 OK, I think we'll go ahead and get going. My name's Andrew Wilder. I'm the vice president of the South and Central Asia program here at the US Institute of Peace. And I'm honored to welcome all of you. Thank you for taking the time to come join us. In particular, we're to thanks for our panelists. Many of them have come a long way to join us today for a topic that I think is extremely important. There was a time in my career when I actually looked at issues around policing in Afghanistan quite closely. But it was many years ago, so I'm really looking forward to getting an update. However, I do fear that in some areas not all the issues have changed when I did research on a paper published in 2007 called Cops or Robbers. I put a question mark, although some people wondered whether I should. The struggle to reform the Afghan national police. And I thought I'd start today just by reading the final paragraph of the conclusion. Afghanistan is unlikely to ever again have the levels of international attention and resources devoted to reforming the police sector that it has today. I was actually wrong on that point. This was written in 2007 when in that year alone, there was finally a recognition of the importance of the police in around the 2006 to 2007 period. And the resources given to policing in 2007 alone was more than in the previous five years for the police sector. But there was a recognition and it actually increased from there. There is now a unique opportunity to move away from the multitude of individual police reform projects towards a more coordinated, comprehensive, and longer term approach that stands a much greater chance of effectively addressing the complex and difficult task of reforming the Afghan national police. It is time to clarify today's blurred vision on the role of police in Afghanistan and to achieve consensus on a common vision and strategy for developing a police force that will operate as cops rather than robbers. And I highlighted in that paper some key areas which I thought were the key to success in the police reform area. First and foremost was the need to develop a shared vision and strategy for the Afghan national police. Because at that time, we had a major counterinsurgency operation going in the south of Afghanistan and certainly from the US perspective and the other troop contributing forces in the south. There was a desire for more boots on the ground and very much a coin focus, the need for training of the police. We had the Europeans, some of them based in the north led by the Germans, were them leading police reform efforts who wanted more of a civilian police force. And then you had the Afghan government with its own strategy, which I think was too rarely factored into the objectives and our various strategies for police reform in Afghanistan. And I would describe that largely as one of regime protection. And I think that we were often too naive about, I mean, you could arguably say that there was actually a quite efficient and effective police force in terms of some of the objectives around regime protection. But those competing visions was never really clarified. And I think that still remains an issue today. The second big point I made was that how to make donor assistance conditional and comprehensive Ministry of Interior reform. Because unless the issues around the Ministry of Interior, the Home Ministry for the police were addressed. And some, again, again, a common vision on what the reform objective was. And if we didn't have political will, it was going to be hard to see a lot of the reform objectives move forward. Prioritize quality over quantity. Quick fixes, which at that time was the Afghan National Auxiliary Police, ANAP. And some might argue, perhaps, the Afghan local police, which I'm hoping we'll hear about more today, can often undermine achieving longer-term objectives. The need to prioritize fiscal sustainability of the security sector, which, of course, remains a huge issue, and one of particular concern as resources for Afghanistan are now on a downward trajectory. But also that police reform is first and foremost a political undertaking, not a technical one. And I think that's something that's remained a fairly consistent problem, is again, the unwillingness to understand the politics and factor that into our planning. So I'm hoping to get lots more good news. There has been progress. Because I know there has been. And I have to say, even I was in Afghanistan last for the election and now observing on Election Day north of Kabul. And I think just seeing the role of the police in that massive security operation to protect the elections, we know that there was a lot of violence on Election Day. I wouldn't describe it as a peaceful election, but compared to what many of us had anticipated, it was more peaceful. And the Afghan National Security Forces deserve a lot of credit for that, both the ANA and the ANP. And I think the outpouring of support we saw following the election and social media for the ANSF. And I think for the ANP, in particular, was quite a testimony to some of the achievements that had been done. And the pictures of young girls handing out roses to the Afghan National Police is not something I would have predicted for five years earlier. And not something it was a regular occurrence. But it was a morale booster, both for the ANSF and I think a confidence-building measure in the public in their national security forces. I think this issue of the future of policing is hugely important and we're fortunate to have an incredibly gifted panel of experts here today with lots of experience working on this issue, both in terms of the Afghan National Police issues but also on the issues around the Afghan local police. And I just wanted to quickly do a little PR pitch. This event is also to launch some papers that USIP has done recently on the police. The most recent being the Afghan National Police in 2015 and beyond by Michelle Hughes. I'm fortunate to have her with us today. Prior to that, we did the counterinsurgency, local militias, and state building in Afghanistan, which is a closer look at the Afghan local police by Jonathan Goodhand and Aziz Hakimi, who were fortunate to have flown across the pond to join us from SOAS in London. Prior to that, a year ago, we published Police Transition in Afghanistan by Don Plante and Bob and Pareto and Don's in the room today and Bob's on the panel. So I think we'll get presentations on all of these from an opportunity to hear them present it and then discuss it following it. But now it's my great honor to introduce our guest of honor today, former Minister Ali Jilali, who is the Minister of Interior in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and so has firsthand experience what it was like trying to reform the police sector in Afghanistan. Dr. Jilali is currently a distinguished professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at NDU. Prior to being at the Ministry of Interior, he had a 20-year career with Voice of America, covering South and Central Asia and the Middle East and leading the Dadi and Prashti Service. And prior to that, he served as a colonel in the Afghan National Army. He's published widely on security sector reform issues in Afghanistan and we're all anticipating the publication of his recent book on which he's been working for several years of a military history, comprehensive military history in Afghanistan. So with that, I welcome Dr. Ali Jilali. Thank you very much, Andrew, and good afternoon. Pleased to open this session, but I'm sure that we have a panel of distinguished experts and you will learn more from them than from my opening remarks. I will share a few thoughts with you based on my experience as Minister of Interior that I started reforming of police and later on that I continue to follow the development of national security forces in Afghanistan. Whereas, Andrew said that the Afghan National Police has came a long way from the days that it was first established in 2003 to the, today when we saw their successful protection or security of the first round of elections in Afghanistan. Although police always had been very successful in providing security of these major events, for example, the security of the Constitutional Law Enjerga in 2003, 2004, and presidential and parliamentary elections later on. However, these are single events. This will not tell you about the overall capacity of the Afghan National Police as a force that will do the kind of a job which is required from them as law enforcement and at the same time security of the citizen. Actually, Afghanistan National Police ceased to exist during the Civil War. During the communist rule, the police actually became a fighting force, fighting insurgents, fighting the Mujahideen. And then they wet the, in a police state, most of the function of police was shifted to the intelligence service, the Khan. So that tradition of police that we had in Afghanistan actually was being forgotten. And before that, traditionally in Afghanistan, three things were helped, the police to function at the dissatisfaction of the population. One was governance, security and the rule of law. They were all combined together in the center and also in the provinces. Then I think with the many years of war and violence, they fragmented governance, security and the rule of law, they fragmented. In the time that before long, the Ministry of Interior was also in charge of local government and the criminal investigation police and security forces, border police, what we call Jandamari. So a combination of these different categories provided a kind of comprehensive kind of stability in security. Unfortunately, after 2001, when the international community stepped in in order to reform the police and security forces, we saw two major problems. First of all, there were many actors who came with different priorities, different procedures, different levels of commitment. And on the other hand, the development of police or security forces happened while fighting was going on in the country. Fighting in building actually took place at the same time. So most of the building, in fact, was influenced by preference and priorities of fighting. And that was the major, major problem in the beginning. However, even if they joined the building process, was poorly resourced, poorly coordinated, and at the same time fragmented. In 2003, when all provincial governments, district governments, municipalities, border police, and also immigration service, all was under Ministry of Interior. The budget of Ministry of Interior at that time was $127 million a year. That is a fraction of what happened after 2009. After 2009, the budget of training Afghan national security forces were $1 billion a month. I wish we had a fraction of it in 2002 that really would be different. At that time, a police officer was drawing $16 a month. That was salary. If you don't pay a police well, they will get themselves paid by shaking down the others. And that was the beginning of the major corruption in the police force. However, at that time I remember that in order to move police from Kabul to a province, we had to lease trucks and cars from others, commercially. We did not have enough vehicles. That was the situation where we were trying to build and reform the police force. At that time, the police development or reform was going on in the context of social security sector reform, a broken system, uncoordinated system, because different countries came to take one part, one pillar of security sector and develop it. They came with different levels of commitment, different levels of resources, and also priorities. Afghan National Army did very well because it was funded by the United States. It was slow, but it was good. The lead nation was with Germany. Germany was the godfather of Afghan police in the long time. However, Germany wanted to build the police as an arm of law enforcement. But many other donors were looking at the security force. Justice sector was being built by another country, it was Italy. Counter-narcotics was by United Kingdom and DDR by Japan. And therefore, in these different countries, the system was not coordinated. At that time, a police could arrest violators, a criminal, but the next day, since the justice system were not working, he would go lose. That's why the justice system in police building the police force were not coordinated very well. However, since 2009, we saw that there was a more interest in investment in the police. And that actually helped the police. Whatever you see today, police, 140, 150,000 police officers and others, that actually started with the serious attention to police after 2009. Now, with the context that the police was built in Afghanistan, was such that what you have today has many, many problems facing the police as an arm of the law enforcement. But the major question is, what is going to be the