Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform (GFN-SSR)

Security Sector Reform Monitor: Afghanistan

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While Afghanistan has made progress in statebuilding, economic growth and human development, these positive signs have not stemmed the rising tide of insecurity in the country. This paper, published by The Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), reviews and analyses recent development and trends in Afghanistan’s security sector reform (SSR). Despite an infusion of resources and an acceleration of international programming, Afghanistan’s increasingly adverse security environment highlights continuing problems of corruption, clientelism and lack of coordiantion among the international donor community.

Kabul has recently seen a decline in security incidents, yet insecurity remains acute outside the capital. While the increased United States (US) military commitment to fighting the Taliban is a welcome sign, it has generated increased civilian casualties. These casualties have provoked anger and resentment among most Afghans and given the Taliban an effective propaganda tool with which to win over supporters.

This report is part of a larger CIGI project that regularly monitors SSR development and trends in five countries: Afghanistan, Burundi, East Timor, Haiti and South Sudan. The following review of the current status of SSR in Afghanistan reveals both positive results and ongoing problems:

• Personnel strength of the Afghan National Police (ANP) has increased rapidly due to expedited recruitment. However, petty and grand corruption is endemic; despite human rights training, the ANP is still a major human rights violator.
• The ANP also suffers from its highly militarised character: it is modelled as a paramilitary force rather than a domestic police force versed in community policing techniques.
• Current judicial reform includes administrative restructuring and assessment of qualifications for judges, and new pay and grading structures. However, it still does not function as a trustworthy judiciary; approximately 80 per cent of Afghans seek legal remedy through informal structures, such as village shuras, or councils.
• Afghanistan’s prisons are now operating at twice their capacity; their conditions do not come close to meeting international standards.
• The recently constituted Afghan Public Protection Program (APPP) is intended to create a community defence response to fill security gaps and backstop the police. Donors and Afghans fear the APPP may empower local armed groups and warlords at a time when the state is struggling to impose its writ across the nation.

Despite an infusion of resources and programming, Afghanistan’s SSR process continues to face the following challenges:

• Geographical expansion of the insurgency: violence is gradually spreading to heretofore stable areas, including the central provinces adjoining Kabul.
• Insufficient resources hamper programming in some areas of SSR, notably the judicial sector, which has been chronically underfunded.
• High levels of security sector corruption and clientelism reflects the need for robust oversight and accountability structures.
• Coordination shows no sign of disappearing. Significant differences in interests and approaches of national and international stakeholders have fostered reform confusion and aid waste and overlap.

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