Testimony by Mark L. Schneider, Senior Vice President, International Crisis Group to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on “Counternarcotics and Police Training” in Afghanistan

October 4, 2007

I want to thank the chairman and the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia for inviting me to participate in this morning’s hearing on “Counternarcotics Strategy and Police Training in Afghanistan”. In that regard, I would ask that the recent report of the International Crisis Group “Reforming Afghanistan’s Police” be included in the Record.

Afghanistan is in danger of becoming a failed state, in part because it is in danger of becoming a narco-state, controlled at critical points of its security structure by those who do the bidding—willingly or unwillingly—of drug traffickers. That was my judgment at the end of my first trip to Afghanistan nearly four years ago. It now is the conclusion as well of the executive director of UNODC Antonio Maria Costa, who said, “the threat is definitely there that the country will become a narco-state.”

This year, when he released the 2007 World Drug report, he said that poppy cultivation is directly linked to insecurity and “inversely related to the degree of government control”. That report shows that from virtually no opium cultivation in the final year of the Taliban regime in 2001, today Afghanistan produces 93% of the world’s opium, cultivated on 193,000 hectares or 500,000 acres of land, a 17% increase after last year’s 59% increase. Afghanistan opium poppy now grows on land equal to nearly the size of the state of Rhode Island. Equally worrisome is that potential opium production in 2007 probably hit a world record at 8200 metric tons, a rise of 34%.

Let me just add that the executive summary of the new U.S. Counternarcotics Strategy for Afghanistan introduced this past August also states that “the drug trade has undermined every aspect of the Government of Afghanistan’s drive to build political stability, economic growth and rule of law….” In that regard, at least that statement frankly acknowledges the seriousness of the problem—a recognition that is very late in coming. The response also still contains several questionable elements—to be conducted by private contractors—and fails to incorporate others that are likely needed both to limit cultivation and to improve interdiction.

I have testified before the Congress on Afghanistan several times in the past. Each time, I warned that the failure to deal effectively with security threats would undermine democracy, reconstruction and stability. I emphasized that there was a disturbing failure to commit sufficient resources—either military or reconstruction aid to Afghanistan--by the U.S. and by the international community; an even greater failure to require the Pakistan government to close Taliban command and control centers, sanctuaries and Taliban recruiting in Jihadi mosques and madrassas; and an absolute refusal to recognize the links between exploding opium trafficking, insecurity and a corrosive culture of impunity.

Part of the capacity of the insurgents to operate goes back to the decision to have a “light footprint” in the aftermath of the removal of the Taliban, relying instead on warlords and militia leaders—despite their record of past abuse.

As Rand and others have noted, in the first two years after the Taliban were ejected from Afghanistan, the international commitment in dollars was only $52 per Afghan versus $1400 in Bosnia and the commitment of peacekeepers was 20 per 1000 Kosovar Albanians contrasted with .2 of one peacekeeper per 1000 Afghans. Clearly there has been an effort to catch up recently with international US, NATO and other forces going up to some 50,000 and some $10.5 billion requested by the US alone over the past two years for military and police and about $2.4 billion for all other reconstruction aid.

Several recent maps from the United Nations (annexed to this testimony) underscore the rising levels of insecurity in Afghanistan and the overlap between opium poppy cultivation and drug trafficking. Based on the UN assessment of where security concerns obstruct reconstruction and stabilization efforts, one can see a devastating rise in high and extreme risk areas—now reaching almost the whole south and east of the country.

I also would note that high risk districts now virtually encircle the capital of Kabul. The analysis essentially says these areas are largely out of bounds for civilian internationals involved in the reconstruction efforts. But they can and are being reached by Taliban and drug traffickers. The percentage of financing of Taliban activities coming from drug trafficking is unclear but it is high and it is growing. In fact in Helmand, Kandahar, Kapisa, and Nangarhar as well as Uruzgan one sees that overlay between opium production or trafficking and significant insurgent activity.

If the combined efforts of the international forces and the nascent Afghan security forces cannot guarantee enough security for investment and governance to establish roots into these communities and state institutions cannot be extended across the country, it is extremely difficult to see how the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan can succeed.

