Afghanistan

  Historically, Afghan armies have fragmented under pressure, their soldiers deserting with their weapons to defend their homes alongside their kin. Afghan soldiers fought, but not as an army, against the British in the Second Afghanistan War and against the Soviets after their 1979 invasion, but rather as part of a people in arms, with little or no national or central command or direction. The challenge for the ANA is to quickly create a force that will not fragment if faced with the challenge of assuming the primary security responsibility for Afghanistan. This is likely to require more competent Afghan leaders, more coalition trainers, more resources, and more time than current US and coalition plans project.

  Rapid expansion has the potential to undermine ANA capability and so it must be done with care. Counter-insurgency is a war of low-level command, not a few highly professional generals. The Soviets found that, in Afghanistan, the professionalism of their generals mattered less than the inadequacies of their captains, lieutenants, and NCOs. Rapid ANA expansion has stretched the limited supply of these critical Afghan leaders thin indeed. Insistence on ethnic quotas, while important in many other ways, and age limits that keep out most veterans of the war against the Soviets and even the civil wars in ground combat units (the Air Corps is still made of primarily of Soviet-trained aircrew), have reduced the combat leadership pool still further. A reliance on a professional NCO corps on the model of the US and UK armed forces has been difficult to introduce. As in so many other areas, competent Afghans tend to be hired away by NGOs or contractors that can pay much higher salaries and gives them employment away from insurgent landmines and ambushes.

  At the unit level, the combination of the Soviet-era distrust of initiative and the traditional Afghan reluctance to accept individual responsibility has hindered the emergence of functional leadership. These same factors undercut all Afghan organizations and the ANSF, with the help of its coalition trainers and advisors, has done more than any other to overcome them, but they still remain strong. This has prevented them from having true “ownership” of the security situation even when they have taken the military responsibility, as in Kabul, and allowed them to continue to avoid accepting responsibility for the circumstances in their own country. This last especially applies to the ANA’s leaders. Only if their honor (and that of their kin) is at stake will they not be fighting a “limited liability” war against an enemy that respects no such limits. Threatening to disengage and leave them to face the enemy alone is no answer—it did not work for the Soviets—but a long-term commitment to Afghanistan is only going to be credible if it becomes apparent that the Afghans rather than foreigners can and will be able to handle the bulk of the conflict.

  But there is no substitute for the ANA, despite its many problems and lack of readily implementable solutions. The Afghan people will engage with and support the ANA in a way they will never do with coalition forces. Villages turn out to welcome ANA patrols. Just the proximity of the ANA to many villages—that there is an outpost flying the national flag and that Afghan-led reinforcements are nearby—has encouraged Afghans and given them hope to resist the insurgents in many areas. The ANA’s progress, however limited, provides Afghans with an example that other government institutions may be able to follow, showing the potential for Afghans to achieve the capability to provide security in a stable, independent nation.

  The Afghan National Police

  In decades before Afghanistan was plunged into conflict in 1978, the average rural Afghan did not interact with the police. The police force was only there to safeguard state power, government officials, and tax collectors, rather than involve itself in the lives of Afghans or maintain security. Tribal decision-making could be enforced by a temporary arbaki, a posse of armed tribesmen embodied to enforce a specific judgment. The major cities had small well-disciplined police forces, many trained by Europeans. A national gendarmerie provided paramilitary security. The Afghan Communists, following the lead of similar regimes worldwide, created large security police forces, which were trained and supported by the Soviets. When they held state power, the Taliban had nominal police forces, especially in cities where their legitimacy was weakest. This force was resented, even by the Taliban supporters, discouraging an already weak tradition of civil policing now tainted by an association with state repression.

  After the defeat of the Taliban, police reform was not a high priority. The Bonn agreement made the Afghans responsible for maintaining security. The UN “light footprint” approach to reconstruction meant there that it was not involved in police reform. In 2002, Germany assumed the role of “lead nation” in law enforcement training, but they concentrated on thoroughly training a few officers for civilian police duties, on their pre-1978 model, rather than creating a force able to deal with insurgents and narcotics. This led to the US Department of Defense to start providing its own police training in 2003. By this time, the police had emerged as a major problem in Afghanistan’s security. The rise of narcotics cultivation provided ample scope for bribery. Kabul’s inability to pay local police led to widespread desertions and the practice of extorting payments from local inhabitants. Many policemen were illiterate and untrained, appointed by local officials or warlords to whom they owed loyalty. Then, the emerging insurgency thrust this force into the front lines of a conflict it was never intended to fight.

  Today, the Afghan National Police (ANP) is subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior and includes the Afghan Uniformed Police (AUP) which constitutes the bulk of its personnel, Afghan National Civil Order Police (ANCOP), Afghan Border Police (ABP), and the Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan (CNPA). There are also smaller specialized ANP organizations including the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) and Counter Terrorism Police (CTP).559 The Afghanistan Special Narcotics Force is a paramilitary organization that reports directly to the Minister of the Interior. Operationally, the ANP are organized in six regions—Kabul, North, Central, South, West, and East—and are centrally commanded, so provincial and district police chiefs report up the chain of command to the Minister of the Interior rather than being responsible to their local provincial or district governor or to ANA commands.

