Driving in Kabul is a unique experience. Although most of the roads contain lane lines, these are apparently suggestions. As one drives down the road, there is a constant competition for space with other vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians, and occasionally a horse-drawn cart. Now, with the exception of the horse-drawn cart, this may seem quite normal for anyone driving in a large city, say Atlanta, but you have to realize that these vehicles, cyclists, and pedestrians can be anywhere on the road. I’ve seen cyclists and pedestrians weave in an out of traffic from the median to the sidewalk with no thought or care of getting hit. It is quite normal. In fact, just today, I saw a guy weave in and out of the four lanes of traffic like a Connect Four game piece as if the street was actually a sidewalk.
As a result of this, I was only mildly surprised with my driver’s traffic circle maneuver. As anyone who has used these know, when approaching a traffic circle you maintain a reasonable degree of speed, merge into the traffic as it moves counter-clockwise around the circle and move to the inside or stay outside depending upon which street you need. Well, my driver would have none of that! Upon approaching the traffic circle, my guy simply treats it as an intersection and turns left. That’s right, rather than drive around the circle with the flow of traffic, my guy bucks the trend, turns left, and weaves through the vehicles, cyclists, and pedestrians (no horses this time), to get where we need to go. All of this not five feet from a traffic cop who didn’t seem to care.
Safely through the traffic circle, I’m on my way to the Ministry of Justice for a working group on Afghanistan’s new Criminal Procedure Code (CPC). The Taqnin (a sort of clearing house for all proposed Afghan laws that assesses a proposal’s constitutionality and compliance with Sharia law) has graciously allowed the international community the opportunity to critique and offer changes to the Code. I am there to represent the US embassy.
Since I traveled alone and left early, I arrived before any of the other international attendees. My driver was allowed to drive into the compound, but I went alone into the inner gate as the gate guard pointed to the building on the left. I walked into the building and quickly saw that it was merely passageway into a small courtyard. I asked the gentleman I saw where the CPC meeting was being held. He apparently understood little of what I said, but directed me to a door and set of stairs. As I walked into the door, I began to get a bit irritated at being alone with no real idea of exactly where I was going. Was this a test or some sort of newbie initiation? I finally ran into a guy that said the meeting was on the third floor. So I headed up there, the only non-Afghan in sight.
At the top of the stairs I arbitrarily took a right and saw an elderly gentleman sitting on a small chairs halfway down the hall. The hall is a bit narrow with white walls and various carpets (runners I think they’re called) placed haphazardly. “Salaam Alikum (Peace be with you),” I say. “Walikum Salaam (and peace be with you),” he answers. I ask where the meeting is and he points to the room at the end of the hall. “Tashakur (thank you),” I say and walk down the hall into the room. It is empty. The room is also painted white, but has tourism-style pictures of Afghanistan on the wall. Tables are arranged into a square in the middle of the room, with black chairs around it and the surrounding walls. Above the centermost table at the back of the room (where the host might sit) was a picture of President Hamid Karzai on the wall. The carpet was brown with a darker brown pattern on it. It was the type of carpet you might see on a deck in a trailer park. It had no padding and had been cut into strips to lay it. Apparently, this had been done with some attention to detail because the pattern matched at the joints (it wasn’t seemed, so it buckled in some areas). The room, I think, represented the spirit of the Afghan people. Despite the fact that their country is undeveloped (not my word, but that of the Afghan President’s legal advisor) they still make the attempt to convey the importance of meeting being held there as best they can.
Alone, I sat down along the wall and waited. At about five minutes before nine, I became concerned that I was in the wrong place since I hadn’t seen anyone. I called the number of an American embed at the Ministry of Justice, but I got a recording of a lady saying, in Dari, that the phone had been disconnected. I only know what the Dari meant because I left the phone on while trying to think about what the heck I was going to do and an English translation followed. The American embed, by the way, is in the US right now. So I decided to leave the room and, on doing so, saw that the nice, elderly gentleman had been joined by two much younger men. I went up to the one wearing the orange shirt (being a Tennessee fan, I took this as a good sign). He escorted me into an office and made some calls for me. The meeting is upstairs he told me and then escorted me there.
Once in the meeting room, I met folks from the international community: Italian embassy, UN, ISAF, etc. However, the room was very small and they decided that we needed a bigger room. Demonstrating my vast knowledge of the Ministry of Justice building I said that there was a large room downstairs and described it after being asked to do so. They agreed to try that room. On the way downstairs, the bearded, elderly gentleman was still sitting in his same chair. He laughed as I walked by as if to say he’d been right all along. I laughed too and said I should have just waited like he told me. The guy in the orange shirt interpreted for me and the elderly gentleman nodded and laughed more.
The meeting itself was interesting for me, but likely uninteresting to most non-lawyers. We discussed the minutiae of criminal procedure and whether the proposed procedures comport with international law. We discussed issues such as a statute of limitations for war crimes and crimes against humanity (a no-no under international law), a statute of limitations for the execution of punishments (an interesting, but fairly simplistic concept that fails to consider unintended consequences), witness testimony, and the like. The entire meeting used an interpreter in sequence rather than a real-time interpretation through earpieces so it was slow going, as we had to wait for every speaker’s statement to be translated. Intuitively, you realize that translations are not always exact and I cannot resist referencing a sophomoric, yet humorous moment. I’m pretty sure the translator meant to say, “alter the penal code,” but it came out “vibrate the penal code.” Yes it was sophomoric, but after five hours of legal minutiae it gave me a chuckle.
No comments:
Post a Comment