The result was that Afghan National Police were often overmatched in conducting counterinsurgency and counternarcotics operations, as well as curbing cross-border infiltration. In some cases, including in southern Afghanistan, Afghan police actively collaborated with Taliban. A German assessment of the border police reported: “Neither the Afghan border police nor the customs authorities are currently in a position to meet the challenges presented by this long border.”35 Interior Minister Jalali argued that “because of the late start in comprehensive police development, the [Afghan National Police] continues to be ill-trained, poorly paid, under-equipped, and inadequately armed.”36 Afghan forces had a difficult time even against criminal organizations. In one incident in Balkh Province, police forces were attacked, captured, and disarmed by a drug cartel after an armed clash.37 And again, in the days following a police-led operation to capture Taliban fighters in Sangsar village in the southern province of Kandahar, an after-action report found that there was “no joint plan,” “no unity of command,” and “no intel sharing” between the police and Afghanistan’s intelligence service. The result was seven casualties and one friendly-fire incident. All Taliban escaped.38
In many ways, however, the police were an afterthought; the international training for law enforcement was simply not as good as it was for the Afghan National Army. In the course of four years, control over the police was shifted among three agencies—from the German lead in 2002, to the U.S. State Department in 2003, and finally to the U.S. Defense Department in 2005. DynCorp International set the tone for this sorry state of affairs early on, and some of the blame can be assigned to them. The State Department and DynCorp focused largely on “outputs,” such as the number of police trained, rather than “outcome” measures such as police performance against insurgents or drug traffickers. They had too few people and too few resources.39 The quality of DynCorp police trainers varied widely. Some had significant international police training experience and were competent in dealing with police in a tribal society in the middle of an insurgency. But many other DynCorp trainers had little experience in such an environment.40
Senior Bush administration officials had more scathing criticism of DynCorp. Ambassador Ronald Neumann told me: “What DynCorp did was take a police officer out of a cesspool, train him for a few weeks, and throw him back into a cesspool. This,” he said pointedly, “did not result in a lot of cleanliness over the long run.”41 Yet Neumann was quick to acknowledge that building competent and legitimate police has been a major problem in past counterinsurgency operations. “The early focus on low-level training was inadequate,” said Neumann. “DynCorp was executing the contract they were given and I do not think one can entirely hold them reponsible for how the contract was structured.”42 Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage similarly told me that “DynCorp simply didn’t do a good job in training the police.”43 Afghan officials repeated this charge. Minister of Interior Jalali said, “The DynCorp police trainers were a mixed bag. I personally rejected a number of DynCorp contractors because they had little or no useful background for training police in Afghanistan.” He noted that DynCorp “checked boxes” they were more interested in completing a contract, not in creating a competent, viable police force.44
To help alleviate the police concerns, the Afghan government and the Combined Security Transition Command—Afghanistan came up with a plan to build what became known as the Afghan National Auxiliary Police. “There were not enough guns and people to protect local villagers,” remarked Ambassador Neumann. “This is counterinsurgency 101: to protect the local population.”45
In February 2006, Ambassador Neumann and General Durbin were approached by senior officials from the Afghan Ministries of Interior and Finance while General Eikenberry was out of town. The Afghans wanted to hire an additional 200 to 400 police per district. The idea was to create a new force, to be called the Afghan National Auxiliary Police. Durbin and his deputy, Canadian Brigadier General Gary O’Brien, briefed Neumann on the initial concept in the spring of 2006, and Durbin then briefed President Karzai in May 2006. The plan was to establish a police force designed to fill the local gaps in Afghan security forces.46 The auxiliary-police program meant training a local force for ten days and equipping its members with guns. They were then sent to secure static checkpoints and to conduct operations with Coalition forces against insurgents in six unstable provinces: Helmand, Zabol, Kandahar, Farah, Oruzgan, and Ghazni.47 At the same time, Durbin moved to dissolve the Highway Police, who were interminably corrupt, regularly took bribes at checkpoints along major highways, and harassed local Afghans.
