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Joe Quinn is a counterinsurgency advisor at COIN Advisory and Assistance Team (CAAT), in Kabul, Afghanistan. From November 2006 until February 2008 he spent 16 months in Iraq as a member of the Reconciliation and Engagements Cell (REC) that planned and implemented the Sons of Iraq (SOI) program. The SOI program essentially hired 106,000 Iraqis to serve as Local Defense Forces (LDF) throughout most of the country. Many of his thoughts on the new Afghan Local Police (ALP) program are based upon that experience, and upon what he has seen in Afghanistan so far. He graduated with a Master's degree in International and Global Affairs from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, in May 2010. He also graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, in June 2002. Mario Fumerton is Associate Professor at the Centre for Conflict Studies, Utrecht University. His current thematic interests include contentious politics, mobilisation and collective action, insurgency, counterinsurgency, and reconciliation. His publications include “Insurgency and Terrorism: Is there a Difference?” (co-author; in The Character of War in
the 21 st
Century, Routledge, 2010), "Civil defence in Latin American democratic systems: Peru's Comités de Autodefensa and Guatemala's Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil in comparative perspective" (co-author; in Armed Actors, Zed, 2004), From Victims to Heroes: Peasant counter-rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000 (Rozenberg Publishers, 2002. Published PhD dissertation), and "Rondas Campesinas in the Peruvian Civil War: Peasant Self-defence Organisations in Ayacucho" (Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2001). His PhD dissertation was used by Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a reference source on peasant self-defense committees, and the history of civil war in Tambo District, Ayacucho Department, Peru. He has done fieldwork research and given consultancy workshops in Peru, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Kenya, and his present research interests include contentious politics, insurgency and counterinsurgency, mobilization and collective action, and reconciliation. The thoughts and opinions within this paper are the authors’ alone and do not represent ISAF or CAAT policy. joe.quinn11@gmail.com m.a.fumerton@uu.nl
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COUNTERINSURGENCY FROM BELOW: The Afghan Local Police in Theoretical and Comparative Perspective
DISCUSSION PAPER Joe Quinn Mario A. Fumerton
The Taliban came to Kaman-i-Kalan, a town in Kunduz province, in March 2009. The residents are Pashtuns, like the Taliban. But that made no difference to the insurgents. They set up checkpoints outside the town, and levied on the population an ushr tax of 10 percent on all agricultural earnings. Then the killings started. First, the Taliban killed a local man for protesting against their harsh treatment; they hung his corpse from a tree. Then they killed a policeman from the neighboring village, pinning a note on his body that read: “We will kill anyone who supports the government.” For the residents of Kaman-i-Kalan, that was the final straw. Elders from 14 surrounding villages held a jirga, and decided to take up arms against the Taliban. A local man, who had been secretly hoarding weapons, donated his entire cache of arms. Residents took up a collection to buy more Kalashnikovs. “They elected commanders and gave themselves a command structure, and they trained their fighters. That was in the summer, and in late November they made their move. They told the Taliban that they could either leave or be shot. The Islamists left.” 1
This story of how locals stood up to the Taliban at Kaman-i-Kalan is not unique. The reports that trickle in from several parts of Afghanistan are scattered and few; but they have been slowly growing since mid-2009.
2 From Achin to Nangarhar, Herat to Day Kundi, from Paktika and Zer-e-ko Valley to Kunduz, villages have spontaneously mobilized and taken up arms against Taliban insurgents in the belief that if they are unable to rely upon Afghan security forces for protection, then they will defend themselves.
3 These developments bring nine inconclusive years of war in Afghanistan to a crossroads—and a dilemma. If harnessed properly and intelligently, organized anti-Taliban villagers could “help cause a ‘cascade’ or ‘tip,’ in which momentum against the Taliban becomes unstoppable.” 4 On the other hand, critics fear that a new attempt to mobilize rural villages into irregular defense forces simply runs the risk that they eventually will degenerate into predatory tribal militias, warlordism, and bloody inter-community violence, as has happened with similar initiatives relating to armed civilians in the past. These concerns find expression in the contrasting politics and policies of a number of key actors within the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). In 2009, former ISAF commander General Stanley McChrystal gave his enthusiastic backing to the Community Defense Initiative (CDI): a program whereby anti-Taliban 'militias' in at least 14 areas of Afghanistan were controlled and supported by a newly created U.S. special forces group “that reports directly to McChrystal as head of US forces in the country, but which sits outside the authority of the International Security Assistance Force, the Nato mission in Afghanistan.” 5 Even so, Afghan President Hamid Karzai himself has been an outspoken critic of and opponents to the idea of forming village defense forces, “warning that such groups could become militias in a country already plagued by warlordism.” 6 However, within a few short days after assuming command of coalition forces in Afghanistan on 4 July 2010, General David Petraeus managed to assuage President Karzai’s concerns, enough to persuade him to approve the establishment of village defense guards, which will officially be known as Afghan Local Police (ALP). 2

A presidential decree to establish the ALP was passed in August of this year.
7 While the details of the final shape of the ALP program is, perhaps, still up for discussion, it would appear that the Afghan Ministry of Interior already has a fairly clear idea of how it will function, and how its organizational and administrative structures will look like. The following explanation of the ALP program comes from a recent interview by one of the authors of this paper with Major General Gul Nabi Ahmadzai, Director of General Training and Education for the Afghan National Police (ANP) at the Ministry of Interior. He is the officer who will be in charge of training the new ALP.
8 Mario Fumerton: Why is the Afghan Local Police necessary? Maj. Gen. Gul Nabi Ahmadzai: Owing to the security challenges in Afghanistan, from the Taliban, from al Qaida, from other terrorist groups, the Ministry of Interior (MoI) requested to the government that there should be a local police force in some parts of the countryside, and that has been accepted. So, the responsibility of the local police is at least to take care of their own villages; that would be very helpful. In Afghanistan, there is a general idea—it is a custom—that everybody should defend Afghanistan. The task doesn't just belong to the army or to the police; this is a nationwide task. That is why an Afghan Local Police will be a very good idea. The idea is that we [Afghans] should at least take over some of the responsibility [for security] from international forces [i.e. ISAF]. The Afghan Local Police will be organized in those areas where there are already a lot of challenges, places where there are some uncertainties. MF: How is the ALP to be organized? GNA: The ALP will be made up of volunteers, of people who have a good background, who don't have a crime record, with a very good character. Initially, they will be assigned to defend their own countryside, and their own neighbourhood. They will have their own rules and regulations. Their recruitment, and their administrative management will be controlled by very professional [national] police officers. Those officers will belong to the same district and the same province as the local Afghan Local Police they will supervise. The ALP of a village will have its own leader, which will appointed by the ANP regional or district commander. There will be a presence of both the ALP and the ANP in every village where the program is running. We are going to try out the program in some areas. If it works, then we will extend the program. Of course, in the future, after we have established security in Afghanistan, the ALP will be come absorbed into the Afghan National Police. The ALP will be under the command of the Deputy-Minister of Security, and the Minister of Interior. For the first running of the program, the ALP will have 10,000 people. I don't know what will happen in the future, whether they are reducing or increasing. It all depends on the results, on if it works. If we have good results, then probably they will be increased. The ALP will be organized in places they are required. MF: What kinds of resources should they receive? GNA: They will have salaries, and their own uniform. They can only carry weapons no more powerful than AK-47. They are not permitted to carry more advanced weapons than that. Their weapons, logistical support, and equipment, will come from the MoI. MF: How will they be paid, or recompensed for their service? GNA: In the beginning, the budget for the program will come from the United States, to pay for salaries. 3

MF: How should they be trained, and what should be the content of their training? GNA: They will be given training in their own villages. They will be trained by regular police officers (ANP). Their training course will take four weeks. One part of the course will be about rules and regulations, and the other section of the course will be tactical. We will tell them what are their responsibilities, and what is their authority. We will also show them the rights of the civilians; that they should take care of civilians. MF: How should they be coordinated with the ANP, ANA, and ISAF forces? GNA: ISAF will have no direct contact with ALP. But probably ISAF will help the Afghan MoI with providing equipment and salaries. If ISAF wants to have some sort of connection with the ALP, they should talk directly with Afghan police or the MoI. MF: Who should supervise the ALP? GNA: For the time being, the ALP will be under the supervision of the MoI, the Ministry of Interior. It will not belong to any specific ethnic group, or a political party. MF: How will the ANP and the MoI respond to the critics of the ALP program, particularly some ANP officer themselves who are against the idea? GNA: Leadership in making these kinds of decisions is the job of the Afghan government, of the MoI. It is not up to police officers to decide whether they like it or dislike it. It is not their job to decide. Afghan leadership has decided to do the ALP program. Opinions and criticism about the ALP are individual opinions, not a general opinion. This idea of the ALP program came after long research and study. MF: How will the ALP be different from earlier civilian-based initiatives tried in the past, like arbakai, Local Defence Force (LDF), etc.? GNA: There should be no misunderstanding that the ALP will be like former militias in the past. They will be very professional; they will be under the Afghanistan Constitution, working under the Ministry of Interior. Arbakai and militias in the past mostly belonged to an ethnic or certain sort of people, and they would get direction from the leadership of that ethnic or that party. But the ALP are different because they are under command of MoI-ANP, so they are really different things. So it has been determined that those mistakes we have committed in the past—those ethnic militias and arbakai—we should not have them any longer. MF: If former Taliban fighter want to surrender to a community, and want to be integrated
back into the community, will they be permitted to join the ALP?
GNA: Any Afghan who accepts the Afghan Constitution, any Afghan who wants to work with the Afghan government, and does not have a crime record, is welcomed. But we will still do a background check, since this is a policy of the Afghan government. The manner in which GIRoA (and indirectly, ISAF, and the International Community) views, deals with, and utilizes the Afghan Local Police in the months to come will have significant strategic, political, and relational repercussions at all societal and political levels in the future. If this latest local defense initiative is to have some positive and meaningful part to play within a larger counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, then it is imperative that we first come to understand why earlier similar attempts went wrong, and how this one can be handled differently so as to harness its full potential while avoiding past mistakes. To this end, this paper aims to inject a deeper theoretical and comparative perspective into the discussion so as to bring a more balanced appreciation and informed understanding of the 4

potential risks and advantages that may arise from establishing the Afghan Local Police (ALP). We begin with a discussion of the principal objective of population-centric counterinsurgency: securing and protecting the population. Specifically, we will focus on the theoretical and practical challenges and difficulties that arise for counterinsurgent forces tasked with population protection. This naturally raises the question: how can these problems be surmounted? Next, we will consider critically whether the intuitive solutions to the problems of population-centric counterinsurgency necessarily leads us to the counterintuitive conclusion that the most ideal counterinsurgent is to be found not among the ranks of the armed forces, but rather within the local settings where insurgency is being played out. At the face of it, this conclusion seems to be the inherent reasoning behind the idea of an ALP—although to date such reasoning has not yet been articulated in any sophisticated or coherent way. What role can civilian self-defense forces in general (and ALP in particular) play within a larger counterinsurgency campaign and strategy? We should bear in mind that in our (patronizing) desire to “protect” the population, it is likely that we will fail to hear (or even to ask) what the population really needs and wants in regard to their security. A top-down approach always brings the danger that we will overlook the population's potential to exercise agency in regard to their own self-defense—and this will certainly result in missed opportunities. For most of the past 9 years of ISAF and American involvement in Afghanistan, the population has generally been regarded as a passive human terrain through which COIN’s kinetic and non kinetic forces and activities flow. As a former U.S. Army company commander explained, “The assumption is that security would be provided to the people, not by the people.” 9 We adhere to a population-centric COIN, yet we rarely leverage the population. Ironically, this is in stark contrast to insurgency doctrine, where the active participation of the population in both kinetic and non-kinetic efforts (both offensive and defensive) has long been recognized and deemed to be essential for success.
10 The paper will then move on to consider whether the Afghan Local Police, as it is currently envisaged by the MoI, will be substantially different from past attempts at organizing community defense, like ANAP, AP3, and LDI. We will consider the risks arising from the ALP initiative, and conclude by offering a number of recommendations.
Population-centric COIN: objectives and obstacles
Winning the popular support of the civilian population has been a key strategic principle in the theory and practice of counterinsurgency (COIN) since the early 1960s, if not earlier.
11 More recently, it has come to be assumed that securing and protecting the population is the key to winning the coveted prize of popular support. In any case, this focus defines the way in which the war in Afghanistan is now expected to be pursued. Consider, for instance, former ISAF commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s Counterinsurgency Guidance document of 26 August 2009, wherein he declares in no uncertain words: “Protecting the people is the mission…. We will help the Afghan people win by securing them, by protecting them from intimidation, violence, and abuse…” 12 Although protecting civilians may seem intuitive to many of us who embrace a population-centric approach to COIN, putting the principle into practice has historically proven to be extremely challenging. One reason for this difficulty is because counterinsurgent forces are almost never able to be maintain a presence in all places at all times where the population might be in need of protection.
13 We can refer to this as the ‘ubiquity problem.’ 14 Moreover, counterinsurgents will find it difficult to gain the trust, confidence, and (most importantly) the collaboration of the population if they are unable to sustain a constant presence among the people. 5

When there is a numerical shortage of counterinsurgent troops, their ability to establish a viable presence amongst local populations in every strategic location will be severely taxed. This is especially so in countries like Afghanistan, Colombia, or the Philippine island of Mindanao, where rugged and inaccessible terrain makes regular deterrent patrolling of remote areas all the more difficult to carry out. As expected, zones not under incumbent control lie open for insurgents to move in and impose their own control over the people by way of persuasion and coercion. In turn, control shapes collaboration, and zones of insurgent control are ready source for recruitment and resources for insurgents. As Kalyvas observes, “gaining control over an area brings collaboration, and losing control of an area brings much of that collaboration to an end.” 16 Therefore, the counterinsurgent’s ability to increase and sustain its presence within a territory can be an important factor in enhancing the degree of collaboration from the local population—and the same holds true for insurgents. As Mao once wrote, "...we must not forget the consolidation of the base areas, the chief task
being to arouse and organize the masses and to train guerrilla units and local armed
forces." 17 A second challenge associated with the task of protecting the population is how counterinsurgents can come to know, exactly, whom to protect. Insurgents hide among the population, like fish in water, according to Mao's famous dictum. This creates what can be termed an 'identification problem' for counterinsurgent forces.
18 Besides making it difficult for counterinsurgents to know whom they should protect, the identification problem also makes it difficult to know whom to fight. A British officer in Malaya once observed: “Somewhere in that gigantic morass were fifty veteran terrorists. How were they to be killed? How were they even to be found?” 19 And as a German officer fighting partisans in the Soviet Union pointed out, “it was an extremely one sided type of warfare because the German soldier was easily recognizable, and the partisan fighter, because he wore civilian clothes, was not.” 20 The identification problem can prevent the gathering of accurate information, which can lead to frustration among counterinsurgent personnel and a heightened risk of inflicting civilian casualties owing to mistaken identities. For instance, “on 21 February 2010, up to twenty three (23) local nationals were A KEY CHALLENGE FOR COIN IS HOW TO GAIN COLLABORATION: In late June 2009, a
small number of U.S. Marines and British soldiers were the only foreign forces in Nawa, a district of 70,000 farmers in Afghanistan's Helmand province. The American and British troops could not venture a kilometer from their cramped base without confronting machine gun and rocket fire from insurgents. Local farmers, wary of reprisals from the Taliban, refused to make eye contact with foreign soldiers, much less speak with them or offer valuable battlefield and demographic information.
15
However, three months later, the first spontaneous reintegration in Afghanistan took place in this district.
killed and twelve others injured when the convoy they were travelling in was mistaken for an insurgent force and engaged with air-to-ground fire.” 21 In extreme instances, frustration arising from the identification problem can result in counterinsurgency troops committing excesses, such as what happened at My Lai, Vietnam, in 1968, at Haditha, Iraq, in 2005, or at Accomarca, Peru, in 1985. The Peruvian military officer in charge during the Accomarca massacre later told a journalist: “You have not experienced nor seen the situation that we [soldiers] endure…. One can not trust a woman, an old man or a child [in Ayacucho Department].” 22 Unfortunately, for counterinsurgency commander and the intelligence community, the identification problem can create a tendency "to over overemphasize detailed information about the enemy at the expense of the political, economic, and cultural environment that supports it." 23 Finding creative ways to flag (and to pin down) allegiance and identity within 6

the population will surely aid in enhancing local collaboration, which in turn can improve our contextual intelligence and understanding of the complex, dynamic environment at the grassroots level where the war is mainly being fought, and "where it will be won or lost." 24 A third problem for a population-centric approach to counterinsurgency arises when official security forces lack legitimacy and accountability. The police, the army, and other sectors of national or international security forces might regard themselves as the 'protectors of the people.' The population, on the other hand, might see them differently. Public opinion about security forces must always first be investigated, and never assumed simply on the biased basis of Western cultural and institutional experiences. Indeed, more often than not, policemen in developing countries systematically engage in corrupt and abusive practices, and as such enjoy a low degree of popular legitimacy. For example, peasants throughout Peru have a long history of distrust and animosity towards the national police.
25 Many people interviewed during field research in Peru between 1997 and 2000 said that they considered “most policemen as corrupt and exploitative, frequently abusive and inconsiderate, and often disrespectful towards civilians, particularly peasants.” 26 A similar image of the police can be found in Afghanistan: A combination of local loyalties, links to criminal networks, low or no pay, and a residual culture of impunity contributed to endemic corruption in the ANP. In many communities, ANP officers were viewed as predatory and a greater threat to security than the Taliban. For many Afghans, the police were identified with demands for bribes, illegal taxes, and various kinds of human rights violations. They were also known to use house searches as an opportunity to shake down the occupants and steal their possessions. Corrupt police practices were felt more directly by the poorest members of society: taxi and truck drivers, traders, small businessmen, and farmers. High levels of corruption and a culture of impunity severely undermined the legitimacy of the Afghan government and further eroded public support for the police.
27 These observations have a bearing on the naming of the Afghan Local Police, since the word "police" could prove somewhat disconcerting and detracting for the program. In conversations that one of the authors had with Afghan locals who will be involved by this initiative, many expressed their concern not to be seen as officially associated with the Afghan police, for they feel that the term is loaded with pejorative connotations. Hence, if the objective is to cultivate popular support, then counterinsurgents will need to be aware that to incorporate grassroots anti-insurgent movements completely into unpopular state institutions (like the police) will run the risk of tainting the popular legitimacy that such bottom-up initiatives enjoy in the first place—thereby diminishing their potential to play a catalytic and strategic role in generating momentum for popular counterinsurgency from below.
The qualities and strategic role of counterinsurgency from below
Asia Foundation’s 2008 survey on perceptions of security found that the most insecure provinces in Afghanistan were Helmand and Wardak (over 75 percent of the population feared for their safety), followed by Farah, Herat, Ghor, Badghis, Sar-e-Pol, Kandahar, Zabul, Ghazni, Lowgar, Paktia, Khost, Jowzjan, Laghman, and Nurestan (between 50 and 75 percent of the inhabitants feared for their security).
28 More recent survey data on local perceptions of security collected early this year found that almost 50 percent of Afghans polled perceived their security from violence and crime to be between “somewhat” or “very” bad.
29 It is questionable, therefore, whether in the eyes of the Afghans, GIRoA and ISAF forces are successfully meeting the security requirements that people expect and require. As then-ISAF 7

commander General McChrystal himself pointed out in 2009, "Nearly eight years of international presence has not brought the anticipated benefits. The Afghan people are skeptical and unwilling to commit active support to either side until convinced of a winning proposition." 30 In their attempt to wage a population-centric counterinsurgency campaign, government and coalition forces in Afghanistan will need to find ways to surmount the three challenges, identified above, if they are truly to achieve their objective of guaranteeing the security of the Afghan population. In theory, the way forward seems simple. According to British Army Field Manual-71876, presence matters in counterinsurgency if security is to be established and sustained. Only when force levels are high enough can security be both generated and sustained effectively…. As it is unlikely that any contemporary coalition can deploy and sustain such numbers it is essential that the host nation security forces are developed so that they become capable of fulfilling this role.
31 In reality, however, it is unlikely that official COIN forces alone, working in a top down manner, can accomplish this. (Until now, ISAF and GIRoA have taken a predominantly top-down approach toward efforts to provide security.) Establishing credible and sustainable security requires counterinsurgency forces to have enough troops for the task, whether national or international. But what if the number of international troops is inadequate, and host-nation security forces have not yet been sufficiently developed to fulfill this role, as is currently the situation in Afghanistan?
32 Moreover, if coalition counterinsurgency forces are unable to be ubiquitous and to maintain sufficient and sustained presence in all locations of strategic importance in Afghanistan, how can they keep the sympathetic (yet undecided) population reassured while at the same time frustrating insurgents in their attempts to intimidate or to co-opt the population? Herein lies the relevance of counterinsurgency from below. The necessity and effectiveness of irregular civilian defense forces has been demonstrated numerous times in history. During Europe's tumultuous and war-torn sixteenth-century, many cities and states throughout the continent were defended not by professional standing armies, but rather by civic guards. A well-known artistic reminder of this fact is Rembrandt's masterpiece, De Nachwacht (The Night Watch). This famous painting depicts the company of Dutch civil guards responsible for defending and policing the city of Amsterdam. To defend one's own town or city was not only a civic obligation expected of all citizens; membership in a civil guard militia was also a source of great pride and social solidarity for its members. Indeed, the Rembrandt
the seventeenth century Figure 1: "De Nachtwacht"—a Dutch civic guard militia from
painting was commissioned and paid for by the civic guard members who are portrayed in it, as a visual record for posterity of their honor and duty. Similarly, during the American Revolutionary War, it was the Minutemen and militia who fought the British in the early years of the war, before the colonies could raise a viable, professional Continental Army of effective size. 8

In a number of insurgent wars and political emergencies since the end of the Second World War, irregular civilian guardsmen have been essential to securing victory for the state. Local groups known as "Home Guards" were instrumentally decisive in helping the Kenyan state to defeat the Mau Mau, not just militarily but also by encouraging defection to the government side.
33 More recent examples of the critical contribution that local civilian defense groups can play in guaranteeing security to their communities are those of Peru's comités de autodefensa (self-defense committees) and the Sons of Iraq program. These comparative cases undoubtedly hold valuable lessons and insights for the Afghan Local Police program.
Few examples demonstrate the full potential of bottom-up counterinsurgency better than Peru's comités de autodefensa. These peasant self-defense patrols emerged within a context of a sanguinary insurgency launched in 1980 by a Maoist-inspired insurgent organization called the Communist Party of Peru—Shining Path. By the time the war had more or less petered out in 2000, it is estimated that upwards of 65,000 lives had been lost in what is one of Latin America's bloodiest armed conflicts. Early Shining Path actions and successes brought substantial degree of popular sympathy and collaboration with the insurgents. However, despite the substantial initial popular support and sympathy among the peasantry for Shining Path's drive against poverty, crime, corruption, and neglect, the organization's violent means ultimately undermined its ends. Whatever degree of support and legitimacy they enjoyed among the peasantry quickly eroded as the insurgents came increasingly to rely on violent coercion to establish their control over the rural population. Consequently, many villages began organizing local self defense patrols spontaneously, particularly in rural areas where resentment towards Shining Path ran deepest. In other places, though, it was the Peruvian military that took the lead in setting up village defense groups. During the first decade of the civil war, the army brought all rural self-defense committees under the nominal authority of the army commanders of each province. It is important to point out, however, that the army's initiative to organize civilian defense did not constitute official policy. Indeed, as a practice it was pursued only sporadically, since more than a few senior officers were against the very idea of indigenous peasants being permitted to handle firearms or to exercise lethal force, even in self defense. While the situation continued that villages risked attack from Shining Path for organizing local defense groups, and the government remained ambivalent in its support of the self-defense movement, the vast majority of peasants remained uncommitted and pragmatic, collaborating erratically with whichever armed actor posed the most immediate threat. It was during the second half of the 1990s that civil defense organizations known as the DECAS (Defensa Civil Antisubversiva) rose to become the most organized, most sophisticated, and militarily powerful of all the civil defense organizations in Peru. It was also the DECAS that formed the vanguard of what eventually would become a widespread movement of peasant resistance to the insurgents. With the help of Marine Infantry units garrisoned nearby, the DECAS emerged and developed in the remote Apurímac River valley, which was once a stronghold of Shining Path. On the basis of their own organizational planning, they created a hierarchical segmentary system whose highest level was the regional committee, followed by the district committee, with the village civil defense committee at the basic level. The level of mobilization within this system depended upon the gravity of the threat being faced. Leadership within the committees took the form of number of elected positions: president, secretary, treasurer, operations commander, and intelligence officer. The general membership of the DECAS, who referred to themselves as "ronderos" 9

