... Advisors who never get to interact with the locals outside the security of coalition bases are severely restricted in both the situational awareness that will inform good decision-making, and in their ability to manage projects. If advisors are not out among the population, it is fair to question the quality of advice they can provide to locals and to their superiors back home. The Government's announcement that our contribution to the US-led 'surge' would be additional police trainers is likely to replicate this risk-averse approach. So I don't share Mark O'Neill's view that the announcement was 'sound policy'.
Sound politics, for sure, but sound policy? Just as advisers who cannot go outside the wire are constrained in the quality of the advice they give and receive, police officers who train but cannot mentor will produce sub-optimal results. This is not to criticise the efforts that the police trainers will put in. Rather, the issue is that training without mentoring produces good objective data (numbers of police trained) but no subjective data (how do they perform once they leave the base?). There is little point in training police inside a base and then releasing them into their own cultural environment with the attendant familial, ethnic, financial and cultural pressures and expect them to become bastions of probity and respected members of the community. When the security environment is deemed too risky for the trainers to accompany the Afghan police officers on their task, it doesn't send a great message to the trainees...
More at The Interpreter.
Dr. Rodger Shanahan was the Chief of Army Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy and is now a non-resident Fellow at the Institute. The Interpreter is the blog of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, an independent international policy think tank.
Comments
Shanahan is certainly on the right track!
In 2008 I never talked with any Afghan in the eastern provinces that had any faith in the ANP. Most were proud of the ANA but would choose the Taliban over the ANP any day. Surely our "train and release" methods are failures. We need US inbeds with the police as we need them with the ANA and with village Arbakai.
I find it incredible that you just put police officers through an academy and then turn them loose on the street. Every Police Officer in Ameraica goes through the academy and then is assigned to a training officer for a year before he is turned loose by himself. No wonder they are having such problems.
Look this is nothing new, the whole Police Training program has had these issues since its inception and worse. Not going to ding the trainers they can only work within the parameters that the State Department sets for them. The level of graph and corruption within the Afghan National Police (ANP) is astounding in one location a few years ago they refused, no couldnt pay the officers at one location cause they mysteriously couldnt find the keys to the safe that the officers pay was stored in. The mysterious missing keys reappeared the day after the inspector who was there to observe the ANPs pay procedures left. This way the Commander and his minions could charge the officers, for food, fuel and uniforms all of which is provided to the officers by the government. Then there are the unofficial vehicle check points where "tolls" are charged by the ANP under the orders of their commanders and even sometimes the District and Provincial Government Officials at all levels.
Look without the mentors going out with the police to instruct and provide guidance at all levels these types of situations will continue and continue to alienate the local populace.
Agreed. Advisors & mentors need to be embedded with the ANP.
As a PMT chief in Kandahar in 2008, I worked with a couple of great Dyncorps police mentors. Unfortunately, they were subject to restrictions that we could do nothing about (I couldn't get them moved to my tiny FOB....not enough security was the reason). Being an Army guy with no police experience, I relied on these two for their police backgrounds and knowledge. Having them at my FOB would've helped me develop training for the ANP as well as know what to look for when evaluating them.
Dr Shanahan is also spot-on regarding the message we send tio the ANP when we don't share their dangers. Our laser-like focus on force protection keeps us, the US advisors, from walking too far from our vehicles, from riding in ANP rangers, from actually embedding with these guys that we are supposed to be training and advising. This needs to change.
By sharing their dangers, we earn their trust. When we earn their trust, they actually start listening to what we impart to them. This is a key part of "advising".
Slapout9 is right: the best practice in police training is to have the new police officer work closely with an experienced officer on the street while learning how to apply the academy lessons to the real world. I have seen some communities that regard that best practice as a luxury, but when you're trying to make major changes in a culture that isn't accustomed to western-style governance practices, mentoring should be regarded as a necessity. I don't see how we can effectively help the Afghans develop modern, effective law enforcement institutions without allowing our trainers to work on the street with the local police.
I suspect that men & women who are willing to travel to a troubled country to help train their police would not only accept the risk of working in the community, but actually expect that to be part of the job. Most of the officers I've worked with over the years would think so.
Books & classrooms & role-playing exercises have their place in training, but there is no substitute with hands-on experience, under the watchful eye of an experienced mentor. It beats the heck out of making people learn all their lessons from their own mistakes.
In addition to police trainers working with ANP "on the street", there has to be experienced trainers working at all levels....station, district, province, etc.
Example: One of my police district chiefs in Kandahar told me that he had received a call from a local (a neighbor, I think) about a domestic abuse issue.....a wife being beaten by her husband (fairly common in A'stan). The chief called his superior and requested authorization to go and respond (A'stan is very top-down oriented). His supervisor apparently chewed him out for asking permission to get involved in a family matter.
There are good guys in the ANP trying to do the right thing. But we need to be there with them on a regular basis.