May 2006

Police-Building in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Beyond: Successes, Failures, and Lessons Learned

While America's efforts to build the Iraqi and Afghan armies have captured headlines, the creation of effective, uncorrupt, and nonsectarian police forces is arguably an even greater challenge for the United States in the war on terror. Lying uneasily at the intersection of development and security policy, U.S. and international efforts to recruit, train, and mentor indigenous police in Iraq and Afghanistan will have crucial implications not only for the success or failure of the military campaigns raging there, but the broader effort to establish democratic, accountable governance in the Islamic world.

Why is the development of effective, indigenous police so important in winning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and why has it proven so difficult? What kinds of internal reforms should Washington undertake in order to improve its capabilities to assist police in the frontline states of the war on terror? What lessons learned can be drawn from police-building thus far in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as from previous police assistance missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and elsewhere?

David Bayley
SUNY Albany

The international community and the U.S. government have had considerable experience since 1990 in trying to create police forces abroad that are both effective at controlling crime and respectful of human rights. The lessons learned from these experiences are applicable not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in a host of other states as well.

First among these lessons is that it is critical for the U.S. government to plan its police assistance efforts before undertaking an intervention. Too often, furthermore, the U.S. government asks what existing federal agencies can provide rather than determining what locals actually need.

Second, in planning and carrying out police assistance, the lions of law enforcement must lie down with the lambs of police reform. In practical terms, this means that institutions from the opposite ends of the development spectrum--such as USAID and the DEA--need to learn to cooperate. Often the necessary communication happens inside America’s embassies abroad; where it breaks down is Washington.

Third, reform efforts should give priority to the safety needs of the local population rather than U.S. concerns about international crime threats that emanate from abroad.

Fourth, there is a tremendous need for a larger cadre of justice specialists who can implement country-specific strategic plans. The civilian side of the American government is not as effective in this regard as the U.S. military, representing an imbalance that needs to be addressed.

Finally, the U.S. government does not take sufficient advantage of the experience and knowledge in criminal justice that exists at the state and local levels.  Too often, U.S. efforts abroad are dominated by individuals from federal agencies, despite the fact that there is no national American police force. These efforts also must place greater emphasis on developing local capacity so foreign police forces can become learning organizations, discovering for themselves what works and what doesn’t.

Dick Mayer
Emergence Group

In considering U.S. police assistance programs, it is important to acknowledge that no two of these missions are the same. Afghanistan is not Iraq nor Kosovo nor East Timor nor Panama. Certain principles can be applied across the board, but there is a danger in trying to transplant particular schemes from one country to another. It's also important to recognize that police assistance is only one small part of criminal justice system development; absent functioning courts and jails, the police cannot work. Nonetheless, time and again, the U.S. government has made the error of focusing on police at the expense of the rest of the criminal justice system.

Police assistance programs must also go beyond training, on which U.S. efforts have historically been focused, to emphasize organizational and leadership development. Individual police officers can receive excellent training, but if they are sent back into a corrupt system, it will be to no avail. Consequently, U.S. efforts must attempt to capture the hearts and minds of the senior echelons of the criminal justice system before the training process even begins.

One recent, troubling development has been the linkage between military and police development under the banner of security sector reform. In a free society, the police and the military do not generally function together, so training them together makes little sense. Additionally, assigning the training mission to the Pentagon risks militarizing a civilian police force.

There is also an unfortunate tendency in U.S. police assistance toward reliance on ad hoc organizations, despite the long-term nature of these missions. Groups of contractors are brought together to train police, despite having no history or experience working together. There is a pressing need in the U.S. government for a standing institutional capacity for foreign criminal justice development assistance--a body of people who can be staffed and resourced properly to carry out these missions.

Ali Jalali
National Defense University

Conflicts do not always end abruptly, and the division between conflict and post-conflict is not necessarily neat. Faced with this reality, civilian police--irrespective of the tasks they are assigned--will be dragged into counterinsurgency operations. In Afghanistan, police have been on the front lines of fighting terrorism. They are poorly trained, poorly equipped, and poorly led, but they are representatives of the government, and thus targeted by insurgents. Any plan for police reform must be shaped by this on-the-ground reality.

Afghanistan also illustrates how the challenge with criminal justice is not always just to create something; it is also often to get rid of something. Rule of law in Afghanistan depends not solely on building a competent, civilian police force, but also on disassembling factional, personality-based militias, which insinuated themselves after the fall of the Taliban in the army, police, and justice systems.

Police assistance in Afghanistan is part of a broader state building project which cannot be done cheaply, quickly, or in the absence of security. This project is complicated by the diversity of international actors involved in it, who come to Kabul with different commitments, resources, and procedures, and who often pursue competing agendas rather than cooperate under a single strategic plan. Different countries have trained Afghan police, for instance, but in the absence of an institutional framework, the impact of this training has been minimal.

There is also a tremendous need for a police mentoring program. The Afghan army has embedded U.S. trainers, which is a main reason for its success. The Afghan police have requested mentors, but have instead received a smattering of contractors who have not been especially ineffective.

AEI research fellow Vance Serchuk prepared this summary.