(patrollers), comprised all able-bodied adults of the village, both men and women, all of who were expected to participate in the tasks of patrolling and engaging in community defense.
34 Some of the villagers brought valuable experience in having served previously as conscripts in the army. In the beginning of their organization, the peasant patrollers were armed only with homemade weapons, like spears, clubs, axes, and slingshots. Some patrollers had a homemade firearm of sorts, and a lucky few possessed shotguns or antiquated Mauser rifles. Over time, however, villagers were able to acquire more shotguns and Mauser rifles by selling their crops and livestock, while the Marines provided them occasionally with small quantities of more potent weapons of war, like hand grenades and an automatic rifle or two. The DECAS routinely engaged in deterrent patrolling, which kept the insurgents off balance and prevented them from returning and infiltrating into areas recently wrested from their control. By taking primary responsibility for patrolling rural areas, local self-defense forces could compensate for the fact that there were never enough government forces, on their own, to guarantee the safety of the rural population. "We [didn't] have enough soldiers to patrol and control the entire countryside," the army officer in charge of all the rural self defense committees told me in 1997. "We don't have the capacity for it. For this reason we have to rely on the presence of the rondas in areas where we cannot always be." 35 Local self-defense groups also made effective use of former insurgents, who were integrated subsequently into the peasant patrols after they had defected from Shining Path. Such individuals brought with them a wealth of intelligence about the enemy, including knowledge of their tactics and the locations of their supply caches. The DECAS were not only restricted to routine patrolling. They also played an active counterinsurgency role by planning and executing a number of fairly large and complex offensive operations. Such operations illustrated a model effort of joint DECAS-Marine cooperation: the peasant patrollers, who possessed intimate knowledge of the terrain and the human terrain, did the scouting and skirmishing; the Marines (and eventually the Army) provided the muscle by supporting the peasant patrollers with immediate overwhelming firepower, once contact with the enemy was made. Working together in this fashion, the DECAS and Marines constituted a formidable force. They succeeded in pushing Shining Path out of the entire Apurímac River valley, and went on to force the rebels into the defensive throughout most of the Andean highlands. The expansion and proliferation of local defense forces in general can be understood not only in organizational and strategic terms; the symbolic, dramatic, and sociological dimensions were equally important. The peasantry's revolt against Shining Path did not erupt everywhere, at the same time. Rather, the DECAS' expansion throughout the Apurímac River valley and eventually into the Andean highlands of south-central Peru was built upon the early success of very localized uprisings against Shining Path. The symbolic significance of these initial victories, however, was amplified as news of the first violent clashes against Shining Path spread like a bushfire throughout the valley. News of the peasant patrols and their exploits disseminated throughout the population faster than the actual self-defense groups themselves multiplied. In the process, facts became embellished. What might have started as reports of "one hundred peasant patrollers" could, ten kilometers further up the valley, end up as a story of "five thousand peasant patrollers." As the reports became myth, and myth fanned excitement and optimism among the valley's inhabitants, Shining Path's own image of invincibility began to crack and crumble. The confidence of villagers to resist Shining Path was bolstered by the idea that "the ronderos are coming!"
36
The expansion of the DECAS can thus be visualized in terms of the classic ink-spot analogy, where, starting from a localized epicenter, the peasant self-defense movement grew steadily outwards in all directions. The seed for this expansion was the original DECAS of only a handful of neighboring villages. Yet it swelled into a widespread and powerful movement that rode the crest of a wave of myths and rumors—armed propaganda, if you will. Such tales glorified and exaggerated the concrete victories of the peasant patrollers over 10

Shining Path fighters, and depicted the ronderos as "liberators." Whether intentional or not, the effect of these exaggerated stories was that they functioned as a sort of force multiplier, which helped to sway the minds of peasants further afield who were otherwise initially hesitant to support the DECAS in their rebellion against Shining Path. DECAS success lay in the fact that it was grassroots movement that was created by local villagers themselves, with the immediate backing of Peruvian Marines who were astute enough to take a secondary supporting role, rather than presuming to take the lead in that autochthonic process. A number of innovative schemes, designed entirely by DECAS leaders, became standard practice by self-defense committees throughout the south-central Andes, and therefore deserve special mention, here. The most striking was their pioneering efforts with regard to reintegrating, reconciling, and rehabilitating former insurgents back into rural communities. Whereas government soldiers and policemen had been known to execute "presumed terrorists" summarily, the DECAS by comparison initiated a system whereby so called "arrepentidos" (repentant insurgents) were placed under the community's strict observation and constant supervision until such time as it was deemed that their repentance was sincere. The process of repentance and reconciliation was not only functional or procedural; it also had a ritual dimension.
37 Arrepentidos were expected to confess their "sins" publicly (Peru has a very strong Catholic tradition). Moreover, they were given opportunities to prove their loyalty and sincerity, mainly by participating in routine patrolling, and in the larger DECAS-led military operations. Indeed, rebels captured in battle were generally considered by the DECAS leaders to be more valuable alive than dead, for it was from former Senderistas that the DECAS obtained much of their intelligence concerning the strength and movement of rebel forces, and, most importantly, the identity of those clandestine Shining Path 'moles' that had secretly infiltrated rural communities. A second important innovation of the DECAS was to create in each district a "Comandos Especiales" (Special Commandos), which was an elite force of the best patrollers from the DECAS organization as a whole. Individual members, known as "rentados" (hired guards), were paid a small monthly salary from financial contributions pooled together from all the families in the district. In addition, they received special military training from military officers at the local
Figure 2: A unit of "Comandos Especiales" from Tambo District, Peru, in 1997
army base, and were equipped with the very best weapons that the communities could afford—usually, the highly prized Mauser rifles. Every community within a district provided a rentado to the district's Comandos Especiales. This practice of creating a mixed unit proved an excellent way to overcome traditional inter-community squabbles while at the same time creating a new sense of corporate identity, united in the collective purpose of exercising self-defense against a common enemy. Often, such a group's sense of solidarity and identity became so strong that they even came to wear their own special "uniform," like a tracksuit, or indigenous ponchos all of the same color (see Figure 3). Throughout the 1990s, closer cooperation between the peasant self-defense committees and government troops brought dramatic improvements in relationships between 11

