THE AFGHAN NATIONAL POLICE: WHERE WE ARE, WHERE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 07 KABUL 001267

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

STATE FOR SCA/FO DAS GASTRIGHT, SCA/A, S/CRS, S/CT,
EUR/RPM, INL/CIVPOL, OIG/ISP
STATE PASS TO USAID FOR AID/ANE, AID/DCHA/DG,
NSC FOR AHARRIMAN
OSD FOR SHIVERS
CENTCOM FOR CSTC-A, CG CJTF-76, POLAD

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: MARR SNAR ASIG PREL PGOV ASEC NATO AF
SUBJECT: THE AFGHAN NATIONAL POLICE: WHERE WE ARE, WHERE
WE'RE GOING

REF: A) NOVEMBER 2006 DOS-DOD OIG POLICE TRAINING AND
READINESS ASSESSMENT B) KABUL 115 C) 06
KABUL 5566 D) KABUL 1049 E) KABUL 435


1. Summary: This cable uses the opportunity offered by
a tasking from the Joint Department of State -
Department of Defense Inspector General Interagency
Assessment of Afghanistan Police Training and
Readiness (ref A) to review recent progress in Afghan
police development and to describe ongoing programs.
It will also sketch out a way forward over the next
twelve months and also look at several long-term
issues. Most important is the critical need for the
U.S. and international community to remain engaged
over the long term, both financially and in developing
the human capital required not only to achieve
progress in the police sector but also in areas of
rule of law and governance. End summary.

Background
--------------


2. The Afghan National Police (ANP) has made
significant strides since tribal leaders and warlords
filled the security vacuum in the wake of the
Taliban,s defeat five years ago. It will take at
least several more years, however, before the ANP
develops the capacity to serve as an effective
security partner and is able to adequately enforce the
rule of law and order in provinces and districts
throughout Afghanistan. The urgent need to deploy
forces capable of responding to emerging security
threats competes with longer term institutional goals
of establishing a civilian police force focused on
community law enforcement and maintaining a sharp
distinction between police and military roles.
Moreover, weaknesses within the Ministry of Interior
(MOI) and ANP have seriously impeded police
effectiveness. These include corrupt and/or
incompetent leadership, limited control over
provincial police structures, low institutional
capacity at all levels, lack of coordination among and
between donor countries and the Government of
Afghanistan. Endemic corruption and the negative
externalities of the drug trade exacerbate these
challenges.


3. Until 2005, U.S. activity in the security sector
was focused on training the Afghan National Army.
Germany, the lead nation for police under the Bonn
Agreement, concentrated its efforts on building long-
term institutional capacity, particularly through
funding and providing personnel support for the Kabul
Police Academy, a long-term training facility for
police officers. The U.S. set up a Central Training
Center and seven Regional Training Centers to provide
basic and in-service training to police personnel of
all ranks. Additionally, MOI reform was initiated,
and the mentoring program began at the general officer
level. The focus on long-term development came with
near term costs, however. In particular, beginning in
summer 2006 the deteriorating security situation in
the south, southeast, and selected other areas around
the country demanded immediate attention.


4. The USG in mid-2005 decided to significantly increase
its involvement in police training and equipping. A
Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the
Department of State and the Department of Defense
whereby DoD was tasked to direct, with policy guidance
from the Chief of Mission, all USG efforts to
organize, train, and equip Afghan security forces.
DOS retained oversight authority and responsibility
for the Embassy Kabul comprehensive police plan. This

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was accompanied by an influx of funding, although some
of the effects, particularly in the distribution of
weapons and ammunition, were not felt for almost 12
months. In early 2006 the USG, through the Combined
Security Assistance Command-Afghanistan (CSTC-A) began
implementation of a "systems approach" to reforming
the Ministry of Interior. Together with pay and rank
reform and other programmatic elements, including
closer cooperation among donor countries, there has
been some progress toward addressing the challenges
faced by the MOI and ANP. The next twelve months will
see further movement in a positive direction, provided
that these activities receive sufficient financial and
political support from all donor nations, and that
Afghan senior leadership remains committed to the
difficult effort to reform the MOI and ANP.

2006 Programs
--------------


5. 2006 saw substantial progress in several key areas,
as discussed in the DOS/DOD Inspector General,s
report:

- Rank reform. The first two stages of a proposed
four-stage process of rank reform have been completed.
The number of generals, which was exceedingly top
heavy, has been reduced to an appropriate level for a
62,000-person police force. Specifically, 120 two-
and three-star generals and 235 brigadier generals
have been reduced to 31 and 86 respectively. The rank
reform process consisted of a written exam and
weighted application followed by international vetting
by the United Nations Assistance Mission to
Afghanistan (UNAMA) to determine if the candidate
possessed any human rights violations, evidence of
previous corruption or administrative malfeasance.
While the Selection Board was an internal MOI body,
the German Police Program Office (GPPO),CTSC-A, and
UNAMA provided technical advisors and assisted in
administering the process. In general the Selection
Board was able to remove several of the most
incompetent police generals. There were
irregularities in the process, some of which were
addressed through a four-month probation review of
fourteen police officers. This resulted in 10
officers being fired, 2 confirmed in place, one
transferred, and one removed from consideration due to
illness. Concerns remain that many of those who were
appointed to senior positions through the Selection
Board may have been chosen on the basis of political
or personal connections. In some cases it also
appears that officers with strong paper credentials
were not well-suited to the demands of the job. Many
of these were changed out in a subsequent action taken
by President Karzai in mid-January 2007 (ref B).
While there remain substantial weaknesses in MOI and
ANP leadership, rank reform has been a positive step
toward the professionalization of the police force.

-Pay distribution: Corruption has had a major impact
on the salary distribution process. Until recently,
the MOI used a cadre of "trusted agents" to distribute
salaries to police in the provincial centers and
outlying districts. At each step opportunities
existed for police chiefs and other officials to take
a cut, resulting in the patrolmen only receiving a
fraction of what they were due. The use of unverified
police lists also led to the creation of "ghost
patrolmen," in which police chiefs inflated their
personnel rosters in order to obtain larger illegal
payments. Recent actions to institute a three-phase
program with the overall intent of paying policemen by
direct deposit to their individual bank accounts have

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made enormous strides toward alleviating many of these
abuses (Ref C). Problems remain in regularly and
routinely providing pay to outlying districts and
cutting out remaining chokepoints for corruption. The
PRT Officers and US Embassy led assessment team
continue to uncover instances in which patrolmen are
not paid on time, and this issue will require constant
vigilance

- Regional Commands and the Role of Governors: In
late spring 2006, the Ministry of Interior created
police commands at the regional level. The action was
designed to address two issues: the lack of
coordination between ANA and ANP, and the power held
by many governors over provincial police forces which
often led to misallocation of resources, favoritism,
and corruption. At the same time this action was
designed to extend the authority of the MoI into the
provinces and also improve command and control. The
police regional commands are in the same provincial
centers as the ANA Corps Commands, and are led by a
two-star general (the same rank as the ANA
leadership). They were originally located inside the
Regional Training Centers but other facilities have
since been found or built for them. The change has in
general empowered the police leadership and made it
more responsive through the MOI chain of command,
although not all attendant issues have been resolved.
The ANP regional commands are severely undermanned and
have limited fiscal resources at their disposal.
Article 4 of the Afghan Constitution provides
provincial governors with vaguely defined powers over
ANP units. While this Article has been reinterpreted
by the Minister of Interior and Attorney General in an
attempt to empower the regional commanders by
specifying that the governors have only an advisory
role over police forces, many governors continue to
have de facto command and control over the units in
their provinces.

- Equipment distribution: Due to bureaucratic delays
in Washington and the long timeline for equipment
deliveries, many patrolmen in 2006 still did not have
sufficient weapons, ammunition, vehicles, or other
appropriate equipment to face the threat. That
bottleneck has been alleviated somewhat and weapons
are flowing to police units. However the standing up
of new forces and reprioritizing of units such as the
border police mean that fully equipping the ANP is
likely to take at least 18 more months.

- Rebalancing: In response to a perceived security
threat in spring-summer 2006, the MOI, in close
coordination with CSTC-A and with the agreement of the
German Police Program, attempted to implement a
revision of the ANP fielding plan that would
temporarily increase the number of patrolmen in
certain key districts by a total of 2,100, move
standby police units to the south, and stand down the
highway police with the intention of reintegrating
these individuals into other ANP units. Rebalancing
proved to be difficult on several fronts and achieved
only limited success. The highway police have only
recently been disbanded, the number of patrolmen
willing to leave their current posts and move to the
south was far less than expected, and most of the
standby police units performed poorly due to
inadequate leadership and insufficient quantities of
equipment. The recruiting effort authorized by
rebalancing eventually led to the development of the
Afghan National Auxiliary Police concept (see below).

Ongoing Programs
--------------

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6. Several ANP programs are ongoing which should lead
to short- and long-term improvements in the force.

- Systems approach to MOI reform: CSTC-A has embedded
over 65 mentors throughout the Ministry of Interior to
assist the ministry in building capacity. This
approach to MOI reform encompasses fifteen separate
systems -- examples include personnel management,
training and logistics. Each system includes a
"capabilities milestones" approach to assessing MOI
capacity. Thus, rather than focusing on the
individual, progress is sought by mentoring the entire
system. In most categories the MOI is still in the
early stages of being able to operate independently.
The goal is for all systems to be fully independent by
December 2008, although in some categories significant
challenges remain to reaching that goal on time.

- Rank reform: Rank reform continues with the
selection and deployment of field grade officers
(colonels, lieutenant colonels, and majors) in the
near-term and testing of company grade officers
(captains and lieutenants). The company grade
officers will be selected and reassigned later in
summer 2007. As rank reform proceeds further into the
ranks, it is expected that the police force will
gradually become more professionalized and less
tainted by corruption. This result will not be
achieved overnight, particularly since many poorly
qualified police leaders still have strong political
connections to national and provincial decision
makers. Over the long term, however, rank reform
should show significant results.

- ANA/ANP pay parity: As of spring 2007, an
initiative under review by the Government of
Afghanistan and the international police community is
to achieve salary parity between the ANP and Afghan
National Army. Although pay and rank reform increases
the amount received by patrolmen from USD 16/month to
USD 70/month and pay distribution improvements mean
they are more likely to received the whole sum, this
is still not a competitive wage. ANA soldiers earn
USD 100/month for duty that is in many ways less
hazardous than that of police officers, while private
security companies pay substantially more than the
ANP. The Law and Order Trust Fund Afghanistan will
review the pay situation at its next quarterly
Steering Committee meeting and is likely to recommend
pay parity with the ANA.

- Increasing the size of the ANP: A second proposal
still under review would, if adopted, increase the
size of the ANP from a force of 62,000 as agreed in
the Afghanistan Compact to 82,000. Through the
mechanism of the Joint Coordination and Monitoring
Board (JCMB),a broadly representative working group,
including members of the international community and
both Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Finance, has
met to review the issue. A decision is expected at
JCMB V, in early May 2007. Significant concerns about
the long-term budget sustainability of a force of this
size make this a decision that will have to be taken
at the highest levels of the Afghan government, based
on the JCMB recommendation. The GOA will not be able
to finance this increase, placing the onus for support
on the international community for what will likely be
a very long-term commitment. However the U.S.
position has been that immediate security needs are
paramount and without this larger force - with
concomitant improved training and equipment - the ANP
will not be able to face difficult challenges
particularly in isolated areas and along the borders.

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- Auxiliary Police: The Afghan National Auxiliary
Police (ANAP) program was developed in fall 2006 in
response to an urgent security need in the south and
east that the rebalancing plan failed to address
successfully. The ANAP has been the focus of intense
effort within the Afghan and international policy
community, particularly through the mechanisms of the
Policy Action Group (PAG) and Security Operations
Group (SOG). There has been a particular concern to
make sure that ANAP patrolmen, who receive only very
limited training (two weeks initially plus three weeks
of follow-up sustainment training) are properly
recruited and vetted to prevent them from turning into
reconstituted militia forces. Post has been very
involved in attempting to ensure that these standards
are met, both by participating in policy-level
discussions and also by sending teams out to the
provinces to inspect ANAP recruitment and training.
See ref D for recent updates in this program and
remaining problems in implementation.

- ANCOP: Another new program designed to extend and
enforce the rule of law throughout the entire country
of Afghanistan, as well as to counter instability in
both the cities and remote areas is the Afghan
National Civil Order Police. The program, which will
eventually number 5,000 relatively highly-trained,
well equipped patrolmen in a kind of quick-reaction
force (replacing the present "standby police," who
have proved ineffective) will deploy either to urban
areas as riot police or to rural areas to counter
threats from insurgency or other instability. While
this is an important program for building Afghan
government capacity to deal with security threats, it
will take some time to be fully operational. The
first classes for this program are now training at the
Regional Training Centers in Herat and Mazar-e Sharif.
See ref E for further information on ANCOP.

- ANA/ANP Coordination: Since 2005, the number of
"green on green" clashes between ANA and ANP has
sharply diminished, though they still occasionally
occur. In order to facilitate coordination, CSTC-A
has assisted the Ministries of Defense and Interior in
establishing Joint Regional and Provincial
Coordination Centers (JRCC) and (JPCC),at which ANA,
ANP, and National Directorate of Security officers
work together. In Kabul, there are ANP liaison
officers at the National Military Command Center, and
ANA liaison officers at the National Police Command
Center. While the culture of distrust between the
two services remains, and JPCCs are not adequately
manned or effective in all provinces, this is a first
step toward coordination between the various elements
in the Afghan National Security Forces.

The Way Ahead
--------------


7. The programs mentioned above are an indication of
the range of activity occurring in the police sector
in Afghanistan. Despite the many challenges that
remain, there have been significant positive
improvements in both the training and equipping of
individual policemen and reforming the leadership and
institutions in the Ministry of Interior. However,
much remains to be done. Several specialty units
within the police, such as the border police, ANCOP,
and ANAP have to be fully trained and
professionalized. In the case of ANAP, the program is
of a short duration and it is expected that some
patrolmen will enter into the regular police at the
end or their contract. (Note: ANAP contracts are for

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one year, although the MOI can extend the program for
a second year if required by the security situation.
It is hoped that most ANAP who have proved competent
on the job will choose to join a regular police
unit.)


8. A significant increase in mentoring coverage at
the district and company level will be essential to
improving the quality of the police. At present,
police go through training at the regional training
centers or elsewhere, but there is no follow-on
supervision in the districts or companies. As a
result they are regularly unable to sustain their
trained level of performance and have difficulty
maintaining professional standards of conduct. CSTC-A
has a plan to increase mentoring coverage at the
district and company level, depending on the
availability of both civilian and military resources.
The ESDP mission supported by the EU, which is
expected to start in mid-June 2007, will concentrate
on improving quality at the Ministry, regional and
provincial levels, and in specialized services such as
the Criminal Investigation Unit and liaison with the
justice sector. The number of civilian police in the
ESDP mission is not expected to directly allow mentor
coverage in the districts, but could allow for
remissioning of US assets to provide this service.
Also by mid-summer it is expected that the
International Police Coordination Board will be fully
functional. The purpose of this body is to develop a
joint approach for all the police training in country
in close coordination with CSTC-A. It will also
increase Afghan ownership of the process by giving the
MOI a more prominent coordinating role.

Comment
--------------


9. The programs described above, and the new
initiatives planned for this year, are expensive
financially and require significant commitment in
human capital. The requested Security Supplemental
funding is designed to cover many of the equipment and
infrastructure needs of the police over the next
several years. The problem of police salaries
remains unresolved. Salaries are paid by
international contributions to LOTFA, to which the
U.S. and EU have historically been the largest donors.
If, as expected, the size of the police increases by
one-third, to 82,000, and the pay for patrolmen
increases by 40 percent, from USD 70 to USD 100, the
cost of ANP salaries and associated expenses is likely
to reach USD 200 million a year. The Government of
Afghanistan does not, and will not in the near future,
have the resources to cover this bill, which must be
paid by the international community. Over the longer
term, the GOA,s commitment to international financial
institutions, particularly the IMF, requires that it
take on an ever-larger share of this expense.
Ministry of Finance officials are deeply concerned
that the cost of the security sector will impact other
programs, particularly in the social sector, that are
vital to Afghanistan,s future. The U.S. and other
donors must therefore recognize that their financial
support will continue to be required in order to
safeguard the security of Afghanistan.


10. Secondly, it must be recognized that developing
the police sector cannot occur in isolation. In
particular, until the justice sector is able to take
on the responsibility of prosecuting, judging, and
imprisoning malefactors, the culture of impunity that
gives rise to corruption and warlordism will not be
controlled. The ESDP program,s intent to link police

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and justice sector reform will be an important step.
However, the overall improvement in the law and order
situation will depend on progress in both arenas.


11. Finally, police leadership is only one aspect of
a larger governance issue that requires long-term
support for institutions and in particular the
development of human capital. It has been estimated
that 70 percent of police patrolmen are illiterate.
Officers are of varying quality, but in general there
are few competent, professional officers to meet the
desperate need. The police academy will gradually
alleviate this situation, but Afghanistan will require
a generation to build a literate, capable police
force. Our commitment must also be generational.
This is a slow, arduous, task. Fully supporting the
effort both fiscally and with the appropriate levels
of manpower is the only way to build an Afghanistan
that is stable, secure, and able to counter the
challenges of extremism, corruption, and rampant
criminality -- an Afghanistan in which ordinary people
can live safely under the rule of law.
WOOD