U.S. officials pointedly tried to avoid turning the auxiliary police into a village militia by recruiting them individually and paying and supervising them through the Ministry of Interior. “There were numerous efforts on the provincial level by local officials to recruit on a militia basis,” said Neumann. “We tried to fix those problems by sending out mixed teams from the U.S. Embassy, CSTC—A [Combined Security Transition Command—Afghanistan], and DynCorp to see what was happening on the local level. We fixed some of those problems.” But the auxiliary-police program still ran into additional snags. Ministry of Interior officials began recruiting without supervision in other provinces and then went to U.S. officials for reimbursement. “I refused to concur with this request and blocked it,” remarked Neumann, “on the grounds that the recruits had not been vetted.”48 Still, the auxiliary police were never well integrated into Pashtun tribes, subtribes, clans, and qawms in the south and east—and, consequently, were never accepted at the social level.
The program was opposed by some senior U.S. military leaders, such as General Eikenberry, who argued that it was only a stopgap measure—a tactical solution to a systemic problem with the police. But Eikenberry, who wanted to avoid a major fight with the State Department and the White House, ultimately did not pull out a “red card” and kill the program.49 In retrospect, he didn’t have to. The auxiliary-police program eventually lost steam. When I visited Kandahar and Helmand Provinces in September 2007, for example, most auxiliary police were being used intermittently. By 2008, when I went back again, they were essentially gone.
Afghan National Army
The Afghan National Army was better. The United States led rebuilding efforts for the ANA, although French, British, and Turkish instructors, as well as instructors from other Coalition countries, were also involved.50 Training commenced in May 2002, when the Afghan Army’s first regular army battalion began ten weeks of infantry and combat training at the Kabul Military Training Center. The United States then assigned some of its best soldiers, from 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group, to organize the initial effort. 51 Unlike the police program, the effort to build a viable army began immediately after the overthrow of the Taliban.
In the fall of 2002, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked General Eikenberry to help coordinate security-sector efforts in Afghanistan. Eikenberry then headed the Office of Military Cooperation—Afghanistan, which was charged with building the Afghan National Army. He developed a comprehensive approach, so one of his most significant contributions was to reform the Ministry of Defense. “There was an existing ministry and a General Staff that had been taken over by members of the Northern Alliance in 2002,” Eikenberry noted, “but it was dysfunctional and not inclusive of all ethnic groups.” Eikenberry and his team, with assistance from MPRI, built an organizational diagram of the Ministry of Defense that included key offices and positions. “My next step was to begin compiling a list of candidates for the top 35 positions in the General Staff with an eye toward creating an ethnically-balanced, merit-based ministry,” he continued. The process for choosing candidates was fairly transparent and done with Afghan partnership.
“In the late spring and early summer of 2003, my team and I briefed President Karzai and other key Afghan leaders, who provided additional candidates for the 35 positions,” he recalled. “I wanted to create sustainable institutions that were wel
l-vetted with and trusted by the Afghans.”52
Eikenberry’s efforts had a significant impact on the training of Ministry of Defense officials and soldiers.53 New Afghan recruits received training in basic rifle marksmanship, platoon-and company-level tactics, use of heavy weapons, and engineering and other skills. Desertion rates were initially high—Afghanistan’s 1st Battalion had a desertion rate of approximately 50 percent per month—but the rate eventually dropped to 10 percent per month by the summer of 2003, between 2 percent and 3 percent per month by 2004, and 1.25 percent per month by 2006.54
Afghan Army efforts ran into trouble after Eikenberry left Afghanistan in 2003, though he returned in 2005 as head of Combined Forces Command—Afghanistan. He was followed by two U.S. Air Force generals with little experience in building foreign armies: U.S. Air Force Major General Craig P. Weston and U.S. Air Force Major General John T. Brennan. “Putting Air Force personnel in charge of army training was like putting an Army general in charge of building an Afghan Air Force. He wouldn’t know what to do,” one senior U.S. Army official told me.55
In December 2005, Secretary Rumsfeld visited Kabul and met with Minister of Defense Wardak, National Security Adviser Zalmai Rassoul, and Minister of Finance Anwar ul-Haq Ahadi. Wardak is a burly, overbearing figure who became an officer in the Afghan Army in the 1980s but later defected to the mujahideen and joined the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan of Pir Sayyid Ahmad Gailani. He was involved in one of the most lethal attacks against the Soviet Union, code-named Operation Avalanche, a 1987 ambush against a Soviet convoy that inflicted one of the highest levels of Soviet casualties in one day since World War II.56 Wardak had an affinity for the United States, testifying several times before the U.S. Congress during the Soviet War, and received medical treatment in the United States after being wounded by a Scud missile in 1989. Ahadi also had close connections with the United States, having received his PhD in political science from Northwestern University. He had taught at Carleton and Providence Colleges.