future of police? Is it going to become an arm of law enforcement? To protect the population or a security force to protect the state? Unfortunately, with the upsurge of violence in 2006, there was a rush to build police as a security force. And that continued until today. Today, police is a security force. However, it is not a kind of a force that will, resolve or solve the challenges of insurgency in Afghanistan. Police is the best arms of fighting insurgency, but not as a fighting force. By protecting the population, when the stress of the population by itself, it becomes an asset to fight the insurgents. When I was looking at the challenges facing today, police Afghanistan, I counted to 10, then I stopped. The first one was the numbers. They say 157,000 police, and then you have, it will go to under 60,000. But it is an odd assortment of different categories. You have the police force and the uniform police, we call it. You have counterterrorism police. You have counter narcotic police. You have border police. But altogether, there's no very close institutional connection between them. Because from the day one, instead of reforming the Ministry of Interior, we want to force generation for the police. So institutional week, each minister who comes, he makes changes, and the next minister comes, he just, you know, make more changes. And there is no continuity in building the institution of the Ministry of Interior. The second thing is that is dominated by force generation, as I said. And that started from the day one. In 2004, before the presidential election, the contractors were pledged to build 50,000 or 40,000 police officers by the October of 2004 police. In order to meet that target, they started courses for one week, two weeks, sometimes three days. And then at the end they said, okay, we met the target. And who were they, the problems? Well, there were many good contractors came from across the world, particularly from the United States, but they were not up to the challenge. They tried hard, many of them were beat cops of small towns America, retired beat cops. So it was the concept of force generation and it continues to be the case. The third was outsourcing the police or building the police force. One of them is the many experience with local police or village guards, whatever you call them. Some of the experience were not very successful. Later on we will hear about the experience with Afghan local police. But in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, some of these experience were not successful. The problem is that in Afghanistan, local police or the militia or tribal militia or tribal contribution, they are all, they work only when they become part in the state become part of one system. When that system breaks down, it does not going to work. So therefore, wherever the state has some kind of influence or the tribes or communities believed in the viability of the state, they contribute. Otherwise, they go find their own ways. The reason that people in Afghanistan during the instability go to warlords, go to pattern networks because they do not see the state capable of protecting them. They go to the actors. And otherwise, in Afghanistan, the nightmare is when the state is weak. They want the state, a strong state. In 2014, during the constitution, there was overwhelming support for the building of a strong, centralized state. Well, but then they went to other options. I'm not going to discuss this here. The security, focus on security for police actually weakened other capacities of police. Building cases, building evidence for criminal cases as becoming very, you know, ineffective because today one police officer as kind of in charge of a district or a charge of a police security function in a province, the next day he comes to the criminal investigation police. So there's no kind of institutional continuity of the police career. The coordination of international donor is always a problem. And while it is, you know, the Afghans appreciate the contribution from many countries, but it only works when there's a coordination priority of the same, that priority of the Afghan government and priority of the international community is the same. I hope that in the future, the International Police Coordination Board would become more kind of authoritative in order to bring that kind of a coordination. The appointment of police officers as another problem. It is not based on their capacity, their competence or their training. One day a general changes uniform from the Ministry of Defense and goes to become the head of the police department of a province. And he brings the experience of the military to the police force. This is not something new, you know, from the beginning, the Ministry of Interior was loaded with army officers. And they actually were oriented more to what security, not the normal police. Well, there are many other things that I don't want to, but looking forward, I think the security can establish in Afghanistan in the future, only through winning the support of the citizens. And that can happen when police function as a community police. There's no doubt, as long as there's insurgency in Afghanistan, as long as there is stability Afghanistan, police will be forced to do some security jobs. However, there should be some two, two conditions should be established. First, all forces that are providing security police force should at the same time should become capable of switching to normal policing jobs when the need comes. You know, in the past, when Afghanistan has Jandarmari, Jandarmari was a paramilitary force. They usually deployed across the border, they were border guards. At the same time, they were doing some heavy lifting in policing jobs. But they were first going to become a police officer, then they would send to Jandarmari courses to become a paramilitary force. This is something that we should see in Afghanistan too. If a person comes from the Ministry of Defense, is a general in the Ministry of Defense, if you want you to appoint him as a police, I think he has got some training to become a police officer. The continued international support is required for the sustainment of the Afghan national police. After 2014, when the bulk of the NATO forces leave Afghanistan, this is going to be a challenge, whether the international community will make good on the pledges that it made to support and continue fund the Afghan national security forces or not. Without that kind of support, without the signing of BSA with the United States, there is a possibility that Afghan national security forces, including police will not hold together. It is particularly very risky because in some units or some parts of the national security forces, the ethnic balance is not there. If that force cannot hold together, then it can fragment it along ethnic lines. Priorities should be unified in the future, priority of the Afghan government, priority of the international community. I think where we can do this as the kind of a more empowered international police coordinating board. The other issue is, instead of continued force generation or focus on force generation, I think institution building, institution reform should take precedence over that. And that is the start of the Ministry of Interior. I think it is a regretful that in 2006, after I resisted hard not to remove, to resist the decision of the government to take the local administration, local governance from the Ministry of Interior and gave it to another entity. Since then, there's very hard, there will be always problem of going between the governors and the police force. As I said traditionally in Afghanistan, security stability provided by the combination of governance, security and the rule of law. That actually fragmented in 2006 after I left the Ministry of Interior. I think it's somehow, this should be good. Now the government is an important person, provincial government. It does not represent the central government because all department in the province report to the ministries in Kabul. It does not have a budget because the budget of a province is the sum of the budget of the departments that they get their budget from Kabul. A governor does not have administrative authority because all the departments report, including police, report to the ministries in Kabul. That situation should be reviewed and correct. Then I think there is a vision. Now they talk about vision of police in the future. It's good. But it's as long as the capability has not built. As long as the current flaws are not corrected, I don't think the vision will be implemented in the future. So therefore vision can work. Unfortunately in Afghanistan, always they write good papers. But there's usually no connection between the ends, ways and means. And finally, managing the Afghan local police. Afghan local police. Afghan local police this time has worked very well in some areas. There are two reasons for this, particularly in the south. First, when Taliban failed to recover the areas that they lost after the surge, they switched to terror tactics, assassination of influential people in communities. That actually flashed back. And people themselves became supportive of local police. You can see it in Panjwai, you can see it in Al-Qadab, in Kandahar, everywhere. Many years ago in Panjwai, I think it was the most unstable area, the secure area. Today is very secure because of the Afghan local police. In Paktika, in some districts that I've recently spoke with them, it has been a very successful experience. But at the same time, those who use this idea in order to re-empower the militias who are very unpopular in Afghanistan, then I think it will fire back. So Afghan national local police is good as long as managed well. And also, it should be also, you know, the real plan. How to do with it later on? Once these Afghans found the local police or they have been the regular police becomes powerful in order to extend it so all over the country. What are you going to do with local police? Are you going to integrate it into the Afghan national police? Or, in a worst case, let it go. Then probably the real possibility of seeing another militia. So therefore, three points. First of all, Afghan national police have come a long way. And it cannot be compared, it's not comparable today with the situation in 2003 when police reform started. Second, Afghan national police is still a security force. It needs to become a regular civilian police. It cannot happen overnight, but gradually they should be planned to do it. And finally, unless this police force is integrated with other elements of this stability and security rule of law in the country, it cannot become a single instrument of bringing security stability to the country. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Minister Jalali. It's now my pleasure to turn the program over to my colleague, former heard Bob Pareto, who is doing a lot of work with us in Afghanistan and Pakistan and police reform issues. And was for many, many years here at USIP leading our security sector reform work. So Bob will moderate the rest of the session. Thank you very much. And thank you, Mr. Minister, for your presentation. I'd like to welcome all of you here this afternoon. My name is Bob Pareto. And for many years I was here at USIP and it's great to be back again. Our focus today is looking forward. It's the post-2014 transition of the Afghan national police. As you've just heard from our first two speakers, this is not the first transition that the Afghan national police have undergone. It seems the transition is a genuine characteristic, a distinguishing characteristic of the Afghan national police. So today we find ourselves in a situation where as a result of a long-term US military training program, the Afghan national police are a basically militarized counterinsurgency force of around 150,000 members. The question before us this morning is, is that the force that Afghanistan needs going forward into a democratic future? To discuss this issue, we have a very distinguished panel of experts who have looked at this from a number of perspectives. Two of our panelists today are authors of new reports and Andrew introduced those reports. They're available outside the room if you haven't picked them up. If you look in your packet of materials or if you picked up the materials as you came into the room, you have the bios of our panelists. So I will limit my introductions in the interest of time. When the panel has finished their presentations and we asked each of them to speak for about 10 to 12 minutes, then we will open the floor for questions. And recognize a number of people in the audience. This is a group of people who know this issue well. Our first panelist this morning, sorry it's not this morning, again this morning. We've been together since about 11 o'clock this morning. So we got off to an early