the armed forces and the peasantry in general. Much had changed in mutual perceptions from the days when the first military detachments that came from the Peruvian coast regarded all Andean peasants with great suspicion, as likely Senderista sympathizers. On the other side, peasants no longer regarded Peruvian soldiers as an "army of occupation," brutal and vicious, who had come only to kill, rape, and steal. By helping to bridge and strength trust and positive interactions, local defense forces in the Andean highlands of Peru have therefore played a critical role in improving and consolidating good relations between the armed forces and the population at large, in a way that government troops could never have achieved on their own. In 1991, the new president of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, passed legislation that gave official recognition to the peasant self-defense groups, and to their right to bear firearms. They were baptized with a new name: Comités de Autodefensa y Desarrollo (Committees of Self-Defense and Development, or CAD for short). In addition, the Fujimori government also adopted the DECAS' practice of repentance and reintegration as the basis for its Law of Repentance and Amnesty. With official recognition came stricter government monitoring and control of the self-defense committees. From the mid-1990s onwards, the army introduced certain bureaucratic formalities and procedures in the operational practices of the CADs. These included such mechanisms as obliging CAD leaders to write up a weekly report of their activities, and requiring CAD patrol commanders to obtained a signed declaration from the leaders of every community they visit stating that while in that village the patrollers did not commit any abuses or crimes. Such controls and protocols were designed to make civil defense patrols more accountable to the military for their actions in order to prevent the rise of local “warlords,” and to preclude their potential for human rights abuses. Hence, as partially indigenous initiatives the civil defense movement in Peru's south central Andean highlands had always enjoyed a degree of popular legitimacy right from the very start. In fact, by the mid-1990s, one can safely say that the vast majority of peasants in the region had come to regard the CADs not as another “predatory force,” but rather as the legitimate and effectively guarantor of the peasantry’s peace and security.
Civilians at the Spearhead: the case of the Sons of Iraq
During the spring of 2007, Multi-National Force – Iraq (MNF-I) Commander, General David Petraeus, and Multi-National Corps – Iraq (MNC-I) Commander, General Ray Odierno, tasked the Joint Fires and Effects Cell (JFEC) to create a 'Reconciliation and Engagements Cell' (REC) in order to expand the success of the ‘Anbar Awakening’ to other parts of Iraq. One of the authors of this present discussion paper was one of the five officers initially assigned to the REC Cell, and as such witnessed the Sons of Iraq (SOI) program grow from 500 Iraqis to 100,000 Iraqis, while security drastically improved. The Sons of Iraq program came into being as an Operation Order (OPORD) that gave guidelines for subordinate units to hire local security guards, using CERP (Commanders Emergency Response Program) funds. The guidelines had no mention of tribal affiliations or religious preferences towards the Sunnis. The OPORD was simply a tool that commanders on the ground could use to help shape and hold the battlefield. Some commanders used it, and some did not. There was never a plan to hire mostly tribal, Sunni security forces; it just turned out that way based on the specific nature of Iraq at the time. Similarly, there should not be a plan to create local-defense forces in Afghanistan explicitly along ethnic lines. Many experts, journalists and policy advisors have a variety of misconceptions about the SOI program—misconceptions based on a lack of understanding as to what, exactly, the program was, and how it developed. Some critics point out that the SOI experience has little bearing on the case of Afghanistan because the SOIs were all tribal. In fact, while it is true that many of the SOI contracts were tribal-based, this is not true for all of them. The reason why many commanders decided to use a tribal-based SOI force is because that is what 12

worked in certain regions of Iraq. At the same time, many other SOI contracts were given to community leaders, business leaders, political leaders, and even insurgent leaders. After all, Iraq is a still largely a tribal society, and so it can be expected that SOI leaders would have affiliations to their tribe. However, this was never a reason for choosing who should be an SOI leader. For the American commanders on the ground, leaders for SOI contracts were chosen on the basis of the amount of influence they had in society, and not on their particular tribal or religious affiliation. Indeed, SOI members—which included former traders, former farmer, and even former insurgents—were paid a humble salary to provide an important service: local security. Yet an important secondary effect of the money paid to SOI members was a boost to local economies. As members brought stability to towns and villages, markets were rejuvenated. SOI members spent their salaries at local markets to provide for their families. Keeping the SOI lesson in mind, one can imagine that the expansion of the ALP program could also play an important role in economically and logistically supporting local leaders, local entrepreneurs, and local security forces against the Taliban and other insurgent groups. In re-examining the Sons of Iraq (SOI) program, it is essential to remember why the program achieved results. What were the reasons for the success of the SOI program? First, it was a local, bottom-up approach. The SOI program was not implemented from Baghdad, the Green Zone or Camp Victory. In an Operations Order, Commanders on the ground were given left and right limits, and then executed the program. Second,
Coalition Forces
supervised the SOI program. Coalition Forces collected biometrics on each of the SOIs, closely supervising and partnering with them. Coalition Forces also carefully
Figure 3: Paid to clean canals during the day, defending their villages at night.
presided over connecting the SOIs to Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and the Iraqi Government. Third, Coalition Forces paid the SOIs. The SOIs signed temporary, paid contracts. The SOIs signed contracts swearing cooperation with the Iraqi Government. The SOI contracts were done in 3-month installments, therefore giving Coalition Forces leverage to end payments due to misbehavior, serving as a sort of sanctions over the volunteers. And fourth, Coalition Force Commanders raised SOI numbers as needed. Eventually, the SOI program was capped at 106,000, but in the beginning, Commanders were given the freedom to sign up SOIs as they deemed fit to overwhelm the insurgency. To conclude, in its simplicity the Sons of Iraq program knocked out three birds with one stone. The SOI program employed former insurgents to provide local security, thereby reintegrating them into the Government.
Theoretical reflections on the strategic value of counterinsurgency from below
Clearly, the historical record provides compelling evidence that irregular local defense forces can play a vital role in assuring the success of counterinsurgency campaigns. They do so by solving those fundamental challenges of population-centric COIN that we discussed earlier in 13

this paper. It is the locals themselves who are best suited to solve the identification problem because they naturally possess all of those cultural and linguistic qualities so highly valued by regular counterinsurgency forces. The population can hide insurgents; but insurgents are vulnerable if the population decides to identify and turn them in. If, indeed, insurgents are like fish in the sea, then the most effective way to inhibit or prevent their ease of movement through the population is to turn the water toxic by organizing and empowering local populations that are fed up with insurgents and willing to stand up to them. The forces of insurgency and of counterinsurgency compete not only for control of the population, but also for the control of spaces—not just physical space, but also social spaces. Denying the enemy social spaces in which to hide, in which to spread propaganda and to recruit fighters, in which to demonstrate that their governance is superior to that of the government—all this is absolutely necessary for success in counterinsurgency. In reality, governments rarely have the capacity to deploy and sustain the necessary numbers of regular security forces to maintain a presence, and therefore control, in all the possible strategically important geographical and social spaces. A well-directed local self-defense initiative, however, can be the essential ingredient for addressing the ubiquity problem faced by the regular security forces. If properly organized and supervised, a local self-defense forces can help to compensate for the 'ubiquity problem' that counterinsurgents face by taking over tasks such as deterrent patrolling and, when necessary, providing immediate defense of the population within the boundaries of their territory. This division of labor can help to free up regular COIN forces for more pressing tasks. Furthermore, "while the individual [village guard] members may be focused on defending their villages or families, the fact that they are permanently present in their villages are operating in places they know well allows incumbents to tap into private information." 38 Consequently, one can reasonably expect that the active collaboration with the government that local defense forces would bring can enhance that which Major General Flynn has deemed essential for fixing Intel in Afghanistan: namely, "gaining and exploiting knowledge about the localized contexts of operation and the distinctions about the Taliban and the rest of the Afghan population." 39 From a practical and strategic point of view, the formation of local defense groups plays one additional significant function: namely, it can serve to fasten down the natural tendency of rational actors to shift allegiances continually in accordance with the fortunes of war, as Afghans are well known to do. Forming a village defense group constitutes a public declaration of collaboration with the government. This exposes the population to violent reprisals from insurgents; for by the very act of forming such groups, villagers compromise themselves. "Because militias threaten insurgents, they quickly become the insurgents' primary targets." 40 As such, people who openly and actively oppose insurgents through self defense groups will quickly find that their only course of action, if they wish to survive, is to continue collaboration with the government. Therefore, the counterinsurgent actor must be able to quickly recognize this as an opportunity to create bridging social capital 41 with local communities. If a counterinsurgent actor fails to reciprocate with concrete actions to support local initiatives of self-defense, then it will surely lose credibility, along with the community's trust, allegiance, and willingness to collaborate. Having established the theoretical and practical reasons as to why the idea of local defense makes both theoretical and practical COIN sense, we must now turn to the question:
to what extent is the ALP program, as currently envisaged by the Ministry of Interior,
suitable for spearheading counterinsurgency from below in Afghanistan? 14

