INEFFECTIVE, UNPROFESSIONAL, AND CORRUPT:

Andrew Legon

"Going forward, we will not blindly stay the course" were
the stirring words President Obama used to unveil his new
Afghanistan strategy on March 27. The sentiment should have
been much welcomed, both in Afghanistan and elsewhere
abroad. Eight years after the U.S. launched Operation
Enduring Freedom, its own intelligence agencies have
concluded that Afghanistan is caught in a downward spiral,
confronted by warlordism, a weak and corrupt government, a
resurgent Taliban, and a narco-dominated economy.
Afghanistan's last ranking on the UN's Human Development
Index was a derisory 174th out of roughly 180 countries. Overlooked but at the heart of both the problem and the
solution is policing. Security is essential for
socioeconomic development, while upholding the rule of law
and contributing to the provision of justice engenders faith
and legitimacy in national government institutions. It was
therefore positive that Obama stressed the centrality of the
Afghan National Police (ANP) to the war effort. Nonetheless,
Obama's "new" strategy, far from going forward, is actually
looking back.

STATE OF PLAY
America's involvement with the ANP began in 2003. To date
roughly $6.2 billion has been provided to train and equip
it, but it is still widely perceived that the police are, in
the words of U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan and
Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, "the weak link in the security
chain," lagging years behind development of the Afghan
National Army. Only scant knowledge of the ANP is necessary
to cause deep pessimism.

It is not that efforts to improve the ANP's performance have
had no success. Infrastructure has been built and equipment
provided. Police academies have been established in Kabul
and in all of Afghanistan's main provinces. Between 2003 and
2008 roughly 149,000 trainees have passed through their
doors. Reports suggest that there is no shortage of fresh
recruits.[1] Meanwhile, the Focused District Development
(FDD) program from Combined Security Transition Command
Afghanistan (CSTC-A) has gained widespread praise. So far
more than 3,000 Afghans have graduated from the program,
which offers eight weeks of training in a variety of police
and counterinsurgency areas. Measures to tackle endemic
corruption within the police include having registered
76,000 police and issued 47,000 identification cards.
Furthermore, an electronic system to pay police salaries has
been initiated in all 34 provinces to combat pay-centered
corruption.

Achievements such as these should not be taken lightly
considering Afghanistan's turbulent recent history, which
destroyed almost all of the progress made towards a national
civilian police force during the 1970s. But success should
also not be overstated. Pay-centered anticorruption methods
founder against an inadequate banking infrastructure.
Likewise, by early 2009, a mere 52 of 365 police districts
had successfully completed the FDD program. CSTC-A has
warned that its training camps are operating at maximum
capacity. Lastly, how many boots are actually "on the
ground"? Definite figures are impossible to ascertain and
estimates vary widely, from as low as 35,000 by the UN to
claims by Afghan government officials that the ANP have
attained 99 percent strength.[2]

Wrangling over the percentage of police trained or recruited
reveals that the international discourse surrounding efforts
to improve the ANP are confined by numbers. This approach is
a poor way to measure the success or failure of attempts to
build an effective police force. Confusing outputs with
outcomes tells observers little of the quality of the police
or their effectiveness in tackling everyday crime. Masked
from view are the many problems that continue to plague the
ANP.

INHERENT FAILINGS
The efforts of many honest and effective Afghan police
should not be ignored, and one cannot overstate the bravery
of those who choose policing in an environment of acute and
ever-present danger. Nevertheless, the ANP as a collective
is riddled with problems starting with illiteracy, levels of
which are currently estimated at 65 percent of the male
population. This fundamental problem restricts the quality
of recruits, the effectiveness of police training, and even
their ability to write reports and record critical
information.

It is little wonder, then, that the ANP is regularly deemed
ineffective, a problem exacerbated by its members' role as
quasi-soldiers rather than civilian police officers. The ANP
has the immense challenge of switching between policing
duties and supporting full-scale military operations with
very little notice. Conversely, too much police time is
wasted on non-core duties such as road construction and
maintenance. This may be why the public complains that the
police are lazy and remiss in their duties, with calls to
the emergency 119 number often going unanswered. This
conduct is undoubtedly compounded by narcotic use; British
officials estimate that 60 percent of the ANP in Helmand use
drugs.