start. Our first panelist is Ambassador Catherine Royal, the former head of the International Police Coordinating Board Secretariat and former Deputy Ambassador of the United Kingdom in Kabul. Our second presenter will be Sean Stith, who is the former director of the International Security Assistance Force, Ministry of Interior Ministerial Advisory Group. Our third panelist will be the author of one of our reports, Michelle Hughes, who has been many things regarding Afghanistan, but probably the most relevant one is the former senior rule of law advisor to the National Training Mission Afghanistan Police Development Mission. And finally, we're gonna change subjects in the middle of our presentation here and take a closer look at the Afghan local police. We have two distinguished discussants who have written a very interesting report. One is Dr. Jonathan Goodhand, who is the co-author, one of the co-authors and he is a professor of development studies at the University of London. And his PhD candidate, Aziz Akimi, who is also a co-author of the report and also is a student at the University of London. Okay, so we will get started and we're gonna turn the microphone over to Ambassador Catherine Groyal. Thank you very much, Bob. It's a great pleasure to be here. I need to preface my remarks by saying that although I'm still a serving member of the British Diplomatic Service, my last two jobs working both as the head of the IPCB Secretariat and also as an advisor to the Minister of Interior. I've been seconded out of my ministry and therefore the Foreign Office can't take any of the blame for anything I'm about to say. It's great that people are interested in this subject because I think it did feel for quite a while that it was one of those Cinderella subjects. Everybody would be very happy to say absolutely having a good and functioning police force is vital to any country and any successful transition. And that's the sort of one of those motherhood and apple pie statements that you can make. And it's not just about security, it's about legitimacy. So it really does go to the heart of any stage. And you saw that again recently in Ukraine. When did the government lose its legitimacy? When the police left the square, it wasn't to do with what the military were doing. It was about the police, faded away, government fell, all sorts of things have happened since. But we did not behave in Afghanistan, certainly at the beginning. And I think the minister set that out very well. We did not behave as if the police really was something that we would do something about urgently, that this was a really important foundation for where we were all going on this. So we think it, but we don't act on it. And we found ourselves in the very complicated situation that the minister also described of having to build that sort of ability and that sort of institution in the middle of a fight. Not an easy time to do it. And when you talk to police professionals about reforming institutions in our own countries and then you try and get them to imagine doing it in the middle of an insurgency, they just sort of collapse at the even thought of it. So we set ourselves an enormous task. The ironic thing is, having decided it was important, but then not doing it, we'd already identified all of these lessons out of Iraq. This wasn't new stuff. We'd made all of these mistakes before. And when I became head of the IPCB Secretariat and found myself having to convince a somewhat reluctant NGMA that we needed to work together and have a real partnership, a sort of civil military partnership on the international side approaching this, one of the things that somebody helpedfully drew my attention to was a pamphlet that was done by Fort Leavenworth, the Army Centre for Lessons Learned. 2007, very, very good pamphlet called From Zero to Blue. And I was able to sort of get myself a sort of speaking slot in front of the assembled slightly hostile NGMA and say the military, the American military identified 13 golden lessons of what we should do in policing in this situation. I'd like to say proudly that we've broken 11 of them. So maybe we should have another go. And so we found ourselves in that situation in 2012, which is really quite shocking and explains why there's still a long way to go. The most critical lessons I'd say that come out in that pamphlet are with three and three of the biggest mistakes that we made. You need to focus on policing early for the reasons I've just said that it's such an important foundation. There needs to be local ownership of the process that you're doing. Well, that was pretty sadly lacking. And it took a very long time for us to understand that actually this was someone else's country and maybe we ought to take their opinion seriously. And that you need to distinguish the police from the army. The relationship that the police have with the population is fundamentally different from that that the military has with the population. And that is the basis of the difference. The sort of old Peelean principles of policing by consent, the relationship with the community that the minister also spoke about, absolutely vital and not at all central to the work that we had been doing on the police in Afghanistan. So some pretty basic problems there. Also, I would thoroughly agree with what the minister said about our disjointedness. I mean, it was major problem. We had adopted, we had a policy that was fundamentally adopt a province or adopt a force. And different nationalities had picked up different forces, taken them forward. And you can argue in the case of the French and ANCOP, they'd done a pretty good job. But how did ANCOP relate to anything else? Well, that was a bit of a mystery. And how it related to the idea of a sort of police that is integrated closely into a justice system and it's part of governance in that way. Well, it just didn't. I mean, fundamentally, and I think the minister hinted at this as well, that we hadn't really created an ANP. The ANP is a name. But even now, you don't join the ANP. You join ANCOP or you join the border police. And I mean, so you actually don't even have an institutional ethos of where you feel that your loyalty is to something called the ANP because that's just a name. And as the minister said, 2009, a really important new phase in all of this. And I mean, I can't express too highly my sort of appreciation and admiration for what NTA did at being stood up and generating the force in the time frame that it did. Absolutely extraordinary. I mean, when I arrived in Kabul first in September 2010, there were still people saying, this just couldn't be done. You couldn't even generate the force in the timescale that we were talking about. Well, we did, or NTA did. And an awful lot of hard work went into that. And we wouldn't be able to have the discussion now about where to go, how to turn this into a proper police force if that force hadn't been generated in the first place. So I'm certainly not coming from the perspective of those who sort of say, well, NTA got it completely wrong. They put the foundation there of the numbers and the force that could start us off and give us something serious to build on. And I also think, and it's sometimes overlooked, that one of the most important things that NTA has done for Afghanistan as a whole is put literacy at the forefront of training and development. And I would start to meet young guys who were joining the Afghan National Police. And I was down in Helmand as a Brit and going and talking to people in the Helmand Police Training College and sort of saying, why Earth are you joining the police? It's the death sentence. I think quite put the question like that, but it's slightly in the back of my mind. And a number of them said to me, because I know that in the course of my service, I've signed up for three years, I will be taught to read and write. And that will allow me to go back out of the police into the civilian world and I will be able to look after my family better and I will be able to do that. So not only has NTA made a forced generation, it's also done a development program on literacy. And that is something we mustn't forget when we look at how you go forward on the police. That is an angle that recruits people. It gets people into the police and it's a huge stimulus for that, but it's also developing the country. But, so all of that, good. On the other hand, we didn't build a police force. We built a security force, we built a paramilitary force. There were extraordinarily good reasons for that, but we needed to start preparing for the future. And I was talking to General Allen, former commisaf about this and he sort of said that he always recognized that there needed to be a proper eye out for a tipping point of when the need for security diminished and you had to go on into looking at a rule of law force. And I agree with him to a point. I think the problem is there isn't really a tipping point. You have to start preparing for a rule of law force and you don't just, there isn't a moment where you can say you move from one to the other. You have to sort of have your priorities, you have to do it all and then just shift the balance of what you're doing depending on what the activity is going. And it's a different priority and a different balance in different places in the country. And I think one of the things you could say is somewhere like Herat, for example, where there's less problems of insurgency, having a real focus on a rule of law and an ability to start doing that earlier actually gives a flagship, a pilot for other places in the country to look to and start looking at what a police force might look like. And perhaps because we were doing it so late in the day and under such pressure, we were not able to sort of do that, to build these two capabilities at once, run them parallel, shift the priorities, but that's where we need to get to and that's what we need to keep doing now. I became the head of the IPCP, Secretariat, you know, as the military say, I was voluntold. And it was because in the run up to the 2012 NATO summit, this issue that the minister also spoke about were we creating a rule of law force or were we creating paramilitary came to a head. And it came to a head because the non-American donors were being asked for a billion euros a year for the next 10 years to finance it, but were being told that they couldn't influence what it looked like and know it wasn't going to be, you know, what they wanted a rule of law force. And funnily enough, they said, then we won't pay. And that stimulated a discussion, which is useful. So the result of that was we need a proper discussion. We need to tackle some of these really difficult issues. We've, you know, we grappled now with the start of generating the force. We've gone a long way towards that. Now we really need to look at what sort of police force it's going to be. And for once, we managed not to invent a new institution. The IPC be already existed, but have become a little bit more abundant. And fortunately, somebody finally said, look, we've already got something with the right mandate. So let's not reinvent the wheel. Let's use something and just bring it back to life. And I unfortunately got the job of doing that. I had some pretty limited aims, which was just as well, because I didn't have a budget for the first five months and had to do things like beg for furniture. And I also had a staff that was made up of voluntary national contributions, which meant I had some absolutely excellent people and I had some people I needed to entertain. But that's the way of the world international organizations. So we gave ourselves some fairly limited goals. One was to actually agree a vision. Discussions had sort of started on this, but it hadn't really got us anywhere. And there were a lot of people who were putting forward their vision and saying that this is what the Afghans wanted. And it struck me that if we were ever going to coordinate international support, at that stage in the game, the only way to do it was to say, we will get our support coordinated behind what the Afghans want, because anything that is ours is too late. In 2002, 2003, we probably could have imposed a vision and got a consensus around it. But at that stage, it had to be an Afghan vision. So the first thing to do was to get that to happen and then to try and get the internationals to agree to align their support behind it. And as they spent their lives saying that they were there to support the Afghans, I was trying to hold their feet to the fire. And the other thing was to come up with some implementable plans. So we didn't just have something that was just, you know, this is what we're trying to aspire to. It was actually, this is what we're going to do about it in the next two years. So those were my aims for sort of a year's work. And I managed to help the Afghans produce vision in that time