Is the ALP suited to spearheading counterinsurgency from below?
What is the profile of the 'perfect counterinsurgent'? In Afghanistan, his skill sets would include the following:  He speaks fluently the local language, either Pashto and/or Dari;  He is culturally sensitive, with years of experience in Afghanistan;  His communication and IO abilities are flawless;  He is an expert on the local history and terrain of his district, perhaps even of his province;  He eats with the people;  He sleeps with the people;  He lives among the people;  He enjoys the respect, legitimacy, and support of the people;  He is related by kinship to the local people, and therefore to a great degree accountable to them;  He wants nothing more than to protect the people. His name is Lalay and there are thousands of 'perfect counterinsurgents' in Afghanistan, just like him. Lalay led a revolt of local farmers in Gizab, Afghanistan, to rid his village of the Taliban.
42 The contention with the Taliban began when the insurgents killed several of Lalay’s family members with a roadside bomb. The Afghan Government gave Lalay $24,000 as compensation for the incident, but then the Taliban demanded that he hand the money over to them. To pressure Lalay to cooperate, the Taliban detained his father and brother. At this point, Lalay organized the revolt against the Taliban with the help of ISAF Special Forces. After successfully helping Lalay and his fellow villagers to driving out the Taliban, the Special Forces went on to train other locals, whom they fondly dubbed the 'Gizab Good Guys,' in order to defend their village. The Special Forces connected the Gizab Good Guys to the Afghan District Government, which helped them to bring in development projects. Though on a smaller scale, the story of the 'Gizab Good Guys' is reminiscent to that of the Anbar Awakening in Iraq, which was led by Abdul Sattar Abu Risha during the spring of
Figure 4: One of the local defense guards known as the 'Gizab Good Guys,' following behind two Afghan National Police (ANP) officers
15

2007. The combination of Sattar’s family being murdered by 'al Qaeda in Iraq' and the overall anger among the tribes with the brutally strict codes of Al Qaeda led to a revolt in Ramadi that spread across Anbar Province. As mentioned earlier, that revolt would go on to inspire the much larger and tide-turning success known as the Sons of Iraq program. It would appear, therefore, that the 'perfect counterinsurgent' is to be found within the Afghan population itself. On the other hand, it is debatable whether the ALP, as it is currently envisaged and designed by the Afghan Ministry of Interior, is the optimal vehicle through which to develop and exercise the full potential of Afghanistan's 'perfect counterinsurgents.' Government-sponsored local defense initiatives, like the ALP, are nothing new in Afghanistan.
43 Such initiatives, under a bewildering variety of acronyms, have been seen before in Afghanistan over the past five years: ANAP (Afghan National Auxiliary Police or polis-e kumaki); AP3 (Afghan Public Protection Program, or niru-ye muhafezat-e mahalli-ye amniat); LDI (Local Defense Initiative, or ibtikar-e defa'-e mahali); APPF (Afghan Public Protection Force). Critics of these initiatives point out that "programs and their acronyms come and go at remarkable speed in Afghanistan" 44 ; but to date little effort has been made to learn from the mistakes and lessons of prior experiences before new, yet similar, initiatives are again launched. Let us briefly look at what some of the problems that arose from these initiatives, and the lessons they hold for the ALP program.
The ANAP
The ANAP was initiated in 2006 as a temporary stopgap measure for addressing the slow and cumbersome process of developing Afghan National Security Forces, particularly in the face of an aggressive, resurgent Taliban that was gaining traction in the south of the country. It proved short-lived, and the program was shut down in 2008. The stated aim of the ANAP was to provide community policing so as to "ensure government control of territory" by "taking part in joint operations with ANA, ANP and the National Directorate of Security (NDS)." 45 It was authorized to grow up to a maximum of 11, 271 recruits, but only around 9,000 members had been deployed before the program ended. After the ANAP program was launched in Zabul in September 2006, a number of widespread problems soon emerged. Contrary to the program's initial intentions, "recruits were ill suited to 'community policing' because, for the most part, they were not from the community." 46 Many had come from places outside of the communities that they eventually would operate in. Indeed, some of the recruits did not even speak the local language (e.g. Dari-speaking ANAP posted to Pashto-speaking communities in Zabul). In theory, members were to be recruited locally, on the basis of community recommendation and a clean criminal record. However, "on paper, vetting was to be conducted by the MoI and NDS but in reality very little vetting was done." 47 Poor vetting practices resulted in the ANAP program being heavily infiltrated by jihadi commanders "eager to access the salaries and resources of ANAP for their fighters." 48 Clearly, such a situation only exacerbates the 'identification problem,' rather than contributing to its solution. Moreover, massive desertions in the ranks of the ANAP reportedly occurred already in its first months, due to long delays in payment.
49 According to Lefèvre, the ANP came to resent the ANAP because (1) it was prone to infiltration by jihadi networks, 50 and (2) it became a potential rival for recruitment into the ANP. Namely, it presented most of the benefits associated with the police (e.g. a similar uniform, salary, firearms and other equipment, ID documentation, employment) without requiring the same level of training from its recruits, and with the benefit of likely being posted closer to home. It is hardly surprising that "aspiring recruits often chose the easier route [i.e. ANAP], further hindering [the ANP's] struggling recruitment drive." 51 Afraid that history was about to repeat itself, these reasons can also account for why, at a COIN shura 16

held at Camp Julian in August 2010, many ANP officers expressed grave concerns and reservations about the government's newest plan to set up the ALP.
The AP3
Discussions between U.S. and Afghan officials in October 2008 on how to improve security conditions at the local level led to the creation of the Afghanistan Public Protection Program, in the summer of 2009. Designed, implemented, and funded by the American military— although under the nominal authority of the MoI—the AP3 is a community engagement program that promotes local governance, local security and project development in order to extend GIRoA legitimacy to the district level. Its stated goal was to "prevent insurgent attacks on key infrastructure and facilities...[thereby increasing] stability that establishes the conditions for greater development...[and] extending the legitimate reach of the Government of Afghanistan." 52 For mainly strategic reasons, the program was initiated in Wardak province in March 2009. Unfortunately, Wardak was possibly not the most ideal location to pilot this project. Whereas the Provincial Governor, Halim Feda'i, claims that local elders had approached him in 2008 to request the creation of a Wardaki-managed local defense force, 53 others present a different story. At a MoI-sponsored seminar in Kabul in 2008, Wardaki local community were vocal in their misgivings about the program and refused to sign a memorandum of understanding with the government.
54 Instead, they drafted a statement requesting a greater role for the ANA and ANP in the province...
55 These elders told the governor and other officials during the meeting that they were not prepared to agree to AP3 because Wardak had painful experiences with government-sponsored militias during Dr Najibullah's regime... These elders reminded participants that infighting among rival militias caused 2,000 deaths in Wardak during the war and AP3 would likely lead to more infighting. The MoI stipulated that selection of AP3 'guardians' would be done at district-level shuras, preferably through the Afghanistan Social Outreach Program (ASOP), being run by the Independent Directorate for Local Governance (IDLG). In practice, though, it seems that the AP3 program had many of the same vetting problems that the ANAP experienced. Even senior MoI officials admit that neither the MoI, nor the National Directorate of Security (NDS) or American Special Forces have the capacity to screen every recruit thoroughly.
56 As Lefèvre observed, "experiences with the ANAP suggest that any vetting mechanism is unlikely to detect infiltration from insurgents or criminal networks. Vetting is not a priority in the management of the AP3...." 57 The program picked up momentum after the appointment of Ghulam Muhammad as AP3 commander in December 2009. He is a controversial figure, since he has formerly served as an insurgent commander in Harakat-e Inqilab-e Islami, Hizb-e Islami (Gulbuddin), and the Taliban regime. After his arrest by American forces in 2004, he appears to have defected to the government side. The Special Forces now regard him well, and he presumes to report only directly to them, thereby bypassing the Deputy Provincial Chief of Police.
58 "The decision to appoint an AP3 commander for the province subverted the original command and control charts issued by MoI, which only mentions that district-level commanders should report to the ANP district chiefs." 59 This has created friction between the ANP and the AP3. In regard to recruitment, soon after assuming command, Ghulam Muhammad quickly brought his mujahedeen followers into the AP3, without consulting local elders, and in disregard for the formal processes of vetting and shura selection. As a result, many Wardakis have grown to distrust the AP3 program and to question whether it is still in their best interest, for it now appears to have been hijacked by a "strongman" who enjoys the backing of U.S. Special Forces. 17

