„Come back when you are dead”

The words of an Afghan policeman to a battered wife named Kathra who had asked for protection from her husband. Two weeks later she was dead. Her husband and his family had beaten and burnt her. This is just one of many cases for Kimberly Motley, a former beauty queen who now works as lawyer in Kabul, Afghanistan, dealing with local criminal, commercial, contract, civil and employment matters. She also takes human and women’s right cases pro bono and has started a foundation to help her clients. Often subjected to threats, she says, „Afganistan is just one big, bad neighbourhood”. But how can a former Mrs Wisconsin live and work in a country stricken by war, poverty and corruption? Interview about the land of strict judgements, 30 million people and only one thousand lawyers. Interview.

What brought you to Afghanistan? How did your career start in Kabul?

79%

Év végéig még

21 125 027 forint

hiányzik a

költségvetésünkből.

Támogasd az Átlátszó

tényfeltáró munkáját!

atlatszo.hu/tamogatom

K.M.: Well, I originally came to Kabul on a US State Department’s Justice Sector funded program in 2008. I was sent here for a year to train and mentor Afghan defence attorneys. After doing that for a year I decided to stay in Afghanistan because I saw a lot of things within the justice system that I felt needed help and needed working on, and I saw a lot of clients who needed good representation.

I: Can you remember what your very first case here in Afghanistan was about?

K.M.: My very first client was an African woman who was actually in prison for drug trafficking. When I met her, she had gone through all the three courts so she couldn’t go to any more courts. She received a 10-year sentence for drug trafficking and communicated to me that she had actually been brought to Afghanistan to get drugs and traffick them back to Africa. I really tried to help her, but no matter how hard I tried to research any legal loop holes for her, I couldn’t find any. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to do much for her.

I: Is it mostly women you deal with?

K.M.: I do represent several women – I have a very wide variety per practice. Among others, I had a case that did cause a stir and international outcry: I represented Gulnaz, an Afghan woman who was charged with adultery by force. Well, the true story is that she was raped and, as a result, she became pregnant. Her rapist was her uncle who was almost twice her age. When Gulnaz went to court, before I met her, she was given a 12-year sentence and she was also encourged by the court that if she married him, then perhaps her sentence may be decreased. I took the case and we went to supreme court where we got her sentenced to three years and the court didn’t say she needed to marry the guy. She had already served two years in prison and she actually gave birth to her daughter in prison. After the 3-year sentence we put in a pardon application to president Karzai on Gulnaz’s behalf and he granted the pardon and she was released from prison. This was the first presidental pardon that I’m aware of that any Afghan president had given to a women on immoral crimes case. I’ve also represented cases on women that were victims of violence: where they were battled by family members, mostly by the husband and they needed support to go to the attorney general’s office to see what they could do in order to make sure that the prosecution prosecutes those people who were attacking them.

I: How do these girls and  women find you?

K.M.: Well, you know, I don’t have a commercial, so it is basically all word on mouth. They find me through embassies, through other Afghan people, or they find me on the web, I do not know, they just find me – there are lots of different ways to find me…

I: After such a long time in Afghanistan you must have a perfect knowledge of the laws here as well as of the courts and the way they bring in their verdicts. What is your professional opinion about them?

K.M.: Well, since I have been here there has been some improvement on the justice system. I think part of that improvment is due to international aid and international involvment from countries all over the world that have tried to help to improve justice in Afghanistan through founding and through support. In terms of women, there need to be more women judges who are symphatetic to women as victims. The justice system needs to be a little better organized, and certain laws – like the Elimination of Violation Against Women Act (EVAW), which is a law that is meant to protect women who are victims of violence – need to be used more frequently and utilized better. It is a law that’s been completely underutilized, especially in a country where over 90% of the women have reported that they had experienced some form of violence. I think the justice system is a working progress that definitely needs to be improved on every level – in terms of tradition, monitoring and advocacy. I think advocates need to be much better – it can happen through trainings and things like that which is happening, but it is not happening in the speed that it needs to, to equate to the problem.

I: How much does written law count in Afganistan? Do people ignore or abide by the law?