and to sort of stagger towards the beginning of a planning process that now has finally produced, you know, some time later, a set of two-year plans that actually look vaguely implementable. They're not costed, but they look implementable and we've got quite a long way on it. The vision is genuinely Afghan. It's one of the questions I'm asked about all the time. One of the things I did was to sort of put myself bodily between the international community and the Afghans and, you know, and let them give the Afghans space to do it themselves. And once they were given that space, they knew what they wanted. It was rubbish to say they didn't know what they wanted. And one of the rules that I sort of imposed that has much criticised forward was we are not going to any discussion with a piece of paper. Nothing is going to be put on paper. Before it's been discussed, we're going to have a discussion with our Afghan counterpart and then it's going to be put on paper because we had this terrible habit of going in and saying, we want to hear what you want to do. And by the way, here's our suggestion. And, you know, and that completely closed down the debate. And, you know, we ended up with nothing. So it was basically, well, we're going in with nothing and we're going to talk about it. You've no idea how upsetting it was to a culture dominated by PowerPoint to say, you cannot put anything on paper. But there we are. We proved to them that you could do it. And another, I mean, there were problems with it, differing visions. And I think one of the, oops, I'm in trouble. One of the problems was this, what I think is a false dichotomy between community policing and coin. I think they're the same thing. Community policing, for me, is not helping little old ladies across the road. It's getting the community to tell you where the IEDs are buried. So that strikes me as coin and counterterrorism and community policing. So that got us into trouble. And that's a debate we're still unfortunately having and we've got to get out of. The turf battles are still there. The lack of Afghan capability is still there. And I won't go all through the institution of capability because Bob will kill me. But I would just like to say a few things about the problems that are coming up. We've made huge progress, there's no doubt about it. The problems I have in my mind, the doubts I have in my mind, and my successors will have to deal with. Afghan commitment, what's the next minister going to do? We managed to pass the vision from Minister Patang to Minister Daudzai. Are we going to get it passed to the next minister? That's vital. The stovepipes, I talked about there being no ANP. That has got to be resolved. The cutting across of personal interests, building an institution that is not there to serve the personal interests of the various people in it but is actually serving the Afghan state. That is the biggest challenge of all. Call it anti-corruption. The political threats. In the last couple of weeks, Karzai has done some odd things to the special police. The anti-terrorist, most effective anti-terrorist force you've got. That's very, very worrying and it just shows you how easy it is to undo some really good stuff. Civic education. You have to be as old as me in Afghanistan to remember what a proper police force looks like. So that means that the whole generation of young people in Afghanistan need to be taught what to expect from the police. They need to understand what their rights are and what their duties are towards a police force and that civic education has to be done. The budget. How do you share the budget out between the army and police in a way that actually creates the sort of security you want in the country? We are part of that problem and make no bones about that. And I think there's a real issue there. Who's actually going to, on the international side, be the bodies that are there talking to the police on the ground discussing things? Up to now, it's been NATO ISAF. Resolute support won't look the same. I know the president has now come up with a number. That's fantastic news. But unfortunately, there's still a lot of discussion about what the mandate's going to look like and where policing fits into that. And there's an awful lot of people out there who say, oh, well, NATO's not doing policing anymore. Well, if NATO decides not to do that, we are all in deep trouble and we've thrown away an awful lot of money. So huge progress. I've seen for myself the daily bravery of the members of the Afghan National Police and the phenomenal people who are really doing their best and delivering and doing extraordinary things and taking casualties at twice the rate of the army. And they deserve our support for that alone, but also we've invested and we need not to lose that investment. Thank you. Thank you very much. So a lot, it's a big topic and a lot to cover. We'll ask Sean to speak next and we'll ask all of our panelists to keep in mind the time limits here because we do want to get to the audience, please. Sean, go ahead. I too will do a quick preface here to my comments. All of my observations are based on my role serving in NATO's ISAF as working within the Ministry of Interior Advisory Group there. I'm not a law enforcement professional at all. At best I'm a bureaucrat. I've got the budgeting experience, I've got some experience with organizational change but not in policing, either in Afghanistan or elsewhere really. I have done two tours there in 2011 and 12 and then most recently in 2013 and 14. I've been back here in the US for about 10 days now. So my observations may be a bit dated given the change that occurs there. They are also informed though by interactions with over 40 plus international stakeholders that also donated or sought influence within the Ministry of Interior and by Afghan leaders within the ministry and within the provinces for the provincial chiefs of police. They're also based on my observations of police performance in such recent issues as the Loya Jerga, the Gosney Islamic Festival, the Nauru celebrations, especially those inviting international leaders into the Kabul area and of course the round one of the presidential elections. As has been mentioned, NATO and ISAF originally focused on force generation and wow, what a tremendous effort occurred there. In less than three years, the size of the police force went from 67,000 to what is really over 200,000 personnel right now. They are the largest of the Afghan national security forces because they include the 157,000 members of the Afghan national police but also the Afghan local police, 30,000, the 20,000 members of the Afghan public protection force, 10,000 civil servants, UN site security, the central prisons directorate for the nation and the judicial security units. If you add it all together, it comes up closer to 230,000 members that fall within that MOI infrastructure. It is a resilient, capable and increasingly credible force and credible with both the coalition operationally and with the people of Afghanistan, especially in the wake of the election security. And that is a key aspect in ensuring security and credibility of the government of Afghanistan and the coalition's efforts in supporting them. At the same time, the MOI and the A&P have plenty of challenges. Political influence is paramount throughout the A&P, throughout the MOI. It is seen as one of the most susceptible to political influence in all of Jiroa and the government of Afghanistan. High personnel turnover and especially in leadership positions, turnover not meaning people leave the force but they're rotated in and out of different positions. It is a fragmented command and control structure. As you heard the minister mention, even within that 157,000, it's not a homogeneous organization like the Army has. No, it's broken up into the Afghan uniform police, which provide about half of that force, but also the border police that's given the task of securing the nation's borders for the first 50 kilometers from the border inland. If they are met by a foreign invader, whose role is it to stop them? The police for the first 50 kilometers. You've got the Afghan national civil order police, modeled on the John Darmory model. Rather than paramilitary, I prefer to think of them as a police force with military capabilities. But still tasked with law enforcement. The Afghan anti crime police, the counter narcotics police, the Afghan local police, the public protection force, the general directorate of police special units, SWAT basically, wow. And all of those forces answer not only to a centralized MOI and police force, but to provincial governors, district governors, et cetera. That's a tough organization to try and manage. And yet they seem to make it work somehow, dealing with multiple variables, complexities, simultaneously that we often don't understand. Given all of that, we also need to focus now on institution building and reform. This is really the underpinnings of all of that operational capability because all of those police forces that 200,000 person force relies upon pay to be processed by the ministry, relies upon supplies and food and facilities to be provided by a ministry. It's the establishment of enduring and repeatable processes, institutions, a bureaucracy, if you will, by a well-running bureaucracy that the ministry really needs and that the police forces of Afghanistan really need to endure. Transitions are occurring within that force. Geographically, the Afghans are in the lead throughout Afghanistan. Even as that geographic transition process started in 2011, though, the police were key to point out that in 20% of the districts, the police had always been in charge because neither the coalition or the Afghan national army had ever had an enduring presence in 20% of Afghanistan. The police were, are, and always have been in charge in those areas. Additionally, the establishment of security primacy by the police rather than the army is increasing. Police are still present in every single district and precinct of Afghanistan. That is not something that can be said by any other security force. At the same time, institutional capabilities need to be established and transitioned from either coalition provided or underwritten to enduring organic Afghan capabilities. A few of those areas, human resource management. Wow, that's the key to this police force. They are establishing and taking ownership end to end processes for recruitment through retirement. They're actually reforming their own processes right now to build in efficiencies that the coalition hadn't thought of. It is tough because they don't have an automated system. While it's being implemented right now, there are still challenges with it. Connectivity and implementation and execution down at the lowest levels. That will need to be maintained. Strategy plans and policies, another area of progress as the Afghans themselves only with coalition guidance but not capability replacement. Again, updated their national police strategy, their national police plan and unlike any of the other ANSF developed their own planning and multi-year program themselves this year. It's important to note that while the ANA is often pointed out as having superior products in that regard, it is done on a contracted basis underwritten by coalition funding and not an organic capability to the Ministry of Defense. There are areas that need improvement. Areas of material sustainment require a lot of maturity in their process, development, documentation and implementation. That's everything from financial execution of their budget, acquisition, procurement, contract management, as well as logistics, the timely ordering, warehousing and distribution of materials to the operational forces, as well as the maintenance of their extensive facilities. While the Army has decided to maintain 149 garrison locations in Afghanistan, the police have to maintain over 1,640 permanent facilities for that nationwide presence. It's a different type of game for the police. Other areas of progress include police intelligence. They've changed the paradigm. They recognize the police intelligence isn't military intelligence. That the majority of their actions will be the result of the population willingly providing information to the police so that they can respond when the people are in need. Other areas are slow and will be time consuming. Gender integration will require cultural changes well beyond the Afghan security institutions and movement to full western style community policing will also be generational in its implementation. In summary, the complete transition to traditional policing roles, the establishment of enduring, repeatable and self-sustaining ministerial processes will take time. It will take years to fully implement and mature. It will also be reliant upon the aligned, coherent and consistent approach of coalition forces in supporting