Even so, the incomplete data nevertheless suggests that security conditions in the province have noticeably improved since the AP3 started, particularly on the main roads and highways. What, then, is the likely future of this program? As far as U.S. officials are concerned, the program has been "a success" in Wardak. But given that it has proven to be resource-intensive and slow to start up, it will not be expanded to other provinces.
60
The LDI
Yet another program is the Local Defense Initiative (LDI), formerly known as the Community Defense Initiative (CDI). The idea appears to have come from American military planners, who were dismayed by the perceived problems with the AP3 program in Wardak and so decided to experiment with smaller projects in mid-2009. It is the U.S. Special Forces who have designed and implemented the LDI program in different parts of the country. As of October 2009, CDIs had been started in Herat (with Noorzais, Tajiks, Barakzais at Shindand), Kandahar (with Alikozais at Arghandab), Nangarhar (with Shinwaris at Achin), and Paktia (with Chamkanis, Mangals at Chamkani. By March 2010, LDIs were also to be found in Daikundi, Helmand provinces.
61 According to the Local Defense Initiative Strategy document, the purpose of the LDI is to "secure local communities by denying insurgents access to and support in local communities" by reversing the "reasons insurgents are effective at the village level: poverty, unemployment, lack of adequate protection, lack of education." 62 On paper, the strategy for undercutting insurgent relevance at the village level is to provide "responsibility and employment to village members...[so that] villagers no longer provide a source of support for insurgents...[and] will not allow insurgents to live within their village or allow village members to join the insurgents." 63 LDI 'defenders' were, according to Special Forces staff in Kabul, to be used solely in a defensive manner, and not to be deployed in combat operations. The strategy document stipulates:  "village leadership, along with District Governors, Chief of Police and NDS are responsible for vetting LDI 'defenders';  village leadership is responsible for verifying "that members of the LDI are receiving payments, ensure the performance and readiness status of the LDI and demand loyalty and responsible action under a compact framework";  LDI groups "will not have authority to act outside their home village area or form alliances with other LDI forces." 64 Unlike earlier programs, like the ANAP and AP3, the government did not officially arm 'defenders'; rather, members were expected to provide for their own weapons. LDI members receive individual payment through the MoI. In addition, communities with successful LDIs could also expect "government assistance" in the form of micro-development and infrastructural projects, upon approval of the District Governor. While the strategy gives the impression of a single, coherent, uniform program for the LDI, in practice one sees striking differences in implementation and outcomes. The positive LDI experience in Nagahan village, Arghandab District, presents a model example of what the program can potentially achieve. The village was chosen by Special Forces field commanders in mid-2009, on the basis of the following selection criteria: "(a) a history, presence or willingness to accept the 'arbakai model' and a tradition of 'resistance' [to Taliban]; (b) strategic importance of the area, both for the Taleban and for the government and the international military and (c) logical feasibility and access.” Based on these clear criteria, one of the sites selected was the village of Nagahan, in Kandahar Province. The initial problem, however, was that locals were uninterested in becoming involved with ISAF because since 2007, Arghandab District had been the target of numerous Taliban 18

attacks, which had succeeded in intimidating the local population. Neverthless, Special Forces, together with the District Governor, held initial discussions with local elder-leaders. "Following several meetings, this materialized into an official 'invitation' to the SF from the villagers of Nagahan." 65 A small team of U.S. Special Forces came to live in the village in November 2009. They established themselves in a qala, together with around 25 'defenders' who lived with them. A second group of around 50 'defenders' lived in surrounding houses of the village. Arghandabi 'defenders' were, according to elders, selected at Nagahan and district shuras. The elders felt themselves to be more capable than the government of managing and controlling the vetting process because they "know all of these people." 66 Moreover, they took it as an important sign of respect that they were always consulted and kept in the loop by the SF in regard to deciding LDI affairs. Quinn, one of the authors of this paper, made a similar observation on this critical point of fact while embedded with an ODA 67 Team in Zer e-koh valley, Herat province: "During my embed period, General Petraeus visited Zerekoh Valley and conducted a Shura with the local Elders.... The one word that kept coming up during the Shura was "consultation." As one of the head Elders of the valley said, "Every time CPT Adams does something, he does it with our consultation. This is the difference." 68 Arghandabi 'defenders' routinely conducted foot patrols together with the Special Forces, thereby bringing a dramatic improvement in the level of local security. This has also raised the population's trust and confidence in the SF, and in the LDI's ability to defend them. "If someone tries to infiltrate the community from the outside, we know immediately," one Nagahan elder told Lefèvre. "Two days ago, some of the villagers captured members of the Taleban placing IEDs near Khal-e-Shak village. We stopped them and handed them into Afghan security forces." 69 The development side of Arghandab's LDI consists of cash–for-work and crops-for work projects, funded and managed by the U.S. military. Projects include seed and fertilizer distribution, the construction of a flood-protection wall, road and culvert construction, among others. The benefits and positive changes brought to Arghadab by the LDI has not gone unnoticed by the neighboring district of Khakrez, who are also keen on starting up an LDI in their own communities. However, some elders from Khakrez believe that although the LDI could greatly benefit their district, they nevertheless feel that Khakrez lacks the necessary conditions to make the LDI effective. Namely, there are long-standing feuds between different ethnic groups living in the district, and many inhabitants believe that both the district governor and the chief of police are corrupt.
70 Unfortunately, reports from other areas where the program is being pursued suggests that it is not everywhere as smooth and successful as in Arghandab. For example, in Achin district, Nangarhar province, US Combined Joint Task Force-82 attempted to organize the entire Shinwari tribe (400,000 members) into an LDI.
71 This was regard as threatening by other tribes in the district, who saw it as upsetting the balance of power in the area. As a result, local conflicts have flared up not only between the Shinwaris and other tribes inhabiting the district, but also between Shinwari sub-tribes. An LDI project in Nili district of Daikundi province also ran into problems soon after it was launched. For rather than giving the responsibility for bottom-up recruitment and vetting to village or district shuras, as was done in Arghandab, the same mistake of the AP3 in Wardak was repeated in Nili LDI project: In early 2010, several people from Daikundi reported that the US military had recruited a jihadi commander named Sedaqat, originally from Khideer district, to assemble a group of up to 500 men to assist with security in the province. Sedaqat is a well-known troublemaker who was behind the 2008 kidnapping of two French nationals working for the NGO Action Against Hunger.... The local population greeted Sedaqat's recruitment to LDI with surprise and dismay. "When he was asked 19

