By Joanna Nathan
The size of American forces in
Afghanistan is currently the subject of heated debate with increasing calls by
all sides for more roles to be turned over to Afghan forces apparently as a quick
exit strategy.
While it is the right approach,
done properly and sustainably it will not be quick. And basic questions need to
be properly debated first. How big should the Afghan security apparatus be? How
should this be decided? And most importantly of all, what should the roles of
the different services be?
In a country with no
established population figures (Afghanistan's Central Statistics Office
estimates 25 million people and the CIA 33.5 million), as of May 2009 the
Afghan National Army (ANA) was reported
to have 87,000 troops with an authorized ceiling of 134,000. There were
allegedly about
75,000 police by the end of 2008 with thousands more hired before the recent
elections and the ceiling raised to 96,800.
Top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley
McChrystal's review
argues for 240,000 ANA and baldly states that the ANP is to grow to 160,000.
No calculations behind these figures are
set out, and this is well up from just two years ago when the aim was 70,000
ANA and 62,000 ANP.
In July this year it was assessed
that only 24 of 559 ANP units were "fully capable" -- although what makes them
capable or not is unstated. Such assessments are conducted by the U.S. military
largely through the framework of fighting the insurgency rather than the law
enforcement focus that the population is crying out for.
In July an interesting report
commissioned for the International Police Coordination Board chaired by the
Minister of Interior and intended to coordinate all such issues with the
international community recommended 136,000 ANP by March 2013. Even more
importantly it emphasized the need for a focus on law enforcement by regular
police with a separate gendarmerie but operating under a single chain of
command.
The latter report was paid for
by the European Commission, with Europe still holding nominal lead over
international police reform efforts, even as U.S. programs dwarf theirs. That
there are such separate reviews going on speaks volumes about international
coordination.
And as for the Afghan side?
Far too little is heard from -- and expected of -- the ministers and heads of
the services in clearly setting forth their goals and priorities to ensure a
common understanding. A lack of basic agreed-upon frameworks to make such decisions
leads to ministries simply shopping between donor nations for what they -- or
even that particular rotation -- are willing to provide. Ceilings for numbers
of security forces are incrementally raised with little demanded in terms of
effectiveness measures. Various schemes for militias come and go, distracting
resources and attention from the core issue of functional institutions.
The minister of interior Hanif
Atmar is one of those pushing for a large increase in the number of police. But
this focus on sheer quantity obscures the larger questions on quality -- which
both the International
Crisis Group and the Afghanistan
Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) have long highlighted as the truly
decisive factor. It has never been explained why, when the problem is that
the police are ill-trained (eight weeks basic training if they are lucky),
poorly vetted and unaccountable, how having even more police who have even less
training, less vetting and less oversight will improve things. And where will a
new generation of leadership to oversee the vast expansion spring from when
officer training -- rightly -- takes three years?
The minister of defense General
Abdurrahim Wardak also keeps demanding the size of his army be increased while
apparently insisting it does not have a role in holding the areas "cleared" by
international forces. It well may not have a role, but then why are the numbers
forever being bumped up?
I see the most crucial position
in the next cabinet as being that of National Security Advisor. Forget demands
for the creation of new technocratic positions to somehow save Afghanistan. What
is already in place needs to be made functional and accountable. The Afghan
administration requires a clear, united position on what the threats are and
what the different forces' roles are in responding to them. According to the
European-commissioned police
report the last available national threat assessment was produced in 2005.
Afghanistan's National Security
Council has had large sums poured into it by the international community (much
of that it must be said spent on "foreign advisors") with little to show. This
needs to be THE body where Afghan ministers come together to forge united
security assessments and policy and then speak with one voice to the donor
community. To be successful the roles and sizes of the police, army and
intelligence services need to be part of a widely agreed strategy looking
beyond merely fighting rather than the result of continual closed-door haggling
and ad hoc programs.
Joanna Nathan is currently
undertaking a mid-career masters at Princeton University. She was the senior
analyst for the International Crisis Group in Kabul from 2005-2009, working on
two policing reports: Reforming
Afghanistan's Police (2007) and Policing
in Afghanistan: Still Searching for a Strategy (2008).
MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images
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