Friday, August 16, 2013

Former American beauty queen working as lawyer in Afghanistan...

Americans are often accused of being homebound and uninterested in the world—and many Americans certainly are. It’s a quality that gets us into a lot of trouble. (George W. Bush, who got us into more than a little, did not even have a valid passport when elected president in 2000.) Still, travel to any far corner of the world, and you’ll stumble upon an American. There are adventurers aplenty among us. Take Kimberley Motley, a 38-year-old American lawyer I met in Kabul last fall. She has carved out quite an unusual career for herself. A recent e-mail makes that quite clear: “My day consisted of being the only woman—let alone a non-incarcerated international woman—in Pul-e-Charkhi Prison in Afghanistan during a violent prison riot, while trying to fight for the release of my South African drug-dealer client. The prison was locked down, 23 guards ran by in full riot gear, but I got locked into the Commander’s Office with 5 prison guards comfortably watching Elmo do his thing on Sesame Street on Tolo TV. You can’t make this shit up.”

No, you can’t.

Kimberly Motley, who hails from Milwaukee, is the daughter of a North Korean mother and an African American father. This unusual pedigree—and the way it shapes her features and her outlook—has served her very well in Afghanistan. Motley is a lawyer, a mother of two young children, and a former beauty queen (Mrs. Wisconsin, in fact). Right now she’s the only foreign litigator in all of Afghanistan, having started her own law firm there, Motley Legal Services. She hung out her shingle after sensing an opportunity few mortals would have noticed: defending Westerners accused of criminal offenses in Afghanistan.

Tall and beautiful, Motley has the air of a very determined woman. I first saw her at a party and asked a friend who she was. “Oh, that’s 911,” the friend said. “That’s what we call her. If you get arrested in Afghanistan, you just call 911 and she’ll get you out.” She has successfully defended many a foreigner charged with murder, robbery, drug dealing, fraud, and other crimes. Who knew so many Westerners were coming to Afghanistan and getting into these kinds of predicaments? (Actually, I knew. The criminal set seems to fit in well there.) Full story...

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