More serious than charges of unprofessionalism, however, the
ANP are never far from accusations that they habitually
abuse their power, using torture as a means of evidence
collection and shaking down houses "like criminals" during
home searches.[3] In September, a reporter from the
Washington Independent watched as Afghan police in Paktia
province attempted to exploit a joint U.S.-Afghan raid on a
suspected Taliban safehouse in order to rob the
inhabitants.[4]

Despite efforts to tackle corruption, the ANP is shot
through with graft, a problem some American officers have
argued is "a bigger threat to the stability of the Afghan
government than the Taliban."[5] Bribes determine everything
from recruitment to assignments and promotion prospects.
Payoffs are extracted not only from criminals, drug runners
and Taliban, but also the general public, shopkeepers, and
even the victims of crime whom the ANP are meant to be
protecting.[6] Corruption is such a lucrative growth
industry on Afghanistan's highways that reports suggest
police posts along major transport routes such as Balu Beluk
can be sold for $200,000. Newspaper headlines that suggest
Afghan truckers seek a return of the Taliban to end
corruption may be media hyperbole,[7] but a 2007 strike over
increased taxes and roadside extortion by those transporting
goods along Afghanistan's highways is indicative of deeply
troubling developments. Little wonder that widespread
sentiment views the ANP as thieves in official uniform. In
some instances this is literally the case; a doctor from
Ghazni related an incident on the Ghazni Highway during
which a bus was robbed by men dressed as Taliban.
Subsequently it was discovered that "it was the entire
police of that area." Such corruption is detrimental to the
reputation not only of the police, but of the central
government more broadly, as the police are one of the most
public faces of the state.

Consequently, in June 2008, a U.S. Government Accountability
Office (GAO) study reported that not one Afghan police unit
out of 433 was assessed by the Department Defense as fully
capable of performing its mission; over three-fourths of
them were assessed at the lowest capability rating.[8]
Clearly a new approach to the ANP is long overdue.

OBAMA'S NEW STRATEGY OR NON-STRATEGY?
Given the new course charted by Obama's administration on
many U.S. foreign policy issues, recent expectations that
strategy in Afghanistan would be fundamentally reoriented
can be forgiven. Afghanistan's rise up the policy agenda is
undeniably welcome after so long in the shadow of the Bush
administration's Iraq distraction. In the 2008 fiscal year,
for example, despite Afghanistan's continuing downward
spiral, the U.S. financed its Iraq operations to the tune of
$10.9 billion per month, compared to only $2.7 billion a
month for Afghanistan. The refocusing of political,
military, and diplomatic energy towards the country will
likely stem the downward trend and regain lost initiative.
Likewise the ANP are receiving greater attention. "This is a
sector of Afghan security forces" said President Karzai in
June last year, "which received attention quite late."[9]
Added determination and focus, however, does not a new
strategy make. The main contours of Obama's strategy for the
Afghan police are depressingly similar to those of his
predecessor.

Most superficially, this is expressed in Obama's announced
plan to build an Afghan police force of 82,000. This
represents no increase in the overall number of police. This
benchmark was authorized by the Joint Coordination and
Monitoring Board back in April 2007 and, if Afghan officials
are correct, is already close to being met. Likewise,
Obama's announcement was disingenuous in claiming that
efforts will be accelerated to build this force by 2011.
Expressing puzzlement at the announcement, Afghan Defense
Minister General Abdul Wardak argued that in both numbers
and pacing, the strategy represented nothing new.

General Wardak need not have worried; on April 19, Interior
Minister Hanif Atmar announced that the Board had agreed
upon an interim increase of the ANP by 15,000 ahead of the
country's August presidential election. The results of a
Board study to increase the force still further are expected
this month. "Our initial calculation is that it should be at
least double the size of the current police force," Atmar
said. Such increases match with the general thrust of
Obama's policy. Additional expansion of Afghan forces, he
argued, "may very well be needed as our plans to turn over
security responsibility to the Afghans go forward." At a
more fundamental level than sheer numbers, therefore, the
focus on specific figures in Obama's announcement
demonstrates a continued US obsession with ANP capacity-
building rather the more complex job of reform.

This flawed approach was recently criticized by the Police
Mentoring Team leader for Arghandab, who stated that the key
"is having a detailed, well thought-out plan, not just
throwing numbers at the problem." Beyond the figures,
however, U.S. policy remains focused on resourcing and
training the ANP, with the imminent deployment of 4,000
extra trainers. But has this been given sufficient thought?
ANP training is poor, the bare minimum believed necessary.
Patrolmen receive just eight weeks training. Meanwhile,
police officers higher up the rank structure have had their
training reduced from one year to just 4-1/2 months. Under
the Bush administration, police effectiveness and
professionalism were sacrificed for the sake of speed. There
is little to indicate any change under the new strategy.
According to Admiral Mike Mullen, the 4,000 trainers are
"absolutely at the heart of being able to do that [increase
the army and police] as rapidly as possible."[10] Said
Jawad, Afghanistan's ambassador to the U.S., is likely to be
disappointed; when asked recently if the ANP's training
program required starting again from scratch, the
ambassador's reply was a resounding "yes."[11]

