Guns, Goats and Justice in Afghanistan

By Lt. Col. Gregory Day

The local pharmacist assured the soldier that the product was from China, not Pakistan, but the solider didn’t believe him and used a form of nonverbal communication highly valued in their culture: He shot up the store and stormed out in a huff.

Getting His Goat
Over the preceding weeks I’d been teaching the Kandak officers and sergeants about their nonjudicial punishment code, trying to get them to use the rule of law in imposing discipline rather than just beating the daylights out of wrongdoers. It seemed to me that this situation of the soldier and his improvident discharge of a firearm was a good opportunity for the Kandak soldiers to see their fledging military justice system in action.

Persuading the Afghan army to use its own military legal system is harder than one might think. They’ve made some great strides in dealing with tribal and ethnic tensions, but equal opportunity and nondiscrimination are still new concepts to them.

Helpful in changing the cultural paradigms is the fact that we control the operational funds that are designated for the Afghan army’s benefit. We pay for facilities maintenance and improvement, parts and tools, contract work, firewood and a variety of other things. I informed the Kandak commander at the time that if this soldier wasn’t formally charged and an open hearing held to weigh his actions, I would cut off all funds until this was done. That got their attention.

I helped the Kandak commander with the legal forms, went over with him his responsibilities during the hearing, and acted sort of as his judge advocate during the hearing itself. It went extremely well. The soldier was found guilty of violating one of the articles of the nonjudicial punishment code, and the commander imposed 10 days hard labor as punishment, in accordance with their regulations.

At that point, I thought the issue satisfactorily resolved, but then discovered that members of the medical community of the town where the pharmacy incident took place had been deeply offended by the soldier’s conduct, and were threatening to pack up and move to a larger town to the north if "justice" wasn’t done.

I protested that justice had in fact been done, and that the soldier at that moment was scrubbing the kitchen floors down in the Kandak chow hall. But it seems that an important part of local legal tradition had been overlooked in our attempt to see the triumph of the rule of law. In the doctors’ eyes, it wasn’t good enough because, quite simply, the process had failed to include any goats.

You have to realize that this part of Afghanistan is heavily Pashtun, and they still tend to follow a tribal code they call Pashtunwali. Under this code, in a case such as this, when some members of the community had been deeply offended by the soldier’s actions, there needed to be some form of restitution to restore balance to the relationship between the Afghan army and the local community.

The way to do this, I was told, was to get the Kandak commander to give the doctors a goat. I drove down to the livestock pen, where we found an irascible male goat. We wrestled him into the back of the truck, and I took him over to the Kandak. The Kandak commander was highly amused in observing me handling the goat. I’d barely started explaining things to him when he interrupted me and said he completely understood what was required and would take care of it himself. He opined that most likely the doctors would butcher and cook the goat on the spot, inviting the Kandak commander and the security detail to the feast. Or, he added, they would simply give the goat back to him, thanking him for the gesture. I left it to him to take care of the rest of it. I figured that billy goat and I had parted ways for good.

An Unexpected Gift
Right about this time I received reassignment orders to serve as the adviser to the officer responsible for Afghan army operations in the Eastern part of the country, in the area of Tora Bora and Shah-i-kot. After learning this, the Kandak and my team got together to throw a little going-away party. Halfway through it, the senior Afghan and U.S. officers present told me that they had a going-away gift for me. I immediately became suspicious, and with good reason. The door to our little meeting room opened and in came that goat, with a bright, cheerful ribbon and bow around his neck.

It turns out that the doctors didn’t actually want a goat, they just wanted to be given a goat. Once they were given the goat, they magnanimously gave it back, as the Kandak commander had predicted. The Kandak figured that having the goat back tied in well to my leaving. My team members, knowing that Army officers are not generally permitted to travel or conduct operations with a live goat (nor a dead one, for that matter), of course told the Kandak that a goat would be an ideal going-away gift for me.

I explained to everyone that though I much appreciated the goat, I was moving and didn’t have any place to keep a goat. Besides, it was a seven-hour ride over rutted tracks, and I really didn’t have any way to transport it. My interpreter whispered to me that refusing the goat would be offensive, but he was smiling as he said it.

My solution to this was to accept the goat but ask them to keep it for me. Maybe, I suggested, we could have a barbecue the next time I got back down here. All smiled and nodded their heads, and I figured I’d dodged that one.

The next morning all my gear was loaded on a truck. I looked over at the lorry with the gear in it, and a couple of Afghan soldiers were tying my goat to the side rail next to my luggage. Our S.P. (start point) was in about five minutes, so I had to accept the inevitable and take my goat. All the way up I worried about what I was going to do with that goat, and how I was going to explain it to my new boss up there. When we arrived, I told the sergeant in charge of billeting that I had three duffel bags, a toughbox, a rucksack, an assault pack - and a goat.

So, within a few minutes, everybody wanted to see my goat, take pictures of it, and make some sort of smart-alecky comment about it to me. This was not exactly the first impression I’d wanted to make, but it was out of my hands at that point. The lieutenant colonel I was replacing was particularly tickled by it, and despite all the "teamwork" ethos we’re supposed to have, neither he nor anyone seemed interested in helping me out with it. Instead, they appeared to enjoy watching to see what I would end up doing with my goat.

In a flash of brilliance it occurred to me that if the goat was an acceptable going-away present to me, then perhaps it would be just as acceptable a welcome gift to my new counterpart. I got the interpreters to keep the goat for me that night, and the next morning I held up traffic loading my goat into a borrowed truck. Luckily one of the gate guards was a ranch hand from Oklahoma, and he got the kicking, squirming thing up into the truck and tied down for me.

I introduced myself to my new counterpart, and told him I had a gift for him. He seemed pleased but somewhat confused at the gift. I very much doubt that any Americans he’d previously worked with had ever given him a goat. He had one of his sergeants come and get the goat, and I was relieved to finally have the thing off my hands.

This has been quite an adventure so far. The majority of Afghans I’ve encountered are friendly and supportive of coalition efforts to stabilize their country. Most of them just want normality and the opportunity to make a decent life for themselves and their families. Despite the somewhat desperate efforts of the insurgents shown in the news, you really can see progress being made here, with local citizens increasingly participating in and supporting their own governance.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gregory Day is a partner in the firm Davis, Adams, Freudenberg, Day & Galli in Grants Pass. At the time he wrote this account in March, he was on his way to Italy to meet his wife, Linda, for his mid-tour leave.

Published in the Oregon State Bar Journal

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