Afghanistan’s foreign minister, Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, has asked the United States to give more assistance to Afghan institutions in order to press the fight against terrorism and the drug trade. And conjuring up bad memories of an American quagmire from four decades ago, Spanta also has called for the “Afghanization” of security operations.
“We encourage the international community to invest in Afghanistan’s national security forces — the army, police, and other security entities. That will be the precondition of Afghanization of the security sector in Afghanistan,” Spanta said. “This will be cheaper, more acceptable for you and your taxpayers, your public opinion and of course the Afghans, to take more responsibility. We are determined and we will take more responsibility.”
Spanta made the comments during an appearance at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank, on February 26. Spanta was in Washington as part of a large delegation from Afghanistan, which, along with another delegation from Pakistan, engaged with top US officials in a comprehensive review of American strategy toward that region.
Last year, the BBC reported:
The BBC’s Elettra Neysmith says “Afghanisation” is a popular concept at the moment within Nato. She says it has been cynically described as a “get out of jail free” card for Western countries mired in the deepening Taleban insurgency
Hrm. Just over two weeks ago, Christian Mark Bleuer noted:
Ok, that’s clear enough. But it’s obvious that the people or person who came up with this word is not an historian. Because if they were they would know about the historical usage of “Afghanisation.” The term was coined by a British Major (later Colonel) by the name of Charles Edward Yate. Essentially, “Afghanisation” described his plan for the ethnic cleansing of certain northern areas populated by Hazaras, Aymaqs, and especially, Uzbeks and Turkmens. They were to be replaced by Pashtuns who presumably would not be open to Russian overtures (everything was about imaginary Russian threats back then) and who would hopefully be loyal to the central government (Ishaq Khan certainly wasn’t). With further input from Captain (later Major) J.P. Maitland and the delivery of British subsidies the policy was implemented by Amir Abdur Rahman. The effects were devastating. Remarkably, or typically, Abdur Rahman managed to hurt every community he could. Pashtuns were also victimized extensively during his rule.
Right, of course. As Christian noted, Mohammad Hanif Atmar, then Minister of Education and now Minister of the Interior, was pushing “Afghanization” of the war effort at least a year ago, and the contemporary usage of the term stretches back at least to 2007. Interestingly, the Ministry of the Interior is responsible for the so-called Afghan Public Protection Force, a pea-brained idea to arm tribes in Wardak and Logar. Hrm. What did Spencer Ackerman just report?
Defense Minister Wardak said that the APPF was a response to the “pressing need for more troops on the ground” to protect the civilian population from Taliban attacks. Run through the Ministry of the Interior, representatives of the Afghan government will ask “30 to 40 influential people” in the province to nominate between 200 and 300 people to provide “public protection” but not “law enforcement.” The force will be under the normal chain of command established by the ministry in the province. Pressed by Politico’s David Cloud, Wardak said that the program could be expanded to “high threat areas.”
But Wardak didn’t appear entirely comfortable with the idea. He said that the Interior Ministry would need to “exercise maximum caution” to ensure that the program does not “create a new warlord or reinforce the old ones.” He explained the program was an emergency response to shortfalls in U.S., NATO and Afghan troops, and indicated that he thought the APPF program needed to be temporary. Recruits who prove “trustworthy [and] capable” will have opportunities to join the Afghan national army and police. But the program would ultimately be “disintegrated.”
Right, because these sorts of programs are always “disintegrated” and never take on lives of their own and rapidly become uncontrollable. Certainly not in Afghanistan.
I remain aghast that such an obviously horrible idea that not even the Afghan Defense Minister can fully support has so much inevitability attached to it.
Update: Spencer posts more details about the APPF, courtesy Minister Atmar. I’ll just reprint my comment to his piece, in full.
Holy moly. So the purpose of these guys is to perform “community policing,” but they don’t have a mandate for law enforcement, but they’re meant to be later integrated into the police and Army, but they’re all about disarming more militias?
None of that makes any sense. They sound like either dead weight on the police force — little more than security guards with who-knows-what rules of force — and without the normal accountability structures that actually keep informal forces like Arbakai and Lashkars in line with their specific communities’ interests.
Each new detail makes the plan sound worse, not better.
Well, I never claimed to be grammatically or syntactically perfect (this IS writing off the cuff, you know). But I think you all get my point.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor.