Florida lawyer works to bring the rule of law to Afghanistan.

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For a rule of law attorney assisting young democracies around the world, promoting transparency in government is widely considered the hallmark of our practice. Last month, I returned from a six-month deployment as a rule of law attorney with the U.S. Army JAG Corp in Afghanistan. During that time, my fellow Army reserve attorneys and I sought to root out corruption and assist our Afghan partners in implementing a transparent government that would earn the trust of the citizens of that country. This was my second deployment as a judge advocate in two years, my first being to Iraq, and this experience as a rule of law practitioner, like my previous assignment, was quite rewarding. At the end of the day, I am confident that we truly made a difference with assisting another fledgling government improve stability and acceptance by its citizens.

While in Afghanistan, I had the opportunity to work with some very brave judges, prosecutors, and police officers who sought to bring democratic justice to a country that otherwise had not known that sort of fairness. Specifically, the team of reservists with whom I deployed helped to implement better processing procedures in order to ensure the protection of citizens' rights. This ultimately meant those citizens would have confidence that the government was not out to harm them. We sought to help our Afghan counterparts implement the use of science in an effort to safeguard individual rights.

Biometric verification equipment, similar to fingerprint analysis, was an important science-based system that we promoted to our Afghan counterparts. In America, we have learned that scientific identification is often better than eyewitness accounts. This equipment would help Afghan authorities to identify criminal suspects in a manner much more reliable than human identification. Our goal is to establish a fairer system with less room for bias in the justice process.

My time in Iraq was actually quite similar to that in Afghanistan in that I worked with local, provincial, and state justice actors to ensure that citizens' process rights remained at the forefront of all justice activity. In both countries, we helped underrepresented populations gain a voice in their nation's future, while assisting governments in earning the confidence of the citizenry. An important point that I observed in both countries is that stability and citizens' confidence are key to a functional government. That means...