“Rumsfeld read us the riot act,” recalled Daoud Yaqub, who was present at the December meeting. An Afghan army of 70,000, which Minister of Defense Wardak had supported, was simply unsustainable. Rumsfeld said an army with between 45,000 and 52,000 soldiers was “a bit more reasonable.” If the Afghans wanted to have a 70,000-man army, he warned, they would have to take money from somewhere else. This triggered major budget discussions within the Afghan government, although the funds were eventually found to support the larger number.57 With Durbin at the helm of Combined Security Transition Command—Afghanistan in 2006, performance steadily improved. Several units of the ANA were deployed throughout Afghanistan to conduct combat operations and establish law and order.
In 2005, Afghan National Army forces had notable success in Kunar Province with Operation Catania, which targeted insurgent hideouts prior to the September parliamentary elections.58 In 2006, ANA soldiers played a key role in two major counterinsurgency offensives—Operation Mountain Thrust in southern Afghanistan and Operation Mountain Lion in Kunar—among several others.59 Soldiers from the 3rd Brigade of the Afghan National Army’s 203rd Corps fought alongside members of U.S. Task Force Spartan, made up of soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division and Marines from the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment. More than 2,500 Afghan National Army and Coalition forces were involved in the operation.60 In 2007, ANA units, backed by a small contingent of U.S. military forces, played the leading role in Operation Maiwand in Ghazni Province against the Taliban. They also played critical roles in fighting Taliban forces during Operation Achilles in Helmand Province.
Sometimes members of the ANA were helpful in more lighthearted ways. In 2006, for example, U.S. Special Operations Forces and Afghan Army forces were involved in heavy fighting near Tarin Kowt, a small, dusty town of 10,000 in central Afghanistan’s Oruzgan Province. The town’s only airstrip was on the military base of the NATO provincial reconstruction team, which was locally called “Kamp Holland” since it housed a sizable contingent of Dutch soldiers. One Special Operations soldier watched, somewhat perplexed, as an Afghan Army soldier put down his Kalashnikov during the fighting, looked toward Mecca, and prayed to Allah. He repeated the action far more than the five obligatory daily prayer times for Muslims.