their efforts. And really the establishment of a comprehensive achievable and resourced plan by all international partners. And I wanna underscore plan as being critical, not a collection of good ideas, but an articulated plan that leads from our current state to our final goal. Additionally, Afghan will and commitment to that effort will be critical, as well as the integration of the Ministry of Interior with other aspects of the government at large, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the control border issues as well, the Ministry of Finance for Resource Management, the Ministry of Justice for Justice Sector Reform and the Ministry of Defense, their partners in security operations. Only when all of these prerequisites are met will we truly be able to transition all capabilities to Afghan ownership. Thank you very much, Sean. I'd like to introduce Michelle and ask her to talk about her report. Well, first of all, before I begin, I'd be remiss if I didn't say thank you to USIP for giving me the opportunity to go back into Afghanistan again this year and really look at some of the aspects of the Afghan national police development that I was able to see at the very beginning, starting in 2009, and that now I'm starting to see come to fruition, and I'm frankly grateful to USIP for having the vision to look out forward and the willingness to project out into the future of the Afghan national police in 2015 and beyond. I agree with all of my colleagues here that the ANP really are key to the future of the security of Afghanistan. It's critical that we get this right, and the Afghans know that, and they share that. In fact, they are preeminent in that sense of importance. I would also be remiss if on this day, after Memorial Day, I don't acknowledge the sacrifices of those individuals who have worked over the years on behalf of the International Coalition to help build the Ministry of Interior in the Afghan national police. The sacrifice on the military side in terms of death and personal sacrifice time away has been phenomenal when you look across the coalition and the civilian side as well. Law enforcement professionals have played a huge role in helping the Afghan national police get to where they are today, and their personal sacrifices are not publicized, but they're great. So I just wanted to make sure that we don't forget what this has cost us. It's more than dollars, it's lives. I'm very fortunate as I sit here in that, first of all, my major conclusions are embodied in this report, which you all have. So you get to read it, and I don't have to try to hammer it into you in 12 minutes. So, phew, thank you for that. But I'm also fortunate because as we sit here today, I am one of the few people who has actually conducted a comprehensive security sector reform-based assessment of the Afghan national police over a period of time. I have conducted, on behalf of the US government and now, most lately, USIP, an assessment of this sort that looks at the linkages between policing governance and justice from the policing perspective every year since 2009. And I think it is a sad statement, frankly, on the degree of continuity that we have in the international community and our engagement with Afghanistan that there aren't more people like me. Because until you're able to really sit back and put some perspective on what has been achieved, what are the challenges remaining? What are the gaps yet to be closed? It's very tough to be opportunistic. It's also very tough to be optimistic. And I remain as we sit here today bullish on the ANP. I've seen them at a disastrous state. And through the years, I've seen a number of capabilities increase measurably, not the least of which is their ability to do strategic planning and articulate and execute their own vision for policing in Afghanistan. When I started with NATO Training Mission Afghanistan in 2010, I was asked to help the coalition come up with a strategy to connect the ANP with the rest of rule of law, whatever that meant in the Afghan context. And because of the absence of continuity and the fact that police development was over in a line of operation for security and governance and justice development were in their own lines of operation for governance and rule of law, there had been very little connection between the two and the thinking of how these things all work together. And so NTMA, looking at what had happened to the ANP around the 2006, 2007 timeframe, knew instinctively that something had to be done that was greater than trained and equipped. And so they wanted a strategy that would allow us to move forward and connect policing to justice and the rest of rule of law. And I was asked to look at that and I was told at the time that the Afghans that there was no vision for the future of the ANP. And so I began to engage with Afghan senior leaders and I realized that I was dealing with professional police officers who in some cases had been policing in this country for 30 years through three regimes and they had a vision of what policing was in Afghanistan but we didn't understand it. And we hadn't really stepped back and taken the time to articulate it. So that's what we began to try to do. And NTMA started talking in terms of building an institution, building an institutional culture and building an operating force. How do we dress all three top down and bottom up? And as we started to engage with the Afghans and bring them into this strategic planning process and strategic thinking process, it was very clear that they had thought through many of the aspects of these. And in particular, there's this question that Sean Stith brought up about change management. The degree of change that has occurred over the last three years with the ANP, when you're building an institution, a critical question is how do you build in the ability to manage transition and change? And this is where, and we talk about it in the report from this year, this is where the Afghans have, I believe, really made significant progress. As they have looked forward, and each of the last three successive ministers of interior have in fact articulated a vision for where they want them to go and then how do they build this institutional culture or restore the tradition of policing in Afghanistan? And with each successive minister's vision and the refinements of it, you've seen more of these elements put in there about community policing and the relationship between the police and the government that they serve and the government with whom they have to interact. And so I believe that this is one of those areas that's significant for the future of the ANP. It is one of those areas where we, as an international community, have an opportunity to, quite frankly, be opportunistic to link our governance development programs that continue in 2015 and beyond to clear deliverables that will help the Ministry of Interior strengthen its own vision and strengthen those institutional functions that enable it to manage change and manage the resources necessary to carry this vision forward. I wanna talk about this issue very quickly of building an operational force and the problem of a national police force and what that means in the Afghan context. It was fascinating to me when I was doing my field research in January of this year that every single Afghan I talked to at every level of government, inside government, outside government, civil society organizations, individuals, even shopkeepers, because I was able to get out and about this past January, even individual Afghans when I would ask them about the Afghan national police and its future. The very first thing they wanted to talk about was the need for the police officers themselves to understand the culture and the values of the country. And several people pointed out from the get-go that if the national police force is going to succeed, particularly as structure, as it's currently structured, police officers have to be able to go from province to province, district to district, and understand the underlying values of the people and the districts in which they serve so that they can engage with them, gather the information that they need in order to keep the community safe, and also to facilitate this transition from military security operations to law enforcement-led operations under Afghan criminal procedure and rules of evidence. And they can only do that if they can relate to the people on the ground and if they can relate to the local governance officials. Many of the programs that have been put in place such as the Afghan local police program as it stands today and a lot of the leader development that's going on in the Ministry of Interior and in the professionalization agenda is designed to build this. But where we are right now in terms of police development and training does not provide that level of education yet. And this is one of those elements of the minister's vision that I think they want to carry forward and where we can really assist in this. And again, in order to do this, this does require that we as an international community look very carefully at those development activities that we are going to continue to do beyond 2015. Look for the policing connections, the linkages, the dependencies, and the enablers that are in some of these other governance and education development programs and start asking the question of what can we build into this existing program that will further strengthen or sustain the progress that we have either begun with the ANP or that the ANP itself wishes to carry forward. The last thing I'm gonna say because I know I'm about out of time and I'm very sensitive that I want you all to be able to ask questions. But to me, the greatest impediment out of all of this has been the absence of consistency and continuity in the international community's approach. With every single change of leadership, whether it's on the civilian side or the military side, there has been a change in emphasis, priorities, and objectives. And the international community's framework for security sector reform, which is Ambassador Royal pointed out, was essentially volunteer for a province or volunteer for a function or volunteer for an organization, has allowed these shifts in prioritization with leadership changes so that it's been nearly impossible to have a consistent development approach. And when we talk about building an institution and institutional culture and an enduring operational force, this is truly a generational undertaking and we have to recognize that and accept it. And that means that there are certain decisions that really should not be made below the strategy and policy level. There are objectives that need to be set at the top and have to be adhered to at the operational level whether we're talking about civilian development missions or whether we're talking about military train advice and equip missions under operation resolute support. So these are decisions that have to be made at the policy level agreed upon by the international community. And I believe that if we can get this kind of at least some degree of consistency and continuity, then it will confuse the Afghans a lot less, but it will also enable us in this time of diminishing resources to put our focus on some critical institutional development issues. We've mentioned a couple of them in the special report. Ambassador Royal has mentioned a couple as has Mr. Stith. It will allow us to really focus in on those over an extended period of time so that we can build those institutional capacities in a way that the Afghans can then adapt that are culturally and resource appropriate and will become enduring. I believe in the Afghans, I believe in this mission. I would not have committed the amount of personal time and effort to it if I didn't. I am actually really impressed and amazed at the amount of progress the Afghans have made in the short period of time that they've had to do this. When you think about the task that not only the coalition took on, but that the Afghans have taken on, it is monumental change management. Contrast this with our own effort and our own government to stand up the Department of Homeland Security and it starts to put things back into perspective. And I think you can appreciate what's gone on here. I believe that we can sustain this, but I believe that we have to do it strategically and carefully in a very focused way. Thank you. Thank you very much, Michelle. We're now going to change our focus on what? We're going to move from focusing on the transition of the Afghan national police to looking at an element of the national police force, the Afghan local police. While the future of the ANP may be open to question, the future of the ANP may have already been decided. If you look at the Afghan national police strategic plan and its strategic vision document, you'll see that the ANP is supposed to be phased out