Closely related to the issue of training, the curriculum of
which has been criticized as overly militaristic, is the
question of what precisely the police are being trained for.
As mentioned above, the ANP are little more than a
supplement to the ANA, ill-equipped and poorly trained for
the paramilitary role they have been assigned. It is clear
that the new Af-Pak strategy fails to reorient the utility
of the police. In Obama's strategic plan, the ANP are often
subsumed within the term "Afghan National Security Forces,"
a semantic maneuver blurring the distinction between the
police and military. Coupled with the strategy's objective
to develop these forces so that they can "lead the
counterinsurgency and counterterrorism fight," it is
apparent that Obama intends to continue his predecessor's
use of the ANP as a paramilitary force.

In short, the new strategy continues the U.S. approach of
concentrating on the recruitment, training and equipping of
a police force that is misused to fight the growing
insurgency confronting Afghanistan, rather than to stabilize
and secure Afghan society.

A COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY FOR THE ANP
Obama introduced the Af-Pak policy as "a comprehensive, new
strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan." But in terms of the
ANP, there exists a yawning gap between official rhetoric
and government policy. Capacity-building should not be
equated with police reform; it is the latter which is so
desperately needed in Afghanistan. Although reform would
entail a myriad of different issues and necessary policies,
a comprehensive plan for the ANP would at a minimum need to
consider three essential factors.

The Politics of Police Reform. Long-term institutional
change is a fundamental requirement of ANP reform. At a
basic level this includes anticorruption measures,
accountability mechanisms and so forth. But discussion of
such changes is merely academic within the dysfunctional
institutional environment of the Ministry of Interior. The
centrality of the Ministry reform in efforts to build an
effective, professional ANP has long been identified. Yet
for too long the issue of institutional reform has not been
high enough on the agenda of the U.S. and other
international actors. A recent GAO report stressed that the
Ministry continues to suffer from "numerous organizational
deficiencies." Limited control over provincial police
structures, with some police forces acting as militias whose
allegiance belongs to local strongmen, means centrally
directed reforms often fail to filter down to the local
level. However, this implies that reforms have been readily
forthcoming--but low institutional capacity afflicts the
Ministry at every level. The International Crisis Group
recently concluded that "operational reform has often
preceded the formation of policies that make up the
foundation of policing."[12] Belated measures to address
Ministry weaknesses have been forthcoming--for example,
efforts to mentor senior ministry officials--but problems
remain, in particular, levels of corruption and nepotism
which infect the ministry from top to bottom.

Being Policemen, Not Soldiers. No amount of reform,
institutional or otherwise, will make a difference to the
Afghan population if the police are tasked as cannon fodder
for the insurgency. President Obama was right when he said
that the "campaign against extremism will not succeed with
bullets or bombs alone." Policing is one of the most
effective counterinsurgency tools, but not in the way
currently conceptualized by the U.S. effort in Afghanistan.
The potential contribution of the ANP to counterinsurgency
efforts stems less from tasking them as military
auxiliaries, and more with their law enforcement and
policing duties. Building connections to the communities
they are supposed to serve would boost intelligence
capabilities. Moreover, crime has undermined public support
for, and the legitimacy of, the central state. As one former
Afghan general noted, "the police are the reflection mirror
of the government, in which the general public judges the
entire system." The Taliban know this, and herein lies the
reason for the wave of insurgent attacks that have claimed
the lives of 1,500 police last year. The ANP therefore need
to be tasked with policing duties first and foremost,
securing the public against general criminality and
lawlessness. Indeed a recent BBC/ Royal United Services
Institute (RUSI) poll found that only 11 percent of Afghans
rated the Taliban as their most serious problem. Afghan
police reform must be driven by the needs and desires of the
Afghan population, not the dictates of U.S. foreign policy;
intuitive though this may be, it nevertheless bears
repeating.

Strengthening the Judicial Counterpar. Lastly, reform of the
ANP must occur concurrently with reform of the criminal
justice sector. The link between police effectiveness and
the consistent application of the rule of law is a
frequently repeated lesson from previous reform missions.
This academic consensus is so great that security sector
reform is increasingly eclipsed by a new acronym, SJSR,
standing for Security and Justice Sector Reform.[13] And for
good reasons: public safety is provided by a complex and
interrelated system of agencies, from prosecutors and judges
to prisons and rehabilitation officers. The police cannot
adequately maintain law and order until a society's justice
system is reestablished. Reform of one without the other is
doomed to fail.