K.M.: Well, I would not say it is all ignored. But I do agree with what you are saying: the law is not followed to the letter as it should be. Part of the reason why it is not is because people don’t neccessarily know the law. People, I mean judges, lots of judges I met are not very well versed in the law. I would not say they all are not, but I think there is a certain level of ignorence to the law that is accepted here, unfortunately, and that’s where some of the perceived cultural norms come into place to replace the law. I think procedure here often triumphs within the law. For instance, procedurally, an accused person, a woman who is a victim of violence has the right to an advocate to represent her in court, because she is a victim. However, procedurally, women – our victims of violance – do not have lawyers in court. What is more, they are not even informed that they have the right to an advocate. But there are a lot of good laws in the books that should and can be utilized to help improve the justice system.

I: How do Islam laws and traditions affect the general legal practice and remedies?

K.M.: Well, Afghanistan, The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is an Islamic country that follows Sharia law, Islamic law. It follows a particular school of thoughts within Sharia law. There are four schools and the school it follows or supposed to follow is the Hanafi jurisprudence. There are a lot of Islamic (Sharia) laws that are meant and placed to help protect women. In my opinion, however, those laws and those rules are very much underutilized. I would never say that Islamic law is bad because I don’t think it’s bad. I would much rather say that there have been a lot of detrimentally negative interpretations of Islamic law that have resulted in peolple being victims of the justice system that don’t neccessarily follow what Islamic law intends for it to be followed.

I: Have you visited the countryside too?

K.M.: Yes, I’ve gone to the countryside. I went around the country: I went to the north, to the center, to the west and I went to the east. I have been to Jalalabad, Mazar, Harad and Kabul. I have also traveled to Baglan, Baghran. I enjoy traveling, because it really allows for me to get to know the justice system. Wherever I go I try to observe courts, look at the prisons, talk to people to get a very good understanding of what is going on. The purpose of this was to track crime to apology, for instance, where crime is represented in Afghanistan. I have actually done a lot of research in Afghanistan. I have done a lot of research and, with the help of a translator, I made over six hundred interviews throughout Afganistan. I have written several publications, two of them on the topic of the Juvenile Justice in Afghanistan. I talked to over 350 people within the juvenile system. 250 of those people were kids locked up – this is over 40% of the population of juvenile. After doing this research I know that most kids are in custody for drug crimes. Drug crime is mostly in the east because it’s along the Pakistan border. In Herat there’s more moral crime, in Mazar it’s more murder, in Kabul it’s more theft. I was able to track sentencing disparities. If you are an accused person, if you are defended and you appeal a sentence that you don’t agree with, according the Afghan law that sentence is not supposed to increase, it is supposed to be the same or supposed to decrease. In our research we talked to a lot of people whose sentences were increased. We talked to kids, talked about their due process violations that happened to them. We talked to many kids that reported forced confessions, that they were tortured, they were beaten, they were forced to give a confession which resulted in them being convicted of crime. We talked to a lot of kids that said that didn’t have an attorney in court. We talked to lots of kids that said if they were silent in court they felt that the judges used that against them. And conversly: we also talked to a lot of judges who said that if kids were silent in court – and there is a right to remain silent here –, they were penalized for it. We were able to get a very clear picture of the juvenile justice system. Then we went back this year and did the same thing but also looked more at traditional sentencings to see what judges were doing out there, if their sentences were consistent with the law.

After such research we were able to track and create sentencing guidelines for judges. It is basically a protocol that allows judges to have some type of procedures in determining what their sentences are for kids as opposed to arbirtarily giving a kid a 15-minute trial and then sentencing him to eight years with no explanation.

I: It is no exaggeration to say that Afganistan is still a country of traditions where before, or perhaps instead of going to court, it is usually the village elders who make decisions in order to settle a case.

K.M.: The fact of the matter is Afghanistan is a very rural country. Kabul is a city, an open urban environment, but it is not neccesarily reflective of Afghanistan which has a population of over 30 million people. The provinces have adopted informal justice procedures in order to deal with certain things. This is called jirgasm, local jirgasm where two parties may have an issue and the village elders are the decision makers to solve those problems – in whatever way that they see fit. I think we have a pretty good grasp of what is going on in the justice system in terms of the jirgas and personally, I see pros and cons to this informal justice. I don’t think its all bad and the matter of fact is that almost all, if not all the justice systems in world have informal mechanisms. Like in the USA we do have an informal justice system. We have free bargaining because we don’t take everything to court. There is free trial, free courts where you can negotiate your cases to not make it go through the government court. That is an informal mechanism. And that is what they have here. However, the problem is that the Afghan informal justice system is not regulated. In a lot of provinces, if there is an issue with a woman and a man, a lot of times the woman is not even allowed to come in to say what happened to give her sight of the story. Instead, if anybody, it’s the woman’s head of the household, a male head of  household who comes and says his sight of the story. That is a problem. If you have someone else being accused for something and they are not able to tell their story or even to walk into the door, that is a problem. Also, it is often male decision makers you can see, much rather than women elders – that is also a problem. The way the informal justice system is done is, in my opinion, oppressive to women but the intent of it is, I think, is to make sure that whatever justice is given or is decided is done quickly. And there are a lot of people in the country that prefer going to the informal mechanism versus the formal mechanism for various reasons: because it is faster, because they feel that it is fair and less corrupt.

