Afghanistan: Counternarcotics and Rule of Law Programs

Our purpose in Afghanistan is straightforward: We are there to squeeze the life-blood out of terrorism and make democracy a reality. To achieve that purpose we contribute mightily to an international effort led by Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. The aim of that effort is to increase Afghan capabilities in police presence and public security, fighting narcotics, and supporting the rule of law. We are committed to encouraging lead-nation ownership of these programs and the sharing of responsibility for transforming Afghanistan. My testimony today is intended to give you a bird’s eye view of these three elements of our aggressive, unified effort. In many ways, these elements are the U.S. and Coalition’s "exit strategy."

Police and the Rule of Law

As designated lead country for policing, Germany has developed an intensive training academy that addresses long-term institution-building and will shape the future of the Afghan police as a nationwide institution. Our program complements the German approach by addressing short-term security requirements for police. We began by establishing a central Training Center in Kabul in May 2003.

Since then, we have established five additional Regional Training Centers (RTCs) using interim facilities in Kandahar, Konduz, Mazar-i-Sharif, Gardez, and Jalalabad and trained over 25,000 police.

In concert with this training, we have provided personal equipment packages including duty belts, flashlights, handcuffs, pepper spray, batons, pouches, and uniforms to each of the police graduates.

INL has also provided $20 million to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Law and Order Trust Fund to support payment of police salaries. We are refurbishing and supplying more than 30 police stations. And with the exception of weapons, we have undertaken to equip the police to the maximum extent possible under the law. A limited number of weapons, including rifles and pistols, have been provided by Ukraine, Serbia and Montenegro. These weapons flow through the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) program.

Somewhat miraculously, the State/INL team has done all this -- once the money became available -- while imposing performance and accountability measures on contractors, including such measures as $250,000-a-day fines for failure to deliver -- and has stood up these academies despite a difficult security environment in a matter of months. I came to this job on October 6^th of last year; the 2004 Supplemental passed November 6th; our academies were operational within 3 1/2 months and by July 1, 2004, State/INL programs had trained nearly 20,000 police.

Going forward, we are establishing additional training centers in Bamiyan and Herat, building permanent facilities at each site, while converting temporary academies to permanent structures.

We are constantly looking for ways to improve the quality of the police training program. To that end, we have expanded our training curriculum into both border and highway police training. On current metrics, we fully anticipate training 3,000 border and 650 highway patrol police by January 2005. Our overall goal is to train 50,000 national police, 12,000 border police and 2,600 highway police by the end of December 2005. At that time, we will begin handing off re-training to the Afghan Central Government, buttressed by German longer-term training.

We are developing a follow-on initiative that will build upon classroom skills and field training. This has been done effectively by State/INL in Kosovo, Liberia, East Timor and currently in Iraq. We are pressing forward a major reform initiative for the Ministry of Interior (MOI) and have embedded 30 technical police experts as MOI advisors.

The MOI advisors are helping the Ministry develop a comprehensive re-organization including a command and control structure with clear, internal roles and missions, standard operating procedures, professional standards and a credible, sustainable system for documentation and reporting. The Afghans are themselves looking at accelerated police recruitment, vetting and matching equipment needs, all within the larger framework of a nationwide commitment to community-policing.

Justice Sector

Concurrently, INL provides support to Italy as lead-nation in reform and rebuilding of the justice sector in Afghanistan. Our direct assistance -- made possible by the support and leadership of Congress as much as by the Administration -- focuses on infrastructure, training and capacity-building for what are still just fledgling institutions. Comprehensive U.S. and Italian training programs are targeted at training judges, prosecutors, and defense counsel. There is also a conscious effort to reintegrate women into the legal sector. New buildings are going up in provincial capitals helping extend justice sector institutions beyond Kabul. Plans include a National Bar Association and widening circles of legal education.

Overall, we and our Italian allies are methodically moving the ball up the field -- establishing the operational elements of a true justice sector.

Narcotics

On the narcotics front, tied like a ball-and-chain to security, justice, and economic development, we stand in the darkness of a long shadow. We and the Afghans can see the way forward, and there is increased urgency to the mission, but there remain challenges.

President Karzai and other Afghan officials have said that drug trafficking and the corruption it breeds may be the biggest threat to Afghanistan’s long-term security and democratic future.

There is a bit of an M.C. Escher drawing here...and we are the staircase.... Without security, crucial eradication efforts, led by the British, central to the Afghan Government, and balanced on U.S. support cannot rise to the necessary level to deter heroin poppy cultivation. Without tackling eradication, as well as heroin lab and warehouse destruction with a vengeance -- without a "full throttle-up" way of looking at stopping narcotics -- the overall security situation will not get better fast.

The "exit strategy," therefore, involves not only more and better police, timely elections, wider economic development and a reliable justice sector, but a unified, all-out effort to rob the forces of instability and terror of the money they gain through heroin production.

Due to the need for more security around eradication, and the recent growth of heroin labs, we expect measurements of the 2004 poppy crop -- which will be released in the next few weeks by the CIA’s Counter Narcotics Center and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime -- to show yet another year-on-year increase. We need to work harder at lashing-up all Afghan and Coalition counternarcotics efforts, while boosting legitimate investment and economic development. The Administration is intent on giving counternarcotics greater priority in terms of our work in Afghanistan and is undertaking a process to determine how best to ramp up our efforts.