The UN Secretary General reported to the Security Council barely two weeks ago that “the boldness and frequency of suicide bombings, ambushes and direct fire attacks have increased.” He cited an average of 548 attacks a month in 2007 already 20 per cent higher than the year before which if continued along this trend could mean closer to 6000 attacks by insurgents, up from 4542 in 2006 and 1558 in 2005., The Secretary General reported the number of civilian deaths through August 31 at 1000, the bulk intentionally targeted by Taliban and al Qaeda but more than 300 the unintentional result of coalition, ISAF and Government responses, primarily ISAF or OEF airstrikes. On the morning of 27 September the UN further reported that suicide attacks for 2007 had reached 123 – the same number as the whole of 2006, compared to 27 in 2005.

Dealing with the challenge of security means not only effectively countering the military and propaganda operations of the Taliban and al Qaeda. It also means assisting the Karzai government in extending transparent and non-corrupt governance into regions of the country traditionally unaffected by the writ of Kabul and traditionally unprotected by that government. They must become convinced that the national government will bring them vital services, promote the rule of law and offer positive economic incentives.

If there is a single message, it is that all concerned have to recognize that there are no silver bullets, no quick fixes that can solve the problem of opium cultivation in an impoverished nation where the state security forces remain of limited size, limited capacity and very limited quality. There has to be a long-term commitment to building the institutions of the rule of law—police, judiciary and prisons—that are trained adequately, paid decently, equipped sufficiently and required not only to enforce the law but to obey the law.

There also has to be a clearer understanding that with rural wheat prices a fraction of the farmgate price of opium poppy, a comprehensive rural development program has to be more than simply alternative crops. It has to be rural investment and infrastructure and services along with full provision of credit, seed, fertilizer, market help for farmers and off-farm income opportunities in districts before they start to grow poppies. Remember that today only 4 per cent of Afghanistan’s farmland is being used to grow poppies but some 14 per cent of the population is involved.

Finally there is a need to question a proposed U.S. strategy that is heavily tilted toward forced eradication, most reminiscent of Bolivia, and to reject completely its obvious desire to import the aerial eradication methods from Colombia. In Bolivia, it took a decade for the consequences of the policy to impact on political instability. In Colombia, it has not worked. With the Taliban growing in capacity to undermine stability already, any actions that further alienate the population are misguided---such as sending helicopters to spray poppy fields that would bring back memories of Soviet helicopters strafing villages at will. It also should be clear that the Taliban have been using propaganda effectively already and the adoption of an aerial spraying approach surely would result in every dead cow and every unexplained illness being blamed on the U.S. and Karzai government use of chemical spraying.

A New Yorker magazine article cited an Uruzgan farmer complaint to the DynCorps eradication team that they had not only destroyed the poppies but also wheat and vegetables. They also charged that only tribes alienated from the Karzai government had their fields eradicated while those political aligned with the government were “missed”.

Buried in the U.S. anti-drug five pillar approach, in fact it is listed as a sixth element, is something called political will. It should be number one on the U.S., NATO and United Nations hit parade. Without clearer evidence of political will with the very top of the Afghanistan government setting down an absolute bar on holding public office and engaging in drug trafficking, counternarcotics efforts are doomed to failure.

It is not just the Taliban and other insurgents who benefit from the drug trade. Corrupt government officials, warlords in and outside the government are also facilitating the drug trade and financially benefiting from it. Currently local people see hypocrisy when most counter narcotics efforts appear directed at poor farmers – who may not even own the land – while the well-connected flaunt their drugs wealth with lavish houses and big SUVs. This further fuels discontent.

Narco-corruption is present at all levels of the Afghan government. This has to change if the insurgency and drug traffickers are to be defeated. Every corrupt governor, police chief or ministry official is a recruiting agent for the Taliban. Public officials trying to build a new transparent Afghan state where impunity is no longer the rule are directly undermined by corruption around them.

