct to be held accountable—and one could even make the argument that none of the Afghan senior leadership has ever been held accountable.  In the 10 years that we’ve been here, my understanding is that not a single “true” general has been court-martialed—General Rasoul doesn’t even really count because, although he wears brigadier general rank and once was a brigadier general, he now works in a colonel position, and is paid a colonel’s wage. 



Yes, those are Sand People.
They're pretty good with M16s.



Part of yesterday’s adventure was simply getting to the courtroom and back.  The trial was held at the 201st Corps, which is located about 15 miles outside of downtown Kabul.  You’d think that in a city of more than 4 million people, there would be suburbs, but this is Afghanistan—you go about 5 miles out of the city center and you’re in the sticks.  Frankly, I have no idea where these 4 million people live, since anything over a few stories high has been bombed several times over, but they certainly don’t live in the burbs. 

 

The 201st Corps is located at an Afghan camp called Pol-E-Charki, which swallows up a coalition base called Black Horse.  Pol-E-Charki is reached by a dirt road through the foothills of some of the most dramatic mountains I’ve ever seen in my life.  These things seem to shoot straight up from the ground, and some of them are well over 10,000 feet high.  The dirt road cuts through the Afghan Army’s vast training grounds, where they train with small arms, artillery, and tanks.  Fortunately, the road was open—which we took to mean they weren’t conducting any live fire exercises with mortars or anything stronger than M16s.  The landscape looked like something from Tatooine—the only living things out there were the Afghan soldiers who were crawling around the hills and dunes like jawas and Sand People.  I kept expecting to see a droid or two wobbling out of one of the wadis.  We passed several ruins, although in this country it’s hard to determine if the pile of rocks before you is ancient or just a house that recently was blown up. 



Just shootin' womprats with my
T16 back home.



At Pol-E-Charki, there was quite a bit of activity—including several helicopters that hugged the snow-covered mountains before turning into the camp, landing just long enough to pick up troops, and then roaring over the courtroom.  There was a certain beauty to it, not to mention a reminder that we’re in a war zone—a reminder that, surprisingly, does not come all that often here at Camp Eggers.

In other news, we’re totally losing this war.  If you’re interested in knowing why—at least according to one little captain on the ground—send me an email or a message on Facebook.



Mountains just outside Pol-E-Charki.