That is a great point.

Overall, I agree with the point you are making, but I think the problem is not so much, or not necessarily, to do with using informal security governance structures like the arbakai, but (i) what do you use them for, and (ii) how do you go about doing that. In other words, instrumentalizing local institutions such as the arbakai (or the jirga system, or lashkars, or…) for counterinsurgency purposes according to the US’s strategic agenda in Afghanistan may be the real problem. Arbakai should not be seen as a useful proxy, nor as a useful substitution force for the ANA, ANP or ISAF forces. They are not.

Sorry, not sure if I’m making much sense. Perhaps I should explain where I’m coming from. My doctoral research is on U.S. police reform/assistance as a tool of U.S foreign policy/national security, and I have been focusing on Afghanistan as a case study. On of the things that gets me mad about the whole thing is how police assistance and police reform (or indeed the whole “security sector reform” effort) is seen primarily through the lens of “our” goals. The U.S. has the most decentralized police force in the world, with more than 13.000 police outfits (I’m quoting from memory, but can get you an exact figure). When it occupied Germany and Japan, it went to great lengths to ensure that police forces in those countries were similarly decentralized (ordering each city of over 5.000 people to have their own municipalized police force).

In Afghanistan, such a decentralized model would – so far as my interviewees go at least – be a good fit. But we have determined that the crucial problem in Afghanistan is state-frailty, state-failure or state-collapse, and the existence of “ungoverned spaces” whence evil comes. So, all security forces must be national. All security assistance should go to the formal (state) sector. And the crucial thrust of their training and deployment should be ancillary to NATO’s COIN strategy, and secondarily to bost the central government’s control of… well, whatever it controls at the moment. You know, police calling in close-air-support, and “holding” areas already “cleared” by soldiers.

Meanwhile, in real Afghanistan outside Kabul, Herat and Kandahar, people still mistruts the police. An Afghan who wrote cogently on this asked the question: “Can the people secure themselves?”. Another asked: Why not have a look at improving (not instrumentalizing) local structures of justice delivery and security governance? TLO and some NGO’s working with it, as well as a number of Afghans, have for the last 5 years been talking about it. The US has either ignored or downright marginalized this perspective, putting virtually all the eggs in the same basket: ANP+ANA= ASF, ASF+ISAF=COIN.

Now they start looking at this (too little too late), and what do they see? Militias. Proxies. Partners in COIN. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of arbakai. They are not a militia. They are not made to clear, control, and hold territory. They are made to dispense justice, act as watchmen, perfom basic police functions at the village level. If the U.S. was serious about improving security governance in Afghanistan, it would be worrying right now how to interface these structures better with the central government. It would be sitting down and learning from them – what do they do, what they don’t, what they need, how can they improve. Sure, they’ll probably be limited to Loya Paktia, but that’s a start.

Before the creation of a national police in Afghanistan, or the opening of the Police Academy in kabul in 1924, the police _function_ already existed in Afghanistan, in society everywhere. Why not learn from that, build on that so as to achieve a model of plural policing, with service delivery spread through the formal and informal sectors of security governance?

But, if on the other hand the program now is to _arm_ the arbakai, and train them in light infantry tactics, and use them as the next Concerned Local Citizens/Awakening Councils, then you are absolutely right – it will fail, and the fallout will be awful. This is not an issue for military engagement. And you’re quite right, it will require “treating the locals as if they were people”. People whose pressing needs – including security needs – have very little to do with the mainstream narratives of COIN being transmitted from the corridors of DC all the way down to the private contractors training young Afghan policemen.

Sorry fo the length and possible incoherence of the post, this is a subject that touches a raw nerve with me.