  Policing was one of the largest failures of the security effort post-2001. In much of Afghanistan, the police failed to provide security but carried out repressive and extractive behavior, especially but not exclusively in the south. The formation of the ANP has been aimed to address these failings. “The ANP is the face of government, still corrupt, a few years back from the ANA” said BG Marquis Hainse, CF, in 2008.560 “The ANP needs a significant amount of work. It is the front line of government with the people” said US MG Mark Milley in 2008.561 Mohammed Hanif Atmar, Afghanistan’s minister of the interior, agreed, in 2009, “The ANP is supposed to get to grips with terrorism, criminality, and narcotics, but is not up to the job.”562 Since the ANA cannot be everywhere, a responsible, honest, and respected police force is needed to achieve domestic peace. While many developing countries have failed to achieve this goal, seldom has the shortfall been as dramatic and as important for national survival as in Afghanistan.

  The ANP was 76,000 strong in November 2008, and by 2009 there were 82,000 ANP personnel—scheduled to grow to 93,000—divided into approximately 500 units. This personnel ceiling represents an arbitrary limit; Iran has some four times the number of police per capita. The ANP’s personnel strength includes an estimated 20 percent that are absentees or are “ghost” policemen who are paid but never report for duty, according to Atmar.563 In 2009, GEN McChrystal urged that the target strength of the ANP be raised to 160,000, although recruiting new officers was likely to prove difficult given the forces’ low pay and poor equipment and the intensity of the combat they are often committed to.564

  Training and reform have been slow, making growth difficult. Because they are in the front lines of the insurgency, “the ANP spends lots of time fighting, not providing police functions,” according to Ben Rowswell, former DCM of the Canadian embassy in K
abul.565 This also does little to encourage more young men, and a few young women, to join the force.

  The US has implemented the Focused District Development (FDD) program in which the AUP is moved out of an entire district for two months of intensive collective training by US military and civilian personnel while ANCOP units move into their district to provide law enforcement in their absence. The FDD takes the AUP out of their home environment to identify and disrupt corrupt preexisting networks and subjects them to the scrutiny of their trainers, who can dismiss policemen that are incompetent. The district’s judicial and legal personnel also receive intense training by US civilian personnel at the same time, with the objective of creating a functional civil justice system. After this training, the AUP are returned to their home district, with an embedded US training team. The program started in January 2008, with a target of 48 districts’ AUP going through the program each year. By April 2009, 52 districts’ AUP had received FDD. The initial districts selected were ones that had experienced problems with the AUP, followed by those near main roads in the south and east. Success has been mixed but limited, especially in the south, while there have been observable improvements in districts where the ANP has gone through FDD, the amount of training has often proved inadequate to compensate for initial shortfalls, and the scarce training resources available have constrained needed follow-up training.566

  ANP morale remains problematic. They operate alongside the better equipped and paid ANA and do not receive the same respect from the population. The burden of ANP training has fallen on the US military’s Police Mentoring Teams (PMTs), supplemented by Canadian and Netherlands P-OMLTS, limited in numbers. Other countries, such as the UK, conduct police training through their PRTs or bilateral programs. PMTs originally were not intended to deploy on operations with the ANP, but have been doing so, in order to function as advisors. Interior Minister Atmar said: “In terms of training aid to the ANP, we have received only 30 percent of what we have planned for. With additional support, we can do training in two to three years, not five to ten.”567 The ANP’s training program has not been as thorough or as well funded as that of the ANA. This is an area where additional commitments of trainers and resources can make a difference, but insisting that Afghans rely on the police rather than their kin and neighbors in arms for security is likely to continue to be a difficult goal to implement.

  The European Community EUPOL police training effort, undercut by a shortage of trainers and resources, concentrates on providing the additional training ANCOP will require for their more difficult missions.568 Some ISAF members, including Canada (using the Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and the Netherlands (using the Marechaussee), have separate bilateral police training programs, as police training, like counter-terrorism, is not within ISAF’s mission statement and so is done by its members outside of ISAF. NATO has plans to implement a police training program in Afghanistan, financed by the US, in 2010. But these programs together still do not amount to what Atmar has identified as required to meet the needs of the ANP.

  The ANP’s Afghan National Civil Order Police (ANCOP) are “like the [Italian] Carabineri,” according to MG Milley.569 They had 14 operational battalions in April 2009 and want to have 5,400 police in 20 battalions by 2011. It was formed after the ANP proved ineffective in dealing with rioting in Kabul in May 2006. Its urban battalions have an anti-riot mission as well as special weapons and tactics (SWAT) teams. Other ANCOP battalions serve in rural areas as a backup for the AUP, including filling in when they leave their home districts for FDD. ANCOP units receive more extensive training than the AUP. They are the first ANP units to receive US-provided body armor and uparmored HMMWV light trucks.