by 2018. So we'll ask Jonathan Aziz if this is a good idea and ask them to talk about their research. Thanks very much, Bob. Thank you for inviting us here today. I mean, first of all, it seems in some ways it's slightly strange to be talking about militias in the context of a debate on policing. But I think the fact that we are shows, tells us something about the very hybrid and ambiguous nature of the security environment in Afghanistan. And although there may be seen to be very clear divisions between a soldier, a policeman, and a militia member, in Afghanistan, many Afghans may have been all three at one point in their lives, sometimes even simultaneously. So there's a lot of ambiguity around these terms. I think you should remember that. But I'm going to talk very briefly to give some background behind this study. And then Aziz is going to take over and talk about the findings. This is really the first study of its kind. And Aziz has been the primary person here doing empirical research to do longitudinal research on militias. And it was based on research in Kabul and in three provinces. And it, as I say, is one of the first longitudinal studies. And the research question we're asking was what have been the roles and the impacts of the ARP on security and political dynamics? And how do we understand it in relation to this kind of complex set of other interventions that are going on in the country? Now, the first thing to say is there's a history behind the ARP. And it didn't come in on a blank slate that we have seen the war years in which there's extreme fragmentation of the means of violence. And there are strong continuities between the pre-2001 period and the post-2001 period as well. The emergence of a new class of military entrepreneurs and also a long history of militia formation in the past. Sometimes it has been about supporting, strengthening the regime in power. Other times it's actually been about the fragmentation and undermining of the regime in power. And one of the ways of dealing with this history in 2001 was what has been by Ruben has talked about as prices of warlord democratization, folding in militia networks into the state. And with the result that what we've seen Afghanistan is what might call a rhizome state, a kind of formal set of structures and institutions underpinned by a set of informal networks and power relations linked to the various military actors. Because of this there's been an ongoing kind of set of trade-offs and paradoxes in the way international actors are attempting to deal with the security paradox and security dilemma in Afghanistan. On the one hand, trying to bureaucratize and centralize the means of coercion through SSR programs through the kinds of policing and implant activities we've been talking about. But on the other hand, there have been various ongoing attempts to work with informal structures, hybrid structures, which actually further decentralize the means of violence. This became increasingly the case post 2006. We're growing questions about the failures of top-down state building, the overly centralized and overly formalized, as it was seen then, attempts at very slow and ponderous efforts to build the state from the top to more bottom-up efforts. So working with militias can be seen in relation to this context. And this is where counterinsurgency, doctrine and state building came together. And this was based on what many of you here will be aware of, so I won't labor it. But I mean, it was about the conceptualization of a different kind of relationship between war-making and politics. So war-making wasn't about clearing the ground to enable politics to take over. War-making was explicitly political. David Kilken has written about this, about 80% politics, 20% fighting. War-making is about persuasion, as much about coercion. And so this interest in militias was very much linked to, and inseparable from this idea that war-making was a battle for governance, and the need to penetrate society, to reach out to society, and to provide security at the local level. And that's where ideas about militias were kind of reproduced, recycled, experimented with. And this also came out of a long, kind of longer term history of experimentation of counterinsurgency, doctrine in relation to the late colonial wars, Vietnam. And most recently then, the Sons of Iraq. And in many ways, it's got an old imperial history. Many of you will know about the Sandman system, which was on the Northwest frontier, a way, a form of indirect rule, of franchising out the means of policing to people on the periphery. And in Afghanistan, there was the reinvention of ideas like the Arbeki, tribal forms of policing. And one thing that we highlight in the report is how these ideas, often at their worst, were forms of crass Orientalism. They, first of all, misunderstood the nature of the Arbeki, and how they came emerged from a specific set of social, political, geographical conditions. And secondly, that there was the misunderstanding about how society, African society, has been profoundly changed over the last 30 years. And one can't simply reinvent tradition. But before handing over to Aziz, I think that the point here is to say that these experiments in militia-foundation formation came out of a complicated set of imperatives, both within Afghanistan and more broadly. And actually how they played out on the ground was the result of a very complicated set of broker and arrangements, negotiations, power plays, and the outcomes varied very much from one context to another. And we're usually very much not ones that were planned. I'll start by reinforcing very briefly what Jonathan was saying, because if you look at the title, the study is done in the context of counterinsurgency. Jonathan talked about its imperial origins and also its impact on state building. Because what we need to remember, and there has been this afternoon, the panel discussed the need for transition to civilian policing and traditional policing. But I think what we try to highlight in the report is the political economy, which has roots back in the 1980s, the Jihad, the armed groups that came to power. Then post-2001, many of the actors that we study were partners of the US military. They defeated the Taliban. And then they became the new power holders. So it's important to remember that, because I think quite often we forget that there is a larger political economy that will probably not change all that much, although Western resources will be withdrawn. But I think there will be more attempt to rent seeking. There will be more attempt at trying to generate sources of revenue as international resources draw down. So in that context, I think it's important to remember that the war is not going to die down. The Americans may leave, but the Afghan forces are the forefront of the fighting. And to discuss civilianizing the police, while the past 10 years, there has been so much effort and so much money has gone into paramilitarizing the police. To me, it seems a bit simplistic. And I think on that note, it's important to now contextualize the Afghan local police. Because just like the A&P, when the American military, primarily responsible for training the Afghan local police, has invested a lot of money into this force. And it's been contrary to its original idea of the Arma Ki being a traditional tribal policing force, not necessarily related to the state. It's been paramilitarized. And I think that's important to remember from now on. We point out in the report that the A&P is not the first experiment. I tend to argue that it goes back to 2001 to the beginning of the military intervention. Because a lot of the actors that we studied, particularly Kunduz and Bahlan, were former commanders, former militias of the Northern Alliance. So there is a sense of continuity there. And there was a number of experiments before the A&P. I mean, when we talk about the A&P, the Afghan government authorized it in 2010. That's when the presidential decree was signed after a period of intense negotiations between the US military and the command of General Petraeus and President Karzai. And we highlighted that the A&P was a compromise solution. It allowed General Petraeus to expand it nationally because he needed the force as part of the surge to battle the Taliban. For President Karzai and Afghan ministers, it was about centralizing the means of patriarchy. It was about trying to control it and have some sort of oversight over it. So Jonathan talked about the competing rationales. And this is, I think, a very, very important point to remember that for someone like President Karzai, it wasn't just about expanding it, but also about controlling it. And initially, of course, it was thought out as a short-term solution. It stood up in areas where there was no ISAF forces or no government forces. And this is one of the things that we highlighted in the report that because it needs so much oversight by government forces, generally, when you stand up forces in areas where there is very sort of these beyond government control, that's where a problem starts. It's difficult to monitor them. It's difficult. And the committee abuses. And all sorts of issues arise with that. But this is sort of the contradiction of ALP in itself. It stood in areas where there is no government control. But for it to be effective, it needs stronger state oversight. The criteria of a selection was, well, it was sort of simple because the first experiment of a joint Afghan US military force that was implemented was in Wardag in 2009 called the Afghan Public Protection Force. It was a program that ran for a year. And then it was discontinued for a variety of reasons. One of them was because the US military was not happy with it. It was too much central control, too much ministry of interior bureaucracy. So from that, and the idea was that you should have expanded to other provinces, but it didn't. So the US military, especially US special forces, then tried to do it at ad hoc bases in the South primarily. But it didn't have government control over it. It didn't have a ministry of interior link to it. And I think that was the beginning of the problems between the Afghan government and the US military because Karzai saw it as a way of, he didn't have control over it. These were empowering local commanders. And that was seen as a problem. And it lacked legitimacy, oversight, state legitimacy. And we do sort of comparison between the three cases because it offers a way for us to do it because it's in three geographical areas and between different time periods. Briefly on findings, in the case study, we made the point early on that we did this sort of historical research. It was grounded and historical. So we look at these armed groups going back in the 80s and then in the 90s and then post-2001 because we were drawing a picture of the local security structure, the context. Who are the people that came to power? How did they manage sort of their forces, oversight and control over them? And many of them avoided the UN led disarmament program. So a lot of them had their weapons and networks and means of cohesion. And what happened is because in Wardach, over the years, going back to the early 1990s, it was a very fragmented security environment, competing militia groups, commanders. Even in one valley, there were three commanders that were basically working across purposes. Each one was undercutting the other, trying to influence the ALP. And for the American military, it was very difficult because they didn't know who to trust and who not to trust. Because their agendas were different. They all wanted to control this because it's a means of resources. And we talked about the various agendas involved. For the Americans, it was about expanding it. For Karzai, it was about controlling it. For local power holders, it was a source of rent. And it was important to control it. So in Wardach, our findings indicate that injecting the ALP and injecting these kind of resources, strategic resources, actually led to further fragmentation. It didn't consolidate. It didn't lead to any sort of improvement in security or help re-exerting government authority, because that was one of the ALP's main rationales to link the central government to the local level. And that's the reason why you call it the local police. In Baghlan, we draw very different securities environment. If you go back to early 2001, when the Taliban left Baghlan, Jamiat, the Andarabis district in the south of Baghlan, most of the commanders that took power post-2001 were from Andarab, and they belonged to Jamiat Islami. They were held by the Islami, who had very close links with the Taliban. So they simply changed the caps, and then they allied with the Americans, and with the Jamiat forces. But because of the dominance of the national police, by the Jamiatis, the Pashtuns and the Islami commanders felt marginalized. So