Afghanistan: Community Defense or Just Another Militia?

Afghanistan’s history has long been shaped by the interaction of militias with the state. Since 2001, Kabul and its foreign backers have returned repeatedly to militias and ​‘local defense forces’ to try to fill gaps in security. Most prominent among many such forces, the Afghan Local Police (ALP) and, from 2018, the Afghan National Army Territorial Force have been promoted as ​‘bottom-up’ state-building, of harnessing the local community to secure territory. But all too often these programs have merely ​‘re-hatted’ existing militias. They have reinforced criminal or factional interests and led to poor accountability and abuses. The Afghanistan Analysts Network and GPPi have been engaged in a three-year project looking into the attractions and consequences of such local and sub-state forces. Why is the ALP the Taleban’s Enemy Number One? Have any of the efforts to improve accountability or adapt the model worked? What makes for a bad versus a good (or at least better) ALP – one that protects, rather than abuses the population? And what is the long-term impact of such mobilization, as the conflict goes – often nastily – local? What does it mean for state control and the political economy of mobilizing, and later, de-mobilizing, fighters? In addition to the Afghanistan-related research below, the main page and Iraq page for this project offer additional comparative learning and analysis.