Peace & Stability Operations Journal Online
Discovering the Soul of Policing in Afghanistan
by Michelle A. Hughes, Esq. and Major (FRA) Rudy Ropital
By late 2010, the police development team within NATO
Training Mission—Afghanistan was looking to move beyond
the boots-on-the-ground focus that had dominated development of the Afghan National Police (ANP) during the previous
eight years. Major General Stu Beare, an experienced Canadian
officer who was heading up the effort to build the ANP and the
Ministry of Interior, had learned from his experience in Bosnia
and elsewhere that if the NTM-A effort was to be sustainable,
its focus needed to turn from train and equip, to professionalization; further development had to be embedded within a
larger framework of comprehensive Security Sector Reform.
The idea briefed well but required a shift in thinking at every
echelon throughout the advisory mission, so in order to change
the paradigm, the police team’s mantra was that we were:
“building a ministry; building an operating force; and building
a culture.”
But what did “building a culture” really mean in concrete, measurable, executable terms? With the exception of its handful of
civilian police officers, including the Carabinieri and Gendarmerie, almost no one on the NTM-A staff had any civilian law
enforcement experience. Even fewer had participated in institutional development within a civilian governance sector, and
no one inside the organization could answer (from an Afghan
perspective) the fundamental question of what the Afghans
wanted their police to do. Thus, in an effort to understand
what we ourselves were trying to achieve, we began to talk about
something that in Afghan terminology, was best expressed as
the “soul” of the police.
Engaging on such a squishy topic was not something that most
of the military advisors were very comfortable with, but surprisingly, this softer focus created a dialogue that the Afghans
enthusiastically embraced, and it enabled the Police Team to
understand some of the second and third order effects of the
extant development strategy. It was also through this process
of discovery that NTM-A began to recognize the emergence of
true ANP leadership and the possibility that despite all of the
naysayers, there may be an emerging generation of police officers
that can take the ANP into the future.
The story that follows is true. We, the authors, worked closely
with both Hamid and Major General Zamary. We traveled with
A joint-service colour guard detail stand at an NTM-A Command Sargeant Major change of responsibility ceremony at
Camp Eggers in Kabul. photo by NTM-A
them in their soft-skinned vehicles through areas that were not
under their control; we sat with them as they conducted their
own engagements with the citizens they are trying to serve; and
we talked often about their vision of the future of Afghanistan
and their place in that future. Finally, we asked if we could tell
their story. They not only agreed, but they vetted our drafts and
helped us to focus not what we thought was important, but on
what they wanted us to share. Our hope is that this story will
cause readers who are engaging in SSR activities in Afghanistan and elsewhere to step back occasionally and think about
the following: What really matters when building a civilian
security institution? What do the people who are served by it
truly want? Are we training to what matters to them, or are we
training to a standard model that conforms to our own experience? How do we react when those we bring into the institution
make mistakes? Is there a way to salvage the good, without
compromising the institutional culture we are trying to foster?
Finally, are we measuring the right things—are we incentivizing
the qualities that count the most toward creating an appropriate
institutional culture—both for our host nation counterparts,
and ourselves?
The Afghans say that in their country, everyone has a story,
and this is the story about a young Pashtun police lieutenant
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