Following the intervention in Afghanistan, a myopic focus on
expanding police capacity soon overwhelmed the justice
system, which has suffered from a lack of resources,
commitment and reform even more than the police. As late as
last year, 40 percent of judges lacked practical induction,
and 80 percent of provincial prosecutors had no university
qualifications. The formal system remains painfully slow and
inefficient. Many arrested by the police never go to trial.
In Gereshk Helmand province, for example, only two to three
criminal cases are lodged with the court every month. Few of
the accused are ever convicted. Even then, endemic
corruption cripples the system's ability to provide a
modicum of justice. In a recent article for the RUSI in
London, Frank Ledwidge, former Justice Adviser to the UK PRT
in Helmand, highlighted the example of a state court that
sentenced a murderer to only six months in prison after the
murderer's family greased the judge's palm.

Again, there are some encouraging signs. Under the FDD
program, judges and prosecutors within reform districts
receive targeted training. Rule of law infrastructure has
been built. But such capacity-building measures must be
complimented by institutional change. At the recent
trilateral summit between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the
U.S., Obama made reference to justice sector reform. But
there was little of note in Obama's new strategy. Instead of
linking the police with the criminal justice system, the
police were tied rhetorically to the military. A robust,
coordinated approach to the justice sector interlinked with
police reform must be a top administration priority.

Central to this effort must be discussion of the elephant in
the room: Afghanistan's rule of law. Many Afghans live at a
geographic and cultural distance from urban-based formal
justice systems. The UNDP's Afghanistan Human Development
Report 2007 is fronted by an image meant to signify that 80
percent of disputes are solved by local, informal systems of
justice. In Helmand, progress has been made supporting this
informal justice architecture, deeply rooted in the culture
and history of Afghanistan. Prisoner review shuras, for
example, are local Afghan-led mechanisms which help prevent
excessive prisoner detention, and ensure the release of
prisoners with no evidence against them. Established in Musa
Qala, Sangin and Nad-e-Ali so far, they are also integrated
into the formal justice sector, with serious cases
transferred to Lashkar Gah and the central rule of law
system. This system could provide a useful model of reform
for the rule of law sector in Afghanistan more broadly.

CONCLUSION
Although nascent, efforts in the Helmand rule of law sector
are the kind of radical thinking needed to build and reform
the Afghan National Police. This has not been the case for
American efforts. Even a focus on accepted and well-tested
police reform measures, including institutional
restructuring or strong accountability mechanisms, could
have justified the description of Obama's strategy as "new."
In many ways Obama's first 100 days in office s shifted the
political terrain of American and global politics; all the
more disappointing, then, that his approach towards the ANP
draws so heavily on the policies which his predecessor
implemented--policies that have demonstrably failed. An
effective, professional police force is crucial for the
stability of Afghanistan. The space for meaningful reform to
achieve this, however, is fast diminishing; the recent
BBC/RUSI poll suggests support for the Karzai government is
waning, currently just reaching 55 percent compared to 78
percent in 2006. To regain the initiative, Obama must take
his own advice: it is "going forward" rather than "blindly
staying the course" that will bring about the required
change in the Afghan National Police.

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Notes

[1] "Ranks of civilian police mentors doubled to speed
training of Afghan police," The Canadian Press, 4 December
2008

[2] "Afghan Defense Chief Unhappy with Obama Plan," Council
on Foreign Relations Interview, 16 April 2009,
http://www.cfr.org/publication/19116/afghan_defense_chief_unhappy_with_obama_plan.html

[3] "U.S. Troops Face a Tangle of Goals in Afghanistan,"
Washington Post, 8 March 2009

[4] "Afghan Police Corruption Stymies U.S. Weapons Hunt,"
Washington Independent, 16 September 2008

[5] "Corruption Undercuts Hopes for Afghan Police," New York
Times, 8 April 2009

[6] Interview conducted by RUSI with a former Afghan police
colonel and professor at the Kabul Police Academy.

[7] "Bring Back Taliban to End Police Corruption," The
Independent, 10 May 2007

[8] "Afghanistan Security: U.S. Efforts to Develop Capable
Afghan Police Forces Face Challenges and Need a Coordinated,
Detailed Plan to Help Ensure Accountability,"
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-883T

[9] "Afghanistan's Future threatened by Poor Police,"
Bloomberg, 10 June 2008

[10] "Trainers Critical to Obama's New Afghan-Pakistan Plan,
Mullen Says," DefenseLink, March 27, 2009.

[11] "Afghanistan, Pakistan Ambassadors Criticize Obama
Strategy," Washington Independent, April 10, 2009

[12] International Crisis Group, "Policing in Afghanistan:
Still Searching for a Strategy," December 2008, p. 7.

[13] DFID Evaluation Working Paper 23, "Security and Justice
Sector Reform Programming in Africa," 2007.
www.fpri.org