Afghan War News > Security > Afghan National Auxiliary Police (ANAP)

History of the Afghan National Auxiliary Police or ANAP

The Afghan National Auxiliary Police program was launched " . . . in 2006 as a temporary stopgap measure for addressing the slow and cumbersome process of developing Afghan National Security Forces".  1.  It was a short-lived program and shut down in 2008 amid accusations that it was a divisive militia comprised of drug users and criminals.

The mission of the ANAP was to work with the Afghan National Army (ANA), Afghan National Police (ANP), and the National Directorate of Security (NDS); assisting these national security organizations with an auxiliary police element that could do community policing at the local level. The ANAP was first launched in Zabul Province in the south of Afghanistan.  It soon encountered some difficulties. 

Selection and Vetting of Recruits.  Many members of the ANAP did not speak Pashto - rather they spoke Dari.  Not only did they not know the language but they did not know the local area as they were from other parts of Afghanistan.  The vetting of the ANAP was supposed to be done by the Ministry of Interior and the National Security Directorate; but this too was a weak area in the implementation.

Implementation of the ANAP.  The Ministry of Interior (MoI) in combination with the Combined Security Transition Command - Afghanistan (CSTC-A) directed the ANAP with a "top-down" approach.  This "top-down" approach was proved to be a bad method of establishing a "community-level self-defense" or local police force.  The MoI proved to be unable to vett recruits, pay the recruits, and provide logistical support. In addition, the ANAP was soon populated with corrupt and criminal individuals who preyed upon rather than protected the local population.  2.

Demise of the ANAP.  The ANAP might have been a good concept, local policing to assist Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), however it was poorly implemented. The ANAP program would later become an example of how "community policing" and "local defense initiatives" could turn out badly.  Many NGOs, the United Nations, humanitarian organizations, and others would quickly point to the ANAP as an example when discouraging the establishment of later "community defense" initiatives such as AP3, CDI, LDI, and the ALP.

News Reports about ANAP

April 10, 2008.  "NATO Cancels Afghan Cop Program". Wired.com Danger Room.

Endnotes

Joe Quinn and Mario A. Fumerton, "Counterinsurgency from Below: The Afghan Local Police in Theoretical and Comparative Perspective", November 2010, page 16.  This paper provides the best explanation of the ANAP that I could find on the Internet.  (Adobe Acrobat PDF file accessed on Decmber 29, 2011 at
https://ronna-afghan.harmonieweb.org/CAAT/Shared%20Documents/Counterinsurgency%20From%20Below.pdf ).

Captain Arthur Karell, "Village Stability Operations and the Security Transition in Afghanistan", Middle East Studies, MES Insights, Volume 1, Issue 6, page 2. Accessed on December 29, 2011 at http://www.mcu.usmc.mil/Middle%20East%20Studies%20Documents/MES%20Insights/MES%20Insights%20Vol%201,%20Issue%206.pdf.