t is difficult to accept that President Biden or his advisors lacked awareness of the gaping holes in the Afghan National Security Forces’ (ANSF) capacity to hold the Taliban at bay.
Much has been written concerning the validity of the 300,000 Afghan force that President Biden cited in his speech about the U.S. withdrawal from the country, which most understand to be a gross overestimation of the actual strength of the ANSF. High rates of desertion have always plagued the ANSF. However, President Biden also seems to have included the Afghan National Police (ANP) in this number – a force that was not able to "provide nationwide security, especially as that force faced a larger threat than anticipated after the drawdown of coalition military forces." I would know. I spent the first several years of my career as the Afghanistan Police Program manager for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs at the Department of State. In 2007, when I left the program, the police could not effectively serve as a force multiplier in counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. To imagine that today they would somehow be capable of holding the line against the Taliban would be laughable if it was not so devastatingly tragic. Even when I left nearly 15 years ago, the failures to strengthen the police force were clear.
The very conception of our efforts and the decisions made early on that shaped the nature of our engagement and our objectives were deeply flawed.
To understand why and how we failed, we must go back to the beginning, when Germany took the lead in reconstructing the police in late 2001. German efforts were initially narrowly targeted at officers and non-commissioned officers in the ANP in Kabul. These programs were intensive, nine-month and three-year-long programs. In theory, this was a fantastic model and provided a professional education. However, the United States wanted to move faster.
In 2002, the United States began building a complementary program at the patrol level that would expand beyond Kabul to several regional training centers throughout the country. As part of the effort, they offered a nine-week basic training course that would produce thousands of trained police officers. Whether nine weeks would have been enough is unknown, the vast majority of ANP never even completed that much training.
The U.S. program presumed much higher literacy rates than existed. Much of the material in the nine-week course was useless –many could not read it. The program was shortened to five weeks for recruits and just two to three weeks of "refresher training" for other police officers. Inadequate training based on our fundamental baseline misunderstanding was undoubtedly a key component of this failure.
Lack of oversight was another critical failure. Invading Iraq was a pivotal moment. Our national security architecture's attention shifted, our resources and personnel were diverted, and folks like me – at the time in my mid-twenties and just barely two years on the job – were left in charge of efforts in Afghanistan. Under my so-called leadership, we built seven regional training centers throughout the country in addition to our Kabul facility and spent countless millions on equipment, uniforms, training, and reform efforts. I don't know the exact number, but I'd estimate that I spent over a billion USD over the six or so years I led that program.
At the time, I did not have substantive law enforcement experience. Despite countless temporary duty assignments in Afghanistan, I never made it to all of the training centers. From a purely fiscal perspective, oversight of contractors was superficial at best. My ability to judge the quality and impact of the program was significantly constrained and was focused squarely on the number of police trained.
By late 2004, it became impossible to ignore the deteriorating security situation and the inability of the police to play a meaningful role in improving conditions on the ground; corruption was rampant, attrition was endemic, and training was inadequate. It had become glaringly apparent that the number of police trained had little do with force strength or capacity.
Frustrated with the worsening security situation, the Department of Defense took over police training in 2005. The transition was a mess. Congressional opposition to the takeover made for a chaotic budget situation. Further complicating matters was the mystifying language describing the new relationship between Defense and State. The vague phrasing led to a year and a half of interagency squabbling and lacked anything approaching a coherent strategy. By 2006, police training amounted to training cannon-fodder for the increasingly virulent insurgency.
Successive administrations have noted that we did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build. Perhaps I do not understand what the term "nation-building" means. If the U.S. objective was to leave Afghanistan with security forces that were committed to the rule of law and capable of providing a safe and secure environment for Afghanistan, I think the United States signed up for at least some aspects of nation-building.
So, why did we fail? We failed because we lacked a plan with measurable articulated goals. We failed because we got distracted by the Iraq war. We failed because the Bush administration could not get the interagency to cooperate, let alone collaborate. We failed because subsequent administrations poured resources down the drain rather than fix the underlying systemic inadequacies of the programs. We failed because we lacked anything approaching meaningful commitment, too scared of the word nation-building to admit that this is what we were doing… just doing so poorly.
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Acknowledging Our Failures So We Can Move Forward
Photo by Mohammad Rahman via Unsplash.
