Afghanistan has a funny way of bringing people together. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Americans and Europeans, both liberal and conservative, rallied to support the invasion and ouster of the Taliban. Last month, Kabul once again managed to briefly unite Western opinion--this time, in outrage over the case of Abdul Rahman, an Afghan put on trial for his life for converting to Christianity.

Research Fellow Vance Serchuk

President Hamid Karzai's government has since dropped the case against Rahman, who promptly fled to Italy, and the story has vanished from the headlines--no doubt to the relief of Kabul and Washington alike.

But for those concerned about Afghanistan, the outcome of the trial provides little cause for comfort. Raising objections to high-profile injustices is all well and good, but the real test is how the Bush administration supports rule of law when the global media are looking elsewhere.

In fact, the trial of Abdul Rahman, abetted by the Islamist hard-liners entrenched in the country's judiciary, was the predictable consequence of American disengagement from Afghanistan.

The story begins in 2002, when the Bush administration--still leery of open-ended nation building commitments--attempted to fob off responsibility for the justice system onto its European allies. Specifically, Washington embraced a plan under which different "lead nations" would each take charge of a separate aspect of Afghan reconstruction. The United States agreed to build the army, while Germany would reconstitute the police, and Italy, the judiciary.

The theory at the time was that assigning ownership of a specific problem to a specific government would ensure accountability. In practice, however, the Italians quickly proved incapable of meeting the colossal fiscal and material needs of the Afghan justice sector, which was mostly nonexistent after 20 years of civil war. This was a job for a superpower--and in the absence of American leadership, reform efforts spluttered.

This neglect is starkly revealed in fiscal terms. According to a recent World Bank study, about 60 percent of international assistance for Afghanistan's security institutions from 2002 to 2005 has been spent on the army, 30 percent on police, and a mere 3 percent on justice. Furthermore, to the extent that Western allies have invested in Afghanistan's legal infrastructure, they have been foremost driven by an interest in combating the country's burgeoning drug trade - not in providing the bread-and-butter improvements in rule of law that ordinary Afghans want.

None of this is to excuse or deny the virulent intolerance of the Islamists who were thirsty for Rahman's blood. But it's important to realize that their influence in the justice system is in part a result of our neglect of it--just as the Afghan army, absent forceful U.S. engagement, would have long ago been hijacked by warlords, Islamists and drug traffickers.

Many armchair analysts suggested at the time of the Rahman trial that it proved the existence of a clash between progressive Western values and medieval Islamic orthodoxies, raising doubts about the Bush administration's vision for implanting liberal institutions in the Muslim world.

Yet the claim that the actions of the Afghan judiciary reveal the collective will of the Afghan people is actually quite flimsy. Opinion polls find Afghans widely dissatisfied with their justice system, citing illiterate and uneducated judges, protracted proceedings, and inconsistent rulings. These same polls, incidentally, find Afghans overwhelmingly positive about the U.S.-built Afghan army, which is seen as a genuinely national, honest, and effective institution.

The next big fight over the Afghan judiciary is likely to concern President Karzai's proposed appointments to the country's Supreme Court, long a bastion of conservatism. Karzai has put up several forward-thinking, moderate nominees, who are already drawing protests from hard-liners in parliament. If confirmed, these new judges will represent a major step forward in developing a professional, competent justice system in Afghanistan. Will Western governments press as strongly today on their behalf as they did for Abdul Rahman a month ago?

In the longer term, rule of law in Afghanistan will depend on Washington partnering with its allies there as aggressively as it has in building the army and, increasingly, police. The West was right to stand up for Abdul Rahman; the question is, will it do the same for the rest of the Afghans?

Vance Serchuk is a research fellow at AEI.