The new rule in Afghanistan has to be that no one can keep their day job as a government official if their night job is to enable or conspire with drug traffickers. A fundamental arm of the law in implementing that kind of policy as well as offering basic citizen security in Afghanistan is the Afghanistan National Police. In some ways, the Crisis Group report last month on Reforming Afghanistan’s Police underscores the flaws in some key elements of the statebuilding endeavor in Afghanistan. While there have been important achievements, and the goals of the Afghanistan compact “…to work towards a stable and prosperous Afghanistan, with good governance and human rights protection for all under the rule of law” remain valid, the magnitude of the problems faced in moving Afghanistan toward stability after more than a quarter century of war cannot be underestimated. However, the current strategy needs major corrections.

On police spending, after 2001, the U.S., despite its awareness that the German-led program was long on quality and short on numbers, did not seek to intervene to support the German effort in ways that would increase the numbers of trained police on the street. In 2002, the U.S. contributed barely $25 m; in 2003, $5 m.; and then a jump to $223 m. in 2004 and now $3.6 billion in requests last year and this.

But again, the U.S. answer was a quick fix, failing to obtain a single vision with the Germans or the Europeans, failing to engage the UN so that perhaps it could have fostered the needed coordination. Now while the number of deployed police stands at some 70,000, many patrolmen have had only two weeks training, the most about eight weeks. As a point of reference, even in Haiti, where there are fairly high standards for entrance, a four-month training session at the national police academy is required before putting armed police into communities. A few weeks is simply not enough.

Policing goes to the very heart of state building, since they are critical to providing citizen protection and justice for the population. However Afghanistan’s citizens often view the police more as a source of fear than of security.

One of the equally disturbing aspects of the U.S. view has been to see the police as part of the military response to the insurgency rather than as police protecting citizen security and trained for that purpose as part of the justice sector. The result is clear in the outcome: four times more ANP police were killed from May 2006 to May 2007 in comparison with the number of military killed, and the disparity worsened in June 2007. A clear delineation of the roles of the different services is urgently required.

There are key problems with the police stretching to the very top which require high level attention on reforming the Ministry of Interior and ensuring strong, accountable leadership. It has been particularly disappointing to see the vetting mechanism agreed to with respect to police appointments become mired in political maneuvering. The pay and rank reform process was aimed at promoting professionalism through testing and vetting every level of the leadership followed by large salary increases to help overcome any need for corruption. It has stalled as it has reached district level appointments.

If professional police forces are the object, then the decision to name some 11,000 auxiliary police and to give them weapons and uniforms after 10 days of training seems highly dubious, and a waste of U.S. taxpayer spending. The lack of a command and control element to supervise their work – no one knows what has happened to over 40 per cent of auxiliary police in some areas since their initial training – only highlights the need for a renewed emphasis on training field level junior leadership, particularly in the Pashtun southern areas. Currently all officer training is conducted in Kabul and the new leadership coming through remains disproportionately Tajik. In July 167 of the 223 non-commissioned officer graduates were Tajiks.

Just as with the government as a whole, the failure to use approved coordinating entities such as the International Police Coordination Board undermines the possibility for coherent action. Crisis Group also has recommended that the IPCB determine nationwide that those who pick up checks for police work are actually working in a police program. The police have to be more professional and more linked to their communities with the training and equipment that both will raise their pride and protect their lives. Without a police force that people can trust and a judiciary that is independent, it seems doubtful that the rule of law can be solidly built in Afghanistan.

Our 30 August 2007 report “Reforming Afghanistan’s Police” has a series of recommendations for different branches of the Afghanistan government, for donors, and the international community. Let me just summarize some key ones:

1. Press for complete adherence to agreed upon screening mechanisms to vet appointments from the top of the Ministry of Interior down to district police chiefs.
2. Expand international participation in monitoring police abuses, corruption and narcotics involvement and support establishing civilian police liaison and review mechanisms.
3. Insure that a common vision of police reform and a common voice come out of the International Police Coordination Board and the U.S. should immediately make good on all of its promised staff assistance to the board.
4. Make long-term commitments to the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan to bring police salaries on a par with military; parallel to the full implementation of the Pay and Rank Reform to ensure that police appointments are merit-based.