I: You have just touched a sensitive spot: how does the legal system in Afghanistan seem to you? Is it really corrupt? How fast and effective or slow can the court be said as far as their verdicts are concerned?

K.M.: I do think it is corrupt, and yes, it can be slow, though I do not think it is always slow. I have been able to get some of my cases move pretty quickly and I think it is because we were very diligent in how we represent people. We communicate with the court very closely and I think that is how we were able to get our cases heard faster than other people. Nevertheless, I have seen people going to courts for years and have also seen people in prison for a very long time without even going to court. I have been asked for bribes in court, I have been asked for bribes outside the court. I have been told by people that they had paid and it did help them in their sentences.

So, corruption is definitely a big issue here – it is no secret that Afghanistan is the second or third most corrupt country in the world and part of the reason is because of the justice system is corrupt.

I: What kind of documents and permits did you need to work as a lawyer in Afghanistan?

K.M.: There is no set system on how the paperwork is required in order to practise in Afganistan, so I have created  a process. Advoctes Law Article 6 says that a foreigner may represent other foreigners in Afghanistan. According to another Advocates Law a person may choose whoever they want to to represent them. My Afghan clients follow this article, whereas my foreign clients prefer Article 6. I had a copy of my Bar Licence as an attorney and a letter from the Supreme Court in the US, in my state, saying that I am an attorney in good standing. I got these documents notarized by the US Embassy and by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

As I wanted to be very open and transparent with my practise here before I went to court, I went to the Supreme Court, I went to the Ministry of Justice, I went to the Attorney General’s Office and I went to the Afghan Independent Bar Association – so four seperate meetings ­– to inform them that I wanted to practice in Afghanistan. I gave the copies of my documents to the Afghan Independent Bar Associacion so they know that I am in good standing and that I have no issues with my license. Then I asked for their blessings, and they gave me their blessings. I thought it was the best way to be very transparent with my wanting to practise here because I knew once I started taking cases it wasn’t going to be a secret.

I: Kimberly, you have been living and working in Afghanistan for the past 5 years. Have you learnt any of the two official languages – Pashto or Dari – or you need a translator? How do you communicate in the everyday life and at courts?

K.M.: My language is English and I communiacte in English. Every document I input to court is in English so I do always take a translator with me.

I: You are from the United States, a culture that in many ways differs from Afghanistan. How can you work here? How can an American woman adopt to the everyday life in Afghanistan?

K.M.: Well, I grew up in a bad neighbourhood in the US and I feel like Afghanistan is just one big bad neighbourhood. I am just careful with certain things: I share certain things, I do not not share certain things. Everybody here is at risk, not just me, but everyone: every foreigner, every woman, every Afghan. But it is just part of life, unfortunately, in a conflict zone in a developing country.

I: What does it feel like walking in the streets and knowing that anything can happen in any second? Bombs can explode, yo may be shot to death, or you can become an eye-witness or, what is worse, a victim of violence?   

K.M.: Well, I do not really think about that a lot when I am walking on the street, to be honest, I am just trying to be careful. You know, if I thought about that, then I would not need to be here. Frankly, that would be paranoia all the time. You just have to be smart and not trust your instincts. I guess Afghanistan is a kind of country where, a lot of people would say, you wouldn’t be doing what you’re doing if you trusted your instincts but, you know, I enjoy what I do.

I: Have you ever been threatened because of your job?

K.M.: I have got threaths. But to be honest, it is an expected consequence. If I didn’t get threats for doing this job I would actually be shocked. But we have precautionary security measures that we keep in play.

I: What sort of threats were they? How can a foreign litigator be threatened in Afghanistan?

K.M.: Well, some people were not happy that I represented, that I am representing Afghan women. I have had police at my door, back under my house, I have been detained by police, I’ve got my Skype checked and things like that from different people, but it is also just part of the job. I do not really like to talk about it too much because I will feel like I am comlapining. It is just life, you just learn to deal with it.

I: Have you never felt fear because of those threats?

K.M.: Honestly, I feel more fear for my clients than I do for myself. I don’t want my clients to be put into bad situations and I don’t like my clients to be locked up for things that they shouldn’t be locked up for. That is what I feel fear for. I feel fear for my clients and their situations.

I: To be women’s advocate, especially poor women’s advocate  does not really seem to be a strong business model. How can you finance your work? Are there foundations that donate you? How can you manage your personal life here?

K.M.: Because I am a woman, and I have done a couple of women’s cases, it is probably easier to label me as a women’s rights’ advocate. But I am a litigator. I am an independent lawyer, I am an international attorney that litigates in Afghanistan, the only one that does that, the first and only one that does that. That is what my label should be. But under that umbrella I do womens’ rights. In addition to women’s rights cases,  I represent a lot of companies, international companies that are operating in Afghanistan. I am sort of their general counsel. I also represent several embassies, I also represent international companies charged with criminal offences on criminal and human rights issues. All my women’s rights cases that I do I do pro bono. My human rights cases I do those pro bono. And I finance that myself, me and my husband. Motley Legal is a private entity. We don’t go after donor foundings, we choose not to, because we want to represent our clients. We don’t want to represent friends, you know, we want to represent our clients; I want to be a lawyer to my clients. But we do have a foundation. The foundation is seperate from here. It is something that is just starting, we have not really done anything with that. So the short answer to your question is that we finance ourselves through our private clients we represent and also through our personal money.

I: What is your professional opinion of Afghan lawyers? Are there female lawyers here? Have you met any? How do Afghan lawyers react to of human and, especially, woman’s rights issues?

K.M.: I have met both women lawyers men lawyers in Afghanistan. I think, like in any country, there are good lawyers and there are bad lawyers here, too. There are some very, very passionate lawyers here that work on human rights cases, which I think is great. I think human rights is becoming something that more and more lawyers are really getting involved in.

I: I have not heard of too many Afghan lawyers representing human or women’s rights cases. May Afghan lawyers not be responsive enough to this matter? Do you think Afghan advocates need more time to recognize this problem and its importance?

K.M.: Afghanistan is a country of over 30 million people. I believe, last time I checked, which was a few months ago, there were a little over a thousand Afghan lawyers that were registered with the Afghan Independent Bar Association. It is a very, very small amount of lawyers for a country of over thirty million. In addition to that, I would say, maybe two hundred are females. I don’t even think it’s two hundred. But I do think  that there are Afghan lawyers that handle human rights and women’s rights cases as I do. They do that because about half the women that are prisoners are in prison for moral crime cases such as adultery and running away. There are a lot of attorneys out there that are fighting for their clients. So do we, but I think we do things a little bit differently. We are willing to go as far as we need to go for our clients and I do not see that from a lot of lawyers. I see that as it is a job, not a passion, whereas for us it is a passion.

I can say that because we are doing the cases pro bono. Financially we do not get anything out of it but the non-financial rewards are far more worthy for us. So I do see that there are Afghan lawyers that are handling human rights and women’s rights cases they certainly do not handle the cases in the same way that I do. And a lot of lawyers have dropped the ball on a lot of human rights and women’s rights cases here – for whatever reason.

I: What cases have you recently taken? What happened?

K.M.: Well, I represent a woman’s family, her name is Kathra. She was a 22-year-old Afghan lawyer, well, she was a law student, she was married to a man who was extremely abusive to her. Her mother-in-law and father-in-law were also very abusive to her. She was beaten several times by her family members. Then she went to police to report the crime of her being beaten but was ignored and left dead. She was actually told by the police to “come back when you are dead”. She went and reported the beatings to the police with her mother. According to the EVAW Law, the police have an informative duty to report victims of violence to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs but they failed to do that with Kathra. To cut the long story short: Kathra is beaten also burnt. Now murdered, we believe, by her husband and, we also believe, by her mother-in-law and father-in-law. They were all prosecuted for murder: the husband has been given only seven years’ prison. Though according to the law the mother-in-law and the father-in-law should have got 20 years in prison, they didn’t get anything.  Now Kathra’s family came to me wanting justice for their daughter and also for her two-year-old son, who is now living with the in-laws who were the main people who were beating her when she was alive. So I am representing the family and we are trying to make sure that they get prosecuted the way they are supposed to get prosecuted according to the law. We are also looking at the government and trying to show how the government did not do their job. The police also failed to care enough to do their minimum amount of work which was basically to report this to the Ministry of Womens’ Affairs when she came to them because she was beaten. But they didn’t do that, they didn’t bother to do that. Perhaps she would still be alive.

