ABA Journal - Law News Now

Well I'm back out to visiting PRT's again after doing a lot of work up here in ISAF HQ and with the Regional Commands. The latest trip was to the Province of Ghazni just South and a little East of Kabul - right in the heart of Taliban Country. And about 7,000 feet up in altitude and thus a lot colder and a lot more snow than in Kabul proper. So much in fact that I fell twice and busted my butt. That's OK. it was fun anyways.

We took a chopper ride down - civilian this time - run by our USAID comrades in arms (well, comrades in reconstruction). We use their air service a lot. Quicker sometimes than the military and sometimes easier.

IAE, it was a beautiful ride across snow covered hills there and back. You can see the pics I took on the way back in the latter part of this slide show. I wondered how long it would be before there were ski resorts popping up around here. I swear if these people could just get their stuff together they could make beaucoup bucks ripping off westerners who would come here in droves to ski and hike and enjoy the scenery.

The Ghazni PRT is located in the provincial Capital of Ghazni which unfortunately is in the northeast corner of the province rather than the Center - which makes it harder for the government to get around. As always in Afghanistan, roads are sorely needed. But the Ring Road (the road that runs around Afghanistan) cuts right through the province. That certainly helps bring development. Ghazni though if you recall was where the South Korean delegation was kidnapped last Summer. They just hopped on a bus, drove down the ring road and decided to get off in the middle of Taliban country and eat some ice cream. Sigh.

It's a Navy PRT - commanded by a Navy Pilot. They've gotten out quite a bit in their stay. When I was there, I was fortunate to visit the Provisional Justice Center. You can see a picture of me and the Judge there in his office. He was an interesting fellow who spent 11 years as a "guest" of the commies - in prison back in the 80's. Now he's finally a judge. I wasn't sure if he was ever a practicing lawyer although he did have a University Degree. Most of the cases are criminal in nature. You can see pictures of the actual courtroom in the presentation. Civil cases are resolved first through an informal "shura system" - kind of like our mediation. Only if unresolved do they have trials.

I tried to tell him that we do civil cases somewhat similar - that the judges usually send us to mediation and only if that fails do we do a trial. He was quite pleased about that. I asked if he had to write out his opinions like our judges, but he did not. I gather there are not a lot of pretrial motions that we have. I've heard of justice horror stories around here - including a judge who was shown a bunch of accused persons and simply sentenced them all to 25 years in jail - right there on the spot. Nothing works like frontier justice!

We also got to go and visit a dam the next day (today actually, I just got back!). That's us trudging through the snow - there's a lot of it and we kept sinking into it. The Dam itself wasn't much but the scenery was quite cool. I thought of telling a great story of how we trudged through the snow after being attacked, hunting the taliban. (We don't look real "tactical" in those pics though.) Actually it was quite a safe district we were in, just a little north of the city and right of the main ring road.

You can see a great spot for a ski resort on the tenth slide in my show. Notice the handsom warrior in the group of us kneeling. The one on the far right of the pic. That's moi. The other picture is of LCDR Chip Bridgman another submarine reservists who just arrived in country a few weeks ago. This was his first mission.

While Ghazni is actually quite safe, it is the only PRT I know of to get really hit. Back in October they had a bad IED attack that killed their civilian US Department of Agricultural Rep, Tom Stefani. We really need our civilian advisors - they are the ones who tell us what we ought to be doing and we really need Agricultural reps. So it was a pretty bad blow to our efforts. The PRT built their MWR facility in his memory. I sent a copy of this pic off to the USDA head rep back in DC. I hope that his death won't hurt efforts to man the PRT's with such specialists as they are vital.

Well, then we flew back, as you can see by the pics. Helo rides are always more fun than plane rides because we stay low and I can take lots of pics. Now I'm back in "home sweet home". At least I got to eat some real 'merican food down in Ghazni - lots of cheeseburgers and hot dogs! I felt like I was back on a ski resort!

See everyone soon.

Sterling

All photos courtesy of Sterling DeRamus.