November 15, 2021
Much has been made of the unpreparedness of the Afghan National Security Forces when the U.S. left Afghanistan. Less has been said of the Afghan National Police, but Western attempts to develop Afghanistan's law enforcement was severely flawed from the start, writes Angelic Young.
I
t is difficult to accept that President Biden or his advisors lacked awareness of the gaping holes in the Afghan National Security Forces’ (ANSF) capacity to hold the Taliban at bay.
Much has been written concerning the validity of the 300,000 Afghan force that President Biden cited in his speech about the U.S. withdrawal from the country, which most understand to be a gross overestimation of the actual strength of the ANSF. High rates of desertion have always plagued the ANSF. However, President Biden also seems to have included the Afghan National Police (ANP) in this number – a force that was not able to "provide nationwide security, especially as that force faced a larger threat than anticipated after the drawdown of coalition military forces." I would know. I spent the first several years of my career as the Afghanistan Police Program manager for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs at the Department of State. In 2007, when I left the program, the police could not effectively serve as a force multiplier in counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. To imagine that today they would somehow be capable of holding the line against the Taliban would be laughable if it was not so devastatingly tragic. Even when I left nearly 15 years ago, the failures to strengthen the police force were clear.
The very conception of our efforts and the decisions made early on that shaped the nature of our engagement and our objectives were deeply flawed.
To understand why and how we failed, we must go back to the beginning, when Germany took the lead in reconstructing the police in late 2001. German efforts were initially narrowly targeted at officers and non-commissioned officers in the ANP in Kabul. These programs were intensive, nine-month and three-year-long programs. In theory, this was a fantastic model and provided a professional education. However, the United States wanted to move faster.
In 2002, the United States began building a complementary program at the patrol level that would expand beyond Kabul to several regional training centers throughout the country. As part of the effort, they offered a nine-week basic training course that would produce thousands of trained police officers. Whether nine weeks would have been enough is unknown, the vast majority of ANP never even completed that much training.
The U.S. program presumed much higher literacy rates than existed. Much of the material in the nine-week course was useless –many could not read it. The program was shortened to five weeks for recruits and just two to three weeks of "refresher training" for other police officers. Inadequate training based on our fundamental baseline misunderstanding was undoubtedly a key component of this failure.
Lack of oversight was another critical failure. Invading Iraq was a pivotal moment. Our national security architecture's attention shifted, our resources and personnel were diverted, and folks like me – at the time in my mid-twenties and just barely two years on the job – were left in charge of efforts in Afghanistan. Under my so-called leadership, we built seven regional training centers throughout the country in addition to our Kabul facility and spent countless millions on equipment, uniforms, training, and reform efforts. I don't know the exact number, but I'd estimate that I spent over a billion USD over the six or so years I led that program.
At the time, I did not have substantive law enforcement experience. Despite countless temporary duty assignments in Afghanistan, I never made it to all of the training centers. From a purely fiscal perspective, oversight of contractors was superficial at best. My ability to judge the quality and impact of the program was significantly constrained and was focused squarely on the number of police trained.
By late 2004, it became impossible to ignore the deteriorating security situation and the inability of the police to play a meaningful role in improving conditions on the ground; corruption was rampant, attrition was endemic, and training was inadequate. It had become glaringly apparent that the number of police trained had little do with force strength or capacity.
Frustrated with the worsening security situation, the Department of Defense took over police training in 2005. The transition was a mess. Congressional opposition to the takeover made for a chaotic budget situation. Further complicating matters was the mystifying language describing the new relationship between Defense and State. The vague phrasing led to a year and a half of interagency squabbling and lacked anything approaching a coherent strategy. By 2006, police training amounted to training cannon-fodder for the increasingly virulent insurgency.
Successive administrations have noted that we did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build. Perhaps I do not understand what the term "nation-building" means. If the U.S. objective was to leave Afghanistan with security forces that were committed to the rule of law and capable of providing a safe and secure environment for Afghanistan, I think the United States signed up for at least some aspects of nation-building.
So, why did we fail? We failed because we lacked a plan with measurable articulated goals. We failed because we got distracted by the Iraq war. We failed because the Bush administration could not get the interagency to cooperate, let alone collaborate. We failed because subsequent administrations poured resources down the drain rather than fix the underlying systemic inadequacies of the programs. We failed because we lacked anything approaching meaningful commitment, too scared of the word nation-building to admit that this is what we were doing… just doing so poorly.