I: Is it normal that a woman turns to the police but they do nothing? 

K.M.: Yes, it is a very, very normal standard operating procedure here. I have known women that went to the police to aske for their help but were ridiculed and left dead. I have also known women went to the police where they were just asked “where’s your husband at? Do you have a permission to be here? If you don’t get out of here I’m gonna charge you with running away”. I have also seen it happen to women when I went to the court or when I was at the police station just working on different cases and I saw women coming in and I saw them being ignored. It happens pretty routinly.

I: Is that possible that a woman, who originally goes to the police to report she has been beaten, ends up in prison?

K.M.: Yes. That is what happened with Gulnaz. She was raped and then went to the police to report what had happened to her. At the end they locked her up. I’m sorry, there is no good way to explain that at all; there is no common sense way to justify that. I do not care what culture you are from, it is ridiculous, it is absolutely absurd.

I: What is the order of the procedure here? How is a criminal case investigated in Afghanistan?

 K.M.: Well, the police get a complaint and then decide whether or not the person should be investigated further. If they decide the person should be investigated further, the file is sent to the Attorney General’s Office. There is an investigating attorney general that can pick up the case and decide to arrest the person for whatever the offence is and continue the investigation on the case. Once that investigation is closed, the file goes to another prosecutor; this prosecutor is the one that takes the case to court.

I: What is your role in this procedure? How do you enter the course of the proceedings?

K.M.: Well, I am basically doing the work that the attorney general should have done: I am investigating the case, talking to witnesses, trying to collect evidence, and I am trying to put that serve in a package to give it to the trial prosecutor and say “hey, here is the case, here is the charge, here are the witnesses. I have done all the work for you. All you’ve got to do is charge these people. All you have to do is to show it to the court and read”. So that is one thing, criminally charge them – the right people. The second, equally important thing is to do a civil case against the Afghan government, against those persons within the government that still do their duty – it has never happened here before. We think it is very important because there is no check on the government when they do not do their duty to help women. So, it will be some sort of an imposed  check on the government to say had they done their job she would still be alive. And since they failed do their job, they violated the law, the EVAW Law, which says the case should have been reported to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.

I: Is it not a criminal case when someone misses their duty?

K.M.: No, it is civil. Well, it can be criminal as well, but I think we want a civil thing right now and figure out what the actual monetary damages are for the family. The point of the civil is to make a point that the government should have done their job and so that this is not to happen again with at least the same officials or that there is something that is put in place to stop this from happening in the future.

I:  Do you think the prosecutor will accept your evidence?

K.M.: I do not know, we will see. This is all new. But I am going to give in some good stuff. Well, yes, they could, they could refuse it, but we will push do like we have done in all our cases and I think it will give results. So, we will see…

I: How would you describe the present Afghan situation?  

K.M.: In terms of the justice system there is a lot of work what definitely needs to be done. I am concerned about the pullout; I mean there a lot of women here in the justice system and may become part of the justice system. It is obviously a very male-dominated culture, so I am really concerned. There are a lot of good things about the Afghan culture, for example it is a very family-orientated environment, which, I think, is great. Furthermore, it is a very entreprenurial environment but, to be honest, I am concerned about what is going to happen with the justice system in Afghanistan, and about the international involvment, if it is sustainable or not. And I don’t know if it will be if aid money is taken away or if troops leave.

I: What do you think will happen if or when the international troops leave the country? Do you think the Taliban’s will come back? Is it possible? Do you think they can take the power again?

K.M.:  The Talibans are here! They never left!  I hope they will not take the power again. I just try to be optimistic. A lot of people say yes, the Talibans will certainly return, but I think people are tired of fighting against the Talibans. They just want to live peacefully and raise their families. Nobody  wants any problems. Some hope in that prevails. Human spirit prevails but I don’t know.

I: It is a daily routine for you to go in and out of the court and prisons. What do Afghan prisons look like? What conditions prevail there?