  The Afghan Border Police (ABP), according to MG Milley, was, in 2008, “in bad shape and need[ed] radical improvement,” especially as insurgent infiltration and narcotics trafficking alike make border security important.570 In Kandahar province, the local Border Police were formed from an Achakzai tribal militia and for years had been more interested in armed tribal politics and extracting revenue at checkpoints than dealing with the insurgents.571 As a result, in 2007, CSTC-A allocated more resources to ABP training, but the shortage of PMT resources has limited improvement. An upgraded US-run Focused Border Development (FBD) training program for the ABP was put in place in 2008. Two cycles, producing 20 trained companies, were completed by April 2009, and by autumn its graduates were operating in the field alongside US forces.572 The ABP have also received additional weapons, vehicles, and equipment.

  Yet for all its failings, the ANP is still the front line force against the insurgency. Unlike the ANA, the police do not operate in tactical units but in small groups, from a handful to a few dozen, often based in unfortified police stations. Not only do they suffer higher casualties due to their proximity and vulnerability to the insurgents, but they have less equipment and funding to start with. The police are armed with old Kalashnikovs and receive little ammunition. Their vehicles, when they have them, are US aid—provided pickup trucks, not tactical vehicles, and they are often unable to use what vehicles they do have due to lack of fuel. Unlike the ANA, the ANP does not receive body armor or even basic field equipment such as stretchers.

  Yet even the old, unreformed police, too often corrupt or extractive, unpaid and underarmed, would often behave heroically. The police were driven from Maiwand District in Kandahar Province in 2006 only after prolonged unsupported resistance against guerrilla groups. A quarter of this 60-man force was killed in action all while the local district leadership cut a deal with the Taliban in the end.573 In the first six months of 2008 alone, the ANP had 700 personnel killed in action. LTCOL Malalai Kakar, one of the highest ranking of the few hundred female personnel in the ANP, was assassinated by the Taliban in Kandahar in September 2008.574 From January 2007 to April 2009, the ANP suffered more than 180 percent of the combat deaths of ISAF and the ANA combined.575 Interior minister Mohammed Hanif Atmar said, of ANP casualties, “Corruption and lack of training in the ANP is a liability, but they are willing to die for Afghanistan every day, four to six people. That is their greatest asset.”576

  Interior Minister Mohammed Hanif Atmar has pointed to several instances of success by his police forces: “The 13 February 2009 terror attack on the Ministry of Justice was a failure. The ANP handled the attack in three hours where a similar situation lasted two days in Mumbai.”577 The “shape-clear-hold-build” operational approach of US forces in 2008–09 made additional use of the ANP as the interface between the military and the civilian population they were supposed to protect from the insurgents.

  Afghan Self-Defense

  By 2008, it was apparent that there was a need to enlist local Afghans to defend themselves and their homes against the insurgency. The local population is a strength of Afghanistan, while the central government has proven ineffective. Foreign military presence is costly and is going to be reduced in the long term. To counter an insurgent threat that can potentially endure indefinitely requires a force that is able to operate just as long. Local Afghans may carry with them local rivalries and resentments, but they know the territory and the people, speak the language and respect the customs, as former Assistant Secretary of Defense Tom Mahnken noted that “[local] Partners understand more than we could—no rotation.”578 US Central Command combatant commander GEN David Petraeus said that effective action in the coming years “will require local defense initiatives and community defense initiatives. We have a keen interest in fostering this.”579 Yet despite the reality that Afghans have been defending themselves for century, Kabul and the coalition have had problems with employing this strength effectively in Afghanistan’s conflicts.

  Previous attempts to create self-defense forces by enlisting former anti-Taliban fighting men, who were often, especially in Pushtun areas, pro-Taliban militia members until just before the end, had some success, especially when partnered by US Special Forces units. But these forces often ended up badly, disintegrating or turn
ing against neighboring groups or the local population. These “private militias” had no claim on state money and had to fund themselves locally, and thus were extremely vulnerable to corruption or carrying out crimes. These groups were seen as being more concerned with extracting revenue for themselves and doing their local patrons’ bidding (which often included land grabs) than effectively combating the insurgents or protecting the local populations. In non-Pushtun areas, without the threat by insurgents, the Taliban background, and the tribal divisions, such groups had less opportunity or motivation to create their own security problems and so were more likely to keep the local Afghans, with whom they shared ties of loyalty or kinship, secure.

  A plan developed in 2006 to deploy the Afghan National Auxiliary Police (ANAP), a force of 11,000 formed from village militias, was a failure. “The auxiliary police asked local strongmen to form a force, paid them, and gave them weapons,” Atmar explained, but neither Kabul nor the coalition wished to create a force independent of the central government that would undercut the highly centralized constitutional order that emerged from the Bonn process. Many were concerned that the ANAP reversed the effects of the DDR program with its potential human-rights abuses.580 Some non-Pushtun observers thought what Kabul really feared was the creation of local armed forces in non-Pushtun areas that would serve as a counterweight to Pushtun power.581 The ANAP members received only a few days’ training but received a monthly stipend, envied by ANP members whose pay was often in arrears. ANAP personnel, in practice, still gave their primary loyalty to local officials or warlords. In Pushtun areas, ANAP ranks included many insurgent infiltrators. The ANAP was disbanded in May 2008.