for them, the ALP was a way of renegotiating the dominance of the Jamiat party, the Jamiat commanders. So then instead of bringing the A&P and the ALP closer together, actually the gap was widened, and it led to a series of problems in terms of integration, in terms of command, in terms of almost created ghettos within Puli Khumni, the center of town. You had government forces that were Afghan national police, and then you had ALP, which were in villages, and they completely, one couldn't go to the other's area. Lastly, in Kunduz, ALP succeeded in pushing back the insurgent, temporarily improved security, but preserved the power of the Jamiat-led coalition, which if you compare it to Baghlan, it had totally the opposite effect. And references were made to the minister of interior at the time, Muhammadi, and he saw it as a way of empowering his own networks. Just very briefly, I think this is important to mention, there's a lot of talk about the ALP committing human rights abuses. But what we did, we also looked at the ALP recruits themselves, how they were endangered by the program, how their communities were endangered. Because in a contested environment, as soon as you stand up and say, I am with the government, you just become a target for the Taliban. And one of the things that was kept, we kept it in reminded by especially ISAF in terms of ALP's success was because it was heavily targeted by the Taliban, almost like six times more than the ALP, which points to also their vulnerability. And I think this is something we need to keep in mind. We talk in terms of coercive pressures, why people joined, pressure from commanders. There was also need to maintain symmetry between different forces, as well as because it was for economic reasons. And I think with that, I'll come to the end, but we have some recommendations. One of them was that not to expand the program further because there's uncertainty over what to do with this force. There should be stronger oversight and support to the ALP. And that brings me back to the early paradox I mentioned, that it stood up in areas where there's very little government control, but then it needs stronger state oversight. The important thing is, and I think this was pointed out in a number of interviews, is to centralize the means of patronage through the Ministry of Interior pay recruits rather than commanders because that's where the dynamics are created, dynamics of dependency and network and patronage. And then lastly, integrate ALP into the Afro-National Police and the ANCF. And with that, I'll end my presentation. Thank you. Thank you very much. You've been a very patient audience on your turn. The way this is done here, because we have cameras in the room and because we want to capture your questions on television, if you want to ask a question, we ask you to move to one of the two microphones on either side of the room. When you ask your question, we'd like you to state your name and your affiliation. And I'd also appeal to everyone who asked the question to be brief. We would like to get as many questions in as possible. And so now is the time. Please move to the microphones. And when we'll take advantage of this couple of minutes here while people are moving around the room to ask so that I can ask a question. I want to exercise my prerogative as a chair and ask the first question. My question is, today it was revealed or announced that the United States will be leaving 9,800 military personnel behind after the withdrawal of US military forces at the end of 2014. And I want to ask the three experts on the panel who have been concerned with the transition process, what they know about this and whether they think this is adequate and how this will be implemented. So quick responses, and then we'll move to questions. I think that the numbers are at least consistent with what the commander of ISAF has long proposed as being sufficient for a regional presence throughout the country. It will, of course, limit coalition engagement to the ministry and the capital region, as well as to four other regional nodes to provide both training and oversight of different police capabilities. I think the only thing I'd add to that is that what's going to be really important is defining the remit and the mission of those troops and making sure that we really use them to the best effect. And we get proper value for money for it. And from where I'm sitting, it's important that policing is given its due importance in that. Michelle? Yeah, the only thing that I would add to that is, first of all, I think it actually could be positive that we have fewer numbers. Fewer numbers means less opportunity to get in the way, but it does force us to really focus in and be strategic in our engagements. And the other thing is, is I do think that we need to be very careful that we look at how do we want to monitor and oversee our investment with a more consolidated presence? Obviously, we have less eyes and ears on the ground. I noted this January that I was actually shocked at the degree to which people in Kabul had so little visibility on what was going on outside of Kabul and going on the ground. There was a huge difference that I had noted from before, and I think that that needs to be addressed as we look at the forced posture for the 9,800. Okay, let's take our first question. What I'd like to do is take two questions. So ask the first person to ask this question, the second person to ask their question, then we'll break and have the panel respond. So please. Thank you. Can you hear me all right? Thank you. I have two questions, actually one to the panel and then another one specifically regarding the AALP. The microphone is for the television, so please hold it up. Hold it up, okay. Two questions and one regarding the AALP and the other one regarding the issue about the future of policing. My name's Mike Cayman, I was formerly with the NATO forces in Afghanistan. To the panel, what I didn't hear is any mention of corruption and the elements of corruption and how it's going to affect the Afghan police and how it's going to affect Afghanistan in the future. Some have said, I say that probably the greatest enemy to the government of Afghanistan right now is the issue of corruption. I think the police perception, the police perception analysis, which was done by the UNDP two years ago, indicated that less than one third of the population has any confidence in the Afghan national security forces. Transparency international has rated them as 143 Afghanistan, 143 out of 145 as corruption index. The question is, I did not hear that as a factor in the future and I'd like to know if you first of all think it is a problem and if you do, how it should be addressed. Regarding the AALP, what I'm interested in the AALP, and I've often wondered how well the members of the AALP are vetted. How do we know what their loyalties are? How do we know that their loyalties are predominantly, not predominantly local rather than national? And what's going to happen if things get sticky in Afghanistan? So my question is, I didn't see in your recommendation any discussion regarding the abolition of the AALF and I wonder if that is a possible recommendation you might have, thank you. Thank you for two good questions. Yeah, thank you. My name is Faribo Parsa and my question from George Mason University. My question is to Ms. Hason. It's about the women in police forces regarding the culture and values in Afghanistan. You mentioned, what are the challenges? Thank you. Thank you very much. Let's turn to the panel for a response. Who wants to take on, we probably ought to admit that we had this huge conversation in our pre-meetings about corruption so we're probably all talked out on that subject but I'll turn it over to Ambassador Royland. We can go down the line. Thank you very much and of course, absolutely right and completely right to call us out on it and not mentioning corruption. And I think from where the work I've been doing, where I think you need to tackle corruption is by building the institutions. And one of the things that we were trying to do in the institutional reform agenda is to tackle the minor issues of a proper human resource policy where you appoint people by merit instead of people paying for their jobs and actually try and set up criteria for jobs. I mean that is a long, it's the only way to do it but it's gonna be a hell of a long process to get from where they are now of everybody buying a job to get two people doing things on merit. The other thing is actually how the money flows. That is something we have more immediate control on but of course it's a very blunt instrument to turn off funding in response to corruption so it's quite, you've got the control technically but you haven't really. But I do think one of the things that we were working very hard on and is still there in the vision and is still proceeding is to try and move the ministry onto program budgeting. So you actually have a financial accountability mechanism that the moment is lacking because at the moment, although you know it's going on, you haven't even got a mechanism whereby you can start asking the difficult questions. So that's where I would start tackling it. Can we ask for a response on the ALP question? Well in terms of recruitment and of course the document, the ALP guidelines put a lot of emphasis on local communities and village councils and local councils playing a role in identifying recruits, vouching for them and then there's a process that they should be vetted by Afghan government institutions including Ministry of Interior and the Intelligence Service to make sure that they're not members of the insurgency that they're not drug users and all that but in a lot of cases, recruitments are not necessarily done on an individual basis. Recruitments are done through commanders. So if you approach a commander, for example, I mentioned the name of one commander in Wardag, he was approached at the time when the US military had a very difficult time around 2009 because there were no recruitments. Pashtuns were simply not coming forward or afraid of the Taliban. So he brought 500 of his men of his old networks and stood them up as a local police force. So that tells you a lot about questions of vetting and all that and one other example of how their loyalties are questionable, I interviewed two young ALP recruits in Baglan in 2012 and I asked them what they were doing before and they said, oh, we were members of the Taliban because the ALP was also implemented alongside the reintegration program. So a lot of the recruits that were reintegrated from the Taliban found themselves in the ALP. So when I asked them, will you go back to the Taliban if the government couldn't pay? And they said, of course we will. So it's very complicated on the local level. As I mentioned in my presentation, there are economic reasons, there are pressures from commanders, pressures from local communities, even from the insurgency. So, I mean, I hope I've answered your question there. Do you wanna ask, Michelle, do you wanna comment on the women's issue? Yeah, I'm very happy to comment on this one and thank you for your great question because not only have I been looking at this from the perspective of the Afghan national police but also from a parallel project on women and community security globally that looks at what we do and how do we integrate women into security institutions and traditional societies. With the ANP, this is to me a very interesting phenomenon. When we initially set up the force structure, women were distributed across the force structure in a pretty much a percentage basis as part of the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 commitment. And there was not a lot of thought given to the operational imperatives that drive women in the ANP and it wasn't working very well, quite frankly. Interestingly enough, as we started to mature some of the high-end police units, particularly those in the general director of special police units, the SWAT teams who were the first units who were really trying to do evidence-based operations in critical internal security cases. Those commanders, the ones that logic would tell you would be the last to be asking for trained Afghan women police were begging for trained professional Afghan women police. And on their tashkills, on their organizational structure, they actually did not have the slots for them to the degree that the regular units did. And so I think what I am seeing on this and the trend that I've seen is as the units have matured and as they've actually become more capable and the commanders have become more focused on doing evidence-based operations and getting them through, those are the units where women are having the most success, those are the women where, those are the units where the women are getting greatest acceptance. And I think that we're going to