K.M.: The prisons are very communal, inmates are allowed to interact with each other pretty much all day. There is a very limited amount of guards in the prison it is mainly run by the prisoners. There is virtually no programming for the prisoners, so they are just basically sitting there waiting for their time. The food is very scarce, so familiy members have to bring nutritional food, fruit, vegetables and meat, into the prison, otherwise a lot of prisoners just won’t get that type of stuff. There are a lot of communical diseases that go around the prison and the medical services are not there a lot because there are so many prisoners. There is always so much you can do. There are also people with weapons and things like that. It is not safe. A prison in Afghanistan is just not a safe place to be.

I: Do you mean relatives are allowed to visit the prisoners?

K.M.: Yes, they are. They are actually allowed to meet them and  have face to face like we are having right now and can give items to the prisoners which is good and bad, because this way prisoners can get weapons – and  they use their weapons.

On the other hand, however, it is good when relatives bring food in because without it a lot of people would probably get very ill, if not die.

I: Apart from being very busy working on the different court cases and fighting for human and women’s rights, you are still able to make time to create your own foundation. What is its mission?

K.M.: The idea of a future foundation is to make the pro bono work we do in Afghanistan, or beyond, a little bit more formalized. About a third of the cases I do here, which is a huge amount, I do pro bono, because I feel like it is my duty too. Prior to coming to Afghanistan I worked as a public defender in the US. I represented only poor people for over five years. So I have a foundation for representing indigent clients. It is called Motley Cares Foundation. We will be taking private donations to do that and we would also like to hire Afghan lawyers to work with us in representing our clients pro bono. How we want to do that is that they need to work under our umbrella so we train them, we mentor them, we follow them on the cases to make sure that they follow our methods in order how to represent people. We have been operating here since 2009 and now we have an over 90%-release record rate of our clients that we represent. We have that rate because we represent people in the whay that I believe is the best way to represent people. It is a proven method that has worked and over 90% of our clients can tell you that it is a proven method that can work in our criminal defence and human rights. It is also supposed to look into investing in other businesses around the world – including Afghan businesses: you know, providing them a small amount of money in order to run their businesses.­ In addition to being the CFO of Motley Legal,  my husband has a strong business background, so he wants to offer people basically grants to start a small business. As I said before, there is a very entreprenurial spirit in Afghanistan, so, with the help we can provide them, people here can start their businesses. Also, it is a way for us to invest back into the country because we, as a private entity, believe that corporations – and we consider ourselves a corporation – should have a certain sense of social responsibility. We believe in human capital: if you invest in people in turn it will be a good investment into the environment and into the economic capital. We do that by doing a pro bono work because we are trying not only to raise capacity and represent our clients the best way possible, but we are also trying to raise the business environment to an ethical and professional business environment that can be viable for the future.

I: Would you say some words about your roots, family background and education?

K.M.: Well, I am American, my father is African-American, my mother is from North Korea who escaped to South Korea with her family when she was very little – so she has quite a story also. My father, who was in the military, in the air force, was serving his tour in South Korea. That is how my parents met and eventually got married. My mother was basically a houswife, a blue collar worker. I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and I am the one of three other siblings. Where I grew up people are really poor. I didn’t have a lot when I grew up, but I had humble beginnings which I am very happy for because they helped me become a hard worker as did my parents. I am married and have three children. As for my education, I have four college degrees, I have an associate specialist master’s and a law degree. I have been a practising attorney for almost ten years now. My main focus has been criminal defense but now it is really litigation. I love court, I love going to court, which is why, part of the reasons why I started going to court here in Afghanistan.

I: Do you enjoy living in Kabul? How long more do you think you will stay in the town? What are your plans and expectations for the future?

K.M.: I like Kabul, I do not know how long I am going to stay here – I have no plans of closing down. When the troops leave, it does not mean I will leave. My plan for the future is to continue to represent our clients in the best way that we think they deserve and need to be represented. To hire more lawyers, train them and menthor them to represent our clients in a way that we think works in Afghanistan. I am actually searching for other countries to practise in to do the same thing in another country but to countinue this office.

Motley Legal is an international law firm and we wish to be more international. We want to spread our legal methods in different countries that are like Afghanistan and represent people. That’s our plan for the future and also to build up the Foundation so we can give more justice and give more to business worldwide. And also, another thing we want to do is to build up our foundation so we can really set a bar for justice and business worldwide, especially in developing countries like Afghanistan.

Interview by Aranka Szávuly and László Bodolai