U. to help with Afghan law reforms

University of Utah law school faculty will be heavily involved in training prosecutors from Afghanistan, according to an announcement made Thursday at the nation's capital.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice marked the beginning of the Public-Private Partnership for Justice Reform in Afghanistan, a move she said is "critical to the country's future success." The project is meant to create better social welfare for the war-torn country and its citizens.

"When you reform the justice system, you not only get stability in the court process, but reduce the propensity for violence, crime and corruption," said U. law professor Wayne McCormack. He said that for years the U. has been working on similar proposals to upgrade the rule of law in strug-

gling countries, and only when the State Department recently stepped in could it actually be realized.

"Establishing a fair, democratic, and transparent justice system in Afghanistan is essential to the country's success, and we know that there is much work remaining to be done," Rice said. "One concern for the justice system is the deficiency of basic equipment, such as just office supplies, vehicles, and the limited availability of defense attorneys and private practitioners."

The secretary detailed progress made in recent years in the country once "ravaged by war and by the Taliban's cruelty, isolated from the world and a haven for al-Qaida." The transformation from tyranny to democracy, she said, is partly due to the launching of a nationwide campaign to prosecute hundreds of cases of embezzlement, bribery and abuse of authority by public officials in Afghanistan.

The S.J. Quinney College of Law at the U., in cooperation with the U.S. Attorney General's Office, which launched the campaign, and the State Department, will loan its professors who have expertise in international, criminal and Middle Eastern law to lead the Global Justice Project. Several faculty members will travel to Afghanistan to get background in Islamic and Hebrew law and then return with a number of Afghan prosecutors to together develop a training program they can utilize in their country to inform and train nearly 2,000 other prosecutors there.

"This sort of discipline requires an interactive program and we just happen to have several hundred years of history to draw upon," McCormack said.