At the end of the battle, the U.S. soldier asked him what he was doing. “I was praying to Allah to deliver U.S. Apache helicopters,” the Afghan responded. “And you know what? Allah listened. The Apaches showed up and saved the day.” Just as the Russians had relied heavily on helicopter support, the Apache attack helicopter was deployed fairly often by the United States against insurgents operating in rural areas. It could lay down a dizzying display of fire from 30-millimeter automatic cannons that could shoot 625 rounds per minute, Hellfire antitank missiles, and rockets. The Hellfire thermobaric missiles carried by some Apaches were particularly ruthless. “The effect of the explosion within confined spaces is immense,” one CIA report noted. “Those near the ignition point are obliterated. Those at the fringe are likely to suffer many internal and thus invisible injuries.”61
Afghan National Army soldiers began to earn a reputation as tenacious fighters in battle. By all accounts, they were more proficient in tactics, techniques, and procedures for fighting counterinsurgency warfare after their U.S. training. When asked to perform crowd control, deliver humanitarian assistance, gather intelligence about insurgents and their support network, and assist in other civil-action projects, the ANA impressed many observers.62 They were also effective in gathering intelligence about insurgents, their support network, and weapons caches. Some argued, however, that the emphasis on quality had had too high a price tag. A World Bank study found that the “ANA salary structure, determined apparently without reference to fiscal constraints or pay elsewhere in the civil service, has set a precedent which the police and other sectors aspire to and which will be fiscally costly.”63
Despite increasing levels of competence, however, Afghan Army forces still suffered from a lack of indigenous air support and the absence of a self-sustaining operational budget. They relied on embedded international forces and U.S. air support during combat, and their weapons were shoddy. As with the police, many soldiers had little ammunition and few magazines. Afghan Army units had few mortars, machine guns, MK-19 grenade machine guns, and artillery. They had almost no helicopter or fixed-wing transport, and no attack aviation. They had little or no body armor or blast glasses, Kevlar helmets, up-armored Humvees, or light-armor tracked vehicles with machine-gun cupolas and slat armor.64 This impacted their ability to conduct sustained operations on their own against well-equipped Taliban raiding forces, who possessed rocket-propelled grenades, recoilless rifles, and antiaircraft artillery such as the Russian-made DShK 12.7-millimeter machine gun.65
Protecting the Local Population
The inability to establish law and order in rural areas of Afghanistan pushed local communities into the hands of the Taliban. Afghan intelligence admitted, “We have not been able to provide policing and protection for the villages against the insurgents or the negative elements in general.”66 Other internal Afghan documents reiterated this problem. There “is a perception amongst the population that not enough is being done to improve their security and that widespread criminality and corruption contribute to a situation not dissimilar from that which led to the rise of the Taliban [in the early 1990s].”67 This was a striking conclusion. As one senior Afghan official told me: “The Afghan National Army goes into a town, clears it of insurgents, stays for a few days, and then leaves. But it doesn’t provide long-term security. This causes significant unhappiness among the local population.” He continued: “Much of the local ‘support’ for the Taliban is passive. People fear for their lives if they oppose the Taliban.”68
A public-opinion poll conducted for Combined Forces Command—Afghanistan acknowledged that approximately 50 percent or more of most respondents in the east and south had no weekly con
tact with the Afghan National Police. The same poll found that less than 20 percent of local respondents in most eastern and southern provinces trusted the police.69 This had a ripple effect on rural villagers. Afghans who cooperated with the government, or even openly supported it, often faced grave danger from Taliban and other insurgent forces across the south and east of the country.
By late 2005, a growing number of villages in these rural areas were emptied of pro-government political forces and supporters, and they gradually fell into the hands of the Taliban and other insurgent groups. This process was not entirely different from the approach that Afghan mujahideen took during the Soviet War, focusing most of their efforts on rural areas. The population was left with little choice but to become active or tacit supporters of the insurgents. A study for NATO forces in Afghanistan discovered that support for the Taliban was positively correlated with rural areas, partly because they had little or no government security presence. “The capacity of the government to protect people is more limited outside the centre of the province,” it acknowledged. “A majority of people in provincial centres believe that the government can protect them from insecurity, compared to a minority outside the centres.”70
While the United States had committed sufficient attention and resources to building the Afghan National Army, it took a pass on the police. It handed over the police program to Germany, which failed to seriously fund or manage the program. Initial U.S. efforts to salvage the police floundered, as the State Department relied on DynCorp International, which lacked the capacity to rebuild a broken police force from scratch in a tribal society. By the time the U.S. military tried to bail out the police program in 2006, incalculable damage had already been done. These challenges might have been mitigated had the Afghan government not begun to come apart at the seams in other areas.
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