see that on a very, very slow gradual level, but we as international community need to be very sensitive to this. Interestingly and unfortunately, I think we haven't always taken advantage of these situations when they've occurred. We haven't reallocated slots, for example. But that's where I see it sitting now and I saw no change to that when I was in Kabul and I was in Kabul when the first district chief of police who was a female was appointed. But I didn't see a change in the trend. Thank you very much. We have a small amount of time left and we have three questioners. So I would like to take all the questions that we have remaining and then we'll have the panel respond. Yeah, thank you so much. My name is Zafar Khan and I came recently from Afghanistan. Up until recently I worked with United Nation Peacekeeping, a special political mission, Yunama. I just have a few comments and a question and I'll be very brief on that. First of all, thanks so much to the USIP for organizing such forums where we actually discuss the important issues to find a good solution for Afghan futures and especially for the policing to safeguard the Afghan people and at the same time to safeguard the democratic process that is going on. My own personal observation because I've had the chance to work for SSR on behalf of Yunama in Bahamian region where I had the chance to find out the problems that related to the policing. And one of the issues was, which was always discussed and which was also as shared was, you know, like lack of equipment, buildings, which we always tried to share that with our headquarters, you know, with the relevant authorities. But, you know, it looked like that there was Gabe and there was a lack of coordination between the relevant authorities at the Kabul level, which nobody paid attention, especially when the security transition took place. The first phase took place in Bahamian and where Mr. Ghani came and he promised $50 million to boost the security services and forces in Bahamian province. But unfortunately, none of those promises was fulfilled. And the same happened with the other provinces and other phases of the security transition. And unfortunately, Mr. Ghani earned a name called transitionist. On the other hand, I'm from Lagar province, which is in the south of Kabul. And I've personally seen the ALP, the creation of ALP as a problem that, you know, it creates a technical problem between the people at the village level, at the district level. So my question is that, what if the international committee had fulfilled the promises that were made during the transition process? Actually, the research were done before the transition takes place, like in Bahamian, like in Baghlan and Mazar Sharif and the rest of the provinces. But none of those promises was met, was fulfilled. And at the end, actually, the trust, the lack of trust between the people and the government was created. And I think that's gonna create a big problem in the future too. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Can we have the second question? Yeah, hi, my name is Myrna Gallick. I'm from the State Department, but this question is in my personal capacity. I wanted to tease out Ambassador Royle's question of who it is that will be providing the civilian policing oriented assistance and capacity building. Since NATO's mandate does not include civilian policing and NATO members are explicitly opposed, certain ones to expanding, the mandate in that direction, arguably, RSMs assistance won't be sufficient. So is it the EU mission? Is it the UN, or is there an opportunity to maybe expand the IPCP secretariat to include more explicitly civilian, policing oriented advisors, as opposed to the ones who are in the mags that have more of a military background? I wondered if you could comment, thanks. Thank you very much. I'm looking forward to the answer to that question myself. And my name is Kili Sullivan. I'm with the Talk Radio News Service and I just wanted to ask the panel to comment on President Obama's recent decision to keep less than 10,000 troops in Afghanistan in order to support infrastructure. And I just wanted to ask how you speculate that that would affect the AMP. Thank you. Thanks very much. Good questions. How should we do this? Should we start from the other end of the table and just work our way up? And when we get to me again, I think we'll have run out of time. So Jonathan, do you want to take a shot at any or all of those questions? I think there's a lot of people who are working on the transition issues. Okay, should we start with Michelle? Not to defer, but I think actually Sean and Catherine are probably the two best to answer that last group. I think we did address, to some extent, the 10,000 number and how it will impact. I personally believe that dropping the number to 10,000 or below will force greater focus and will also force greater autonomy on the Afghan side. And quite honestly, my estimate is based on the most recent interviews I've done this January and the time I was spending in country in late 2012, the Afghans are looking forward to us getting out of their way. So I will leave it at that. I'm gonna bounce around a little bit to a few of the questions. With regard to some of the support that Dr. Ghani may have promised across different provinces, it's important to note that that support also included support in kind. The equipping of the Afghan national security forces, which was not cheap. And while there is an insatiable appetite for more, for increases in pay, salary, benefits, increases in equipment, the fact that the Afghan national army still asked for nuclear weapons to counteract Pakistan, the fact that the Afghan national army and police still asked for tanks, as well as occasionally naval vessels for the army to be able to provide power projection worldwide. That doesn't mean that that automatically gets support. So while there are requests for additional resources, the international community does not always support those. As far as support being provided, it is still rather substantial and significant because it is not only provided through NATO, ISAF, US funding, but in the case of the national police, again, 30 separate non-NATO, non-US bilateral agreements to provide resources to the ANP are there for somebody picking it up beyond NATO. It's obvious that the State Department does not want to take ownership of the policing development problem right now. It is obvious that the Department of Defense does not want to take ownership completely of police development, especially as it is regards law enforcement capabilities. NATO on the military side has signed up to build a security institution and a security force that's to stabilize the nation. There are efforts that look at UPOL, that look at the EU, that look at the civilian side of NATO, that look at the Organization for Security Cooperation Europe to take on an increased role, but all are in fact looking at the International Police Coordination Board as the primary vehicle to coordinate those activities. Neither the UN Development Program, UNAMO or others feel that they are currently positioned to be able to coordinate those activities, especially giving the myriad of players that are there. Finally, with regard to the troop numbers, again, the ISAF position at least has been that these troop numbers are consistent with the plan for a regional presence as well as a ministerial and capital presence in Kabul and that it will be sufficient to meet the development needs under resolute support. I want to just amplify something because the report does talk quite a bit about a couple of recommendations vis-a-vis the State Department role and also the International Police Coordination Board. Absolutely essential that the IPC be strengthened, not just as a coordinating body across the international police donors and that donor map is expanding even as we sit here today. It was 27 countries about two years ago, it's now up to 40 plus, but also because that is the counterpart to what the Ministry of Interior itself needs to build in order to do its own management of the expanding donor map. And finally, we make a very strong recommendation in the report that regardless of who has the lead for actually doing the technical train and equip and continuing the train advice and assist mission of the A&P, the State Department really does need to take a stronger hand in creating clear U.S. government objectives and in creating assessment frameworks and providing oversight that ensure that U.S. government, rule of law, programming writ large or law enforcement related programming writ large connects to policing development so that we can get greater coherence. Thank you. I mean, I think on the promises that were made in the transition process, I think one of the, I totally agree with Sean's view that actually an awful lot of expenditure did take place, but not perhaps in the way that Dr. Ghani perhaps made people hope that it would. But I do think also that there is a real lack of a proper needs assessment or capability of doing a needs assessment. And so, you know, when you are actually looking at coming up with these sorts of figures and what they're for and what you would do with it, actually you're lacking some of the basic planning and tools that would allow you to do that in a coherent way. And that is a problem in when expenditure gets assigned and how that happens. But, and I think when you talk about the police themselves, there is a real disconnect and you mentioned it yourself between what's going on in provinces and back in Kabul. And in fact, there is a report into the development of the police and the MOIs and institution that says that the MOI urgently needs a sort of body within it that is a one-stop shop for provincial police forces to go to and say, look, we need to discuss these problems we've got and get that team inside the Ministry to go and try and work through solutions for them, where at the moment there's nothing there. They are phoning from whichever province into Kabul trying to find somebody who's interested in their problem. And there just isn't a system of coordination there. In terms of who will do this, I mean, you know, it is really worrying. Everybody in hopes that the IPCB will be able to do it. I mean, having run it, I don't think it will. And as I say, I didn't even have a bud. I managed to blag $5 million off the very kind Japanese government. It then took me five months to get my hands on it because it had to come out through the UN accounts. And when you start to run it in that sort of way, you really, you've got problems. And my successor, Gerald Sturter, has been looking at hemorrhaging of staff that's nothing to do with his agenda and the way he's running the organisation. But the Australians and the Canadians who'd been very stalwart supporters of the IPCB finished their police programmes and his key members of staff just left. And the idea that you can go from that position and then put this organisation at the heart of this, I think, oh, that it was so, but I genuinely don't think it is. There's also still an issue that when people talk about coordination, everybody says that they believe in coordination, but they don't want to be coordinated. And again, so that is a real challenge for IPCB. So who is going to do it? I actually think MOI needs to do it. I think it is time that this coordination role of the international community belongs to the ministry. That's what we do in every other country where we do development work. There is a group inside the ministry that the donors liaise with and they decide the priorities between them and they have their negotiations and they come up with the programme. It's not foolproof, it's not perfect, but that's what we do everywhere else and that's what we should be doing in MOI now. I think there is a role for IPCB into help support that team being set up in the ministry to help it get where it is. It means different staff in IPCB who would be experts in programme management and project development and help build that capability in MOI and then IPCB could fade away and the Afghans would have actually had a capability built. And so that's... And then, basically, there would be, you know, identifying a need, identifying a project that needed to be doing and going and talking to donors and saying, how are we going to do that? And if you end up with the people delivering it on the ground, being contractors or through local organisations, well, that's how we do it in the rest of the world and I don't think it should be different. So I think we should be looking to transition the programme and the support to that sort of model. Thank you very much. I'd like to thank the members of the audience that asked some very good questions. And I'd like to thank our panellists for some really excellent presentations. I'd like to provide a round of applause for our panel.