The box is broken

By Dave Anderson:

Marjah was supposed to be the template for the 2010-2011 US counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign.  It would be a trial run for General McCrystal to use his surge forces to clear Pashtun Taliban heartland areas, force the insurgents to either flee if they were smart or fight stand-up battles where US heavy firepower could grind the opponents into the ground, and then install a government in a box.  The government in a box is key to the clear-hold-build process.  It would be responsible for the long-term holding and building up local governments who were legitimate to the immediate population and loyal to the Karzai government.  

So what is supposed to be in the box?  It is supposed to contain the System Administrators of the kinder, gentler, and more effective COIN.  The Afghan government, with US/NATO support, was supposed to fill that box with highly competent civilian administrators,transparent redevelopment and police that were trustworthy, effective, culturally competent and non-corrupt.  

Whoops, the box is broken.  We first started to see clues that the box was broken when the newly appointed district leader was an Afghan expat who spent fifteen years in Germany running a laundromat and stabbing his step-son there before being chosen as the new district chief. 

That could be tolerable if the rest of the components of the box were working well.  Figurehead leaders sometimes are acceptable if the rest of the government works to prove its legitimacy.  

However the New York Times looks at the keystone of the Marjah government in a box, and thus the keystone of the US counterinsurgency effort, the deployment of new police, and it is a disaster.  As you read the quotes, please remember that the police in US COIN doctrine are the front-line counter-insurgents who provide stable, predictable, non-corrupt, transparent governance services to the neutral or antagonistic population.  Over time, the police are supposed to build trust and an informant network that works to undermine the insurgents' ability to gather intelligence, intimidate and mass before conducting operations.

Marja�s police officers, members of the Afghan National Civil Order Police, or Ancop, are from a cadre of roughly 5,000 officers who have been more thoroughly screened and trained than the rank-and-file in the 104,000-officer national police force...

The cadre, billed as superior or even elite, was created after years of Western exasperation with the Afghan police. The Pentagon hoped to develop a core of better officers who could be assigned to high-priority duties....

They still required intensive attention, the Marines said. Sometimes they set up unofficial checkpoints and shook down motorists, taking cash or cellphones. �And at official checkpoints they were charging people for head-of-the-line privileges,� another American who works beside the police said....

The police also said that establishing connections with residents had been difficult. Part of their problem, they said, was that many sergeants are Tajik, and do not speak Pashto, southern Afghanistan�s dominant language....

So the police are still corrupt foreigners who are harassing the locals.  They are a little less corrupt and a little less harassing than the police force that the local Pashtun militias and Taliban ran out of town a couple of years ago, but they are still corrupt and they are still culturally foreigners who don't speak the local language.  And this is the "elite" police force that is supposed to be the COIN fire brigade that can be dropped into an area to stabilize it until main-force police and military units are formed to hold the region under legitimate and popular governance.  

The box is broken.