Afghan Cops Have a Ferguson Problem

When cops forget what it means to protect and serve, you get what happened last year in Ferguson. When citizens are the enemy, that’s when cops stop being police and become a paramilitary organization. Which is why the fine officers of the Ferguson Police Department opted for a whole lot of gun face when dealing with the public. It’s a similar problem facing the Afghan police as they look ahead to a world post-insurgency.

Not that the insurgency’s in any danger of shutting down. But someday Afghan cops will have to think of the people around them as civilians to protect, and not just as a crowd hiding insurgents who want to kill them. It’s a mental shift, and one that’s going to be tough to complete without even more foreign help.

An Afghan National Policeman talks to Afghan Local Police recruits during weapons training conducted by ANP with security from Afghan National Army Special Forces in Helmand province, Afghanistan, March 13, 2013. Afghan Local Police complement counterinsurgency efforts by assisting and supporting rural areas with limited Afghan National Security Forces presence, in order to enable conditions for improved security, governance and development. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Pete Thibodeau/Released)

Criminals are just part of it

If an Afghan cop dies in the line of duty, there’s a better than even chance that the person who shot him isn’t a common criminal. That whoever’s pulling the trigger is tied to the insurgency in some way. That’s not to say that insurgents and criminals in Afghanistan aren’t usually linked. Because what your average Afghan cop faces on a daily basis is a gunned up insurgency that’s more than willing to shoot him in the face.

This is due in large part to the weakness of a non-local military force that’s being shoe horned into places like southern Afghanistan where they can’t establish any more local control than the Americans and Brits before them. The cross-pollination of ethnic groups was intentional, based on the logic that one doesn’t want Pashtuns battling Pashtuns (whenever possible) because at some point they might figure out that they shouldn’t be shooting at each other and that would mean no war for anyone. And where’s the fun in that?

It’s not always the case, but cops tend to be local, and the army tends to be otherwise. So if you’re in Helmand, and I’m a military commander, I want to make sure that you’re going to take up arms against the enemy. And I likely want to tone down this intra-national brotherhood whenever possible. But that means that the military need the help of local cops to try and bring something that resembles law and order to the area.

So they rely on police officers as some kind of supplemental military force. Some branches of the police force are better suited to this than others. Raziq’s Afghan Border Police (ABP) for example are more paramilitary-minded than the average Afghan Uniformed Police (AUP) who’s stuck writing phony traffic tickets at a Kabul roundabout so he can supplement that $200/month he pulls in for his family.

Attrition and the paramilitary problem

And since the Taliban don’t differentiate too much between puppets who wear the Army uniform and puppets dressed like cops, that means that anyone in uniform’s a target. Which leaves cops very much in the crosshairs for insurgents looking to take a poke at the national government by taking on their local reps. Which would be the cops.

This creates a couple of problems for Afghan cops:

1. It means that other cops are going to be less likely to try and be cops
2. It means they don’t get to do a great job of being cops

That first one’s going to be a problem because no force can survive losing 3,200 personnel every year and still hope to keep even the most tenuous grasp on law and order in Afghanistan. The solution to the attrition? Keep recruiting.

That approach worked well when there were American guns and American bombs waiting to help Afghan cops in a bind. Nothing gives you confidence quite like a Warthog on station, no matter whether you’re green or blue.

But now that the Americans aren’t sending death from above to keep Taliban heads down by turning those heads into a fine mist, it’s making things tough in the recruiting department. Pulling in $24,000/year (which your family still gets if you get killed in the line of duty) isn’t much of a draw. It’s getting harder to find more folks willing to get shot for the sake of bringing order to the country.

“The police have lost something like 3,200 this year, so most of the casualties belong to the Afghan National Police. This is the main problem for Afghanistan – how they are dividing the responsibilities for fighting the insurgency. This should be a task for the Afghan National Army, not the police. Currently it belongs to the police and the main part of the fight is done by the police.” Karl Ake Roghe, former head of EUPOL, the European Union Police Mission in Afghanistan.

Attrition aside, for those that remain, they don’t get to do a terrific job of being cops. Which apparently requires more than knowing where the good donuts are, if my extensive research watching a couple of episodes of Blue Bloods is any indication. There seems to be something called “police work,” which means a lot of paperwork that Donnie Wahlberg manages to avoid, and something called “due process,” which is tough to do if you’re being shot at by people hell bent on overthrowing the government.

The insurgency has created the kind of breathing room that criminal elements in Afghanistan need in order to thrive. Crime is on the rise across the country, with kidnapping a major cottage industry. Since the cops aren’t around to do anything about that, in places like Nimroz the people have taken matters into their own hands.¹

Personally, hanging kidnappers from a billboard seems a fine way to discourage others from similar pursuits, but that kind of vigilantism only serves to underscore the lack of confidence ordinary people in Afghanistan have in the justice system. And since the cops are too busy fighting a no-shit shooting war, they don’t have the time, manpower, or professional inclination to chase down kidnappers. Which brings us back to cranes and billboards.

Still a non-professional force

It’s the longest war in American history, but someday the war in Afghanistan will come to an end. Sure, the Americans wrapped up combat operations at the end of last year, but that doesn’t mean that the war ended for the Afghans. Nowhere is that more true than for those on the thin blue line.

Fine, they’re corrupt, sometimes higher than shit, and not nearly as trusted as the army. But the police will need to play a crucial role in the future of governance in the country, and their current focus on paramilitary operations means they’re going to be ill equipped to pick up the reins of real policing when the shooting stops. Or at least slows down a little.

What that’s going to mean is another extended period of foreign mentorship and associated foreign funding to try and bring a police force that’s used to excessive use of force being something you do because it’s Wednesday. Should the shooting war abate in the next two to three years, the police force that’s currently serving isn’t going to be all that ready to just be cops.

Which is fine if you’re interested in keeping the jackboots on and you’re not above crushing a few heads to make your point. But that’s not the kind of course that the current national unity government of president Ghani and his new BFF Abdullah want to chart. And that’s going to mean a period of adjustment for a police force that’s been literally fighting for its life for years.

A future of foreign aid

The problem facing Afghan cops is the one facing most institutions in Afghanistan, and that’s the fact that they haven’t had the chance to think much about the future. Obama and company want to hew to a timeline for withdrawal, a political necessity. Because winning isn’t measured by ground won but by votes lost, that approach has led to an Afghan security force that’s only barely capable of holding its own.

It’s got nothing to do with will: if the casualty numbers reported by Afghan government sources are even remotely reliable, Afghan security forces are more than willing to throw themselves into the fray. But forces willing to die for Mom and naan aren’t the same as forces willing (or able) to do what it takes to keep a population safe from your basic criminal. Or policing a population with things like traffic tickets and arresting people who don’t pay their electricity bills.

A force that’s willing to die is a brave one. It’s not necessarily a mature one. Charges of light brigades notwithstanding, being a cop means a lot of work that’s less glamorous but in many ways more important in order to move Afghanistan into a true postwar environment. While we play politics with Afghan futures, those cops and those who come behind to replace them will pay the price. We need to be prepared for an Afghanistan that’s more secure, but a whole lot less legal. Until next time, you stay on that sunny side!

Ferguson police photos via Jamelle Bouie

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