to go to the American base, at first the people thought that he would be arrested and they were very happy about this. Instead, they seem to be empowering him," says one local official.
72 Quite simply, the LDI projects in Achin and Nili were problematic because they were not carried out according to the same 'philosophy' as in Arghandab. Clearly, both projects were again very top-down in their implementation, particularly in regard to the selection of LDI members and commanders. 'Consultation with local elders'—a crucial element for gaining collaboration and trust in local-level engagements—was not followed. Furthermore, a massive LDI project that concentrates on only one tribe within a heterogenous district, like Achin, risks exacerbating inter-ethnic jealousies and clashes. Its size makes it cumbersome to manage, and more vulnerable to failure. As Kilcullen wisely points out: "Small is beautiful.... Keep programs small: this makes them cheap, sustainable, low-key and (importantly) recoverable if they fail." 73 By contrast, though we must be careful not to prematurely declare Arghandab's LDI experience a resounding success, it nevertheless illustrates very clearly how "counterinsurgency from below" can look like, and what it can achieve, in the Afghan context.
ALP: Critical Observations and Recommendations
In the light of the theoretical and empirical discussion presented in the previous sections of this paper, we would like to conclude by offering our critical observations and recommendations in regard to how the ALP might, and could, develop in the future.
The ALP 'Tug –of-War': VSP vs. ANAP
The Village Stability Platform (VSP) is a decentralized, bottom-up approach to local stability, where ISAF ODA Teams clear semi-permissive to non-permissive environments, then live amongst the local population to bring security, governance, and development to areas without GIRoA presence. One of the downfalls to VSP is that there is limited, if any, Afghan partnership in executing the program. The Afghan National Auxiliary Police (ANAP) was a hastily assembled, additional police force that the MoI generated in early 2007 to answer the shortfalls of security forces against the rise of Taliban in southern Afghanistan. Approximately 9,000 Afghans from six southern provinces were paid, trained (10 days) and equipped by the MoI. These supplementary forces were quickly released into the fight under the ANP with limited supervision and tenuous connection to shuras, which is the village governing body. The majority of ANAP personnel just simply deserted or joined the insurgency, with 3,200 coalescing into the ANP. ANAP is an example of the disaster that may occur when local forces are expeditiously assembled through a top-down, bureaucratic approach. Our interview with Major General Ahmadzai already gives us a glimpse of what the ALP will look like. And it appears that the MoI is currently following a model that is almost identical to that of the ill-fated ANAP not because they see it as the best strategic approach, but because it is simply the only method that they are comfortable with, or perhaps the only one know to them. ANAP is an example of the disaster that may occur when local forces are expeditiously assembled through a top-down, bureaucratic approach. In the coming months, as the ALP program is cobbled together, ANAP should be a constant reminder of what the program should not be. During negotiations over the Afghan Local Police (ALP) program in the coming months, there will most likely be a “tug-of-war,” where ISAF will attempt to align the program with the Village Stability Platform (VSP), a decentralized, bottom-up approach to 20

local security, while the Afghan MOI will look to align the program closer to the failed Afghan National Auxiliary Police (ANAP) program, a centralized, top-down approach. It is imperative that ISAF pulls the ALP program closer to the VSP methodology in order to forge a successful program. Partnership and mentorship with Afghan counterparts is not something that only happens at the tactical level. ISAF must remind GIRoA/MOI of the failures of ANAP and coach them towards taking a more decentralized, bottom-up approach, even if pushing for a more decentralized program stalls the implementation of ALP. It is simply imperative that we have the right ALP program that works for the Afghan people at the village level. The Village Stability Platform (VSP) is not perfect and neither are the approaches of the MoI towards local security. Hopefully, though, ISAF can coach, teach, and mentor GIRoA about the merits of VSP in order to pull them towards taking a more decentralized, bottom-up approach to ALP. Negotiations and partnership is all about making accommodations and compromising with the other party. I strongly believe that ISAF and GIRoA can come to an accommodation and agreement to work the program as partners in order to bring effective local security to the Afghan people.
The Role of the Afghan Ministry of Interior (MoI)
Apparently, the MoI intends to take exclusive management of this program. To repeat what Major General Ahmadzai stated in our interview: "ISAF will have no direct contact with ALP." This is disturbing given the MoI's poor track record on managing the ANAP and the AP3, especially in regard to vetting and payment of salaries. Moreover, "where the informal armed groups have been considered a relative success, this was usually in large part...due to their close relations with adequately trained and experienced international [i.e. Special Forces] military forces." 74 At this moment in their development, it is highly unlikely that the ANP has the military capability to clear "non-permissive environments" in preparation for inducing an ALP initiative in local settings. Local populations will simply not compromise themselves by resisting insurgents if there is not a credible force to back them up immediately when the insurgents come to burst through the gates. At this stage of the counterinsurgency campaign, ISAF cannot completely rely on Afghan capacity to execute such an important program like the ALP. The opportunity is simply too precious to be lost. On the other hand, ISAF cannot go at it alone, without Afghan knowledge and an Afghan face to the program. Instead, we need an effective ALP program relying on partnered ISAF-ANSF oversight to rapidly seize the momentum and cripple the insurgency. The time-consuming bureaucratic burden—administration, training, logistics, etc.— that is in store for the MoI in running this program is also an important point to consider. (The MoI has already experienced this with the ANAP.) Indeed, the MoI already has its hands full in trying to correct the problems and inefficiencies within the ANP, without needing to take on board yet more problems and responsibilities that come along with administering a local police force. The government must be careful not to worsen morale in the national police, as what happened during the ANAP experience. The combination of limited supervisory capacity and lack of enthusiasm for the idea of local police forces within the MOI may lead to GIRoA “slow playing” the program, intentionally or not. Unchecked MOI supervision of the program could lead to missing out on tactical and strategic opportunities to use the ALP to reverse the momentum of the insurgency. The best way to address these grounded concerns, therefore, is to ensure that ALP program is supervised and developed by ISAF, with tacit partnered supervision by the MoI, even if MoI is the one that is 'publicly' seen to be supervising the program. The MoI serving as the paymaster for the ALP program bring the danger of repeating the mistakes of the ANAP and AP3 initiatives. Since the United States will initially be 21

footing the bill for the ALP program, ISAF should therefore be the initial proprietor of the funds, and the one deciding where the money goes through selecting the villages in which to develop ALP initiatives. More precisely, CERP Funds should be used to initially pay for the program so as to ensure that the new local police can receive salaries in an efficient and timely manner in place. In a recent IJC point paper, consideration for financial support of the ALP program was going through the Afghan Security Forces Fund (ASFF) or the Afghan Reintegration Trust Fund (ARTF). The next steps for financing the program would be to finalize an agreement to transfer funds to the MOI. This sort of top-down approach might stymie the ALP program, where a large sum of money would be stuck in a bureaucratic MOI/ISAF system and place the responsibility of initiating the program in Kabul, far away from the knowledgeable actors on the ground. An alternative scheme is to use the Commander’s Emergency Relief Program (CERP) to foster a local, bottom-up approach (See Fig. 5). In the same way that our NATO allies use U.S. CERP Funds for development projects, our Afghan partners should also use
Figure 5: The Afghan CERP Workflow
CERP Funds to pay the salaries of the ALP. The Provincial ANP Chief should partner with the ISAF Task Force Commander on the issue of CERP money for salaries and agree to authorize a Letter of Agreement (LOA) that will officially initiate funds for the ALP program. A copy of the LOA should then be sent up MOI channels for notification and accountability. The MOI will undoubtedly give guidelines for the number ALP personnel that will be authorized per province in order to keep the ALP cap under the 10,000 national maximum. But the responsibility to choose strategic, semi-permissive villages in which to initiative the program should fall to the Provincial ANP Chief, partnered with the ISAF Task Force Commanders. The most effective way to allocate that responsibility is to give the Provincial ANP Chief and the TF Commander the power of the purse. Ultimately, the U.S. will be funding the ALP program no matter what pot of money we choose. Therefore, attention should be paid to the most effective way to distribute the funds, which promotes a decentralized, bottom-up approach that empowers the MOI/ANP. The prospects of an Afghan CERP process would not be reinventing the wheel, but using methods that our NATO allies are already processing. The CERP process is not perfect, but it will definitely be more effective at providing a decentralized, bottom-up approach than just simply dumping large sums of money into MOI coffers.
How many ALP are needed to make a COIN impact?
The overall number of ALP recruits must be permitted to grow large enough to overwhelm the Taliban. Afghan officials have already indicated that they will take a slow approach to the ALP program, starting with 10,000 members. Simply put, 10,000 ALP members will not be enough to achieve operational momentum to overwhelm the insurgency. Again, this is too similar to the Afghan Public Protection Forces (APPF), where 8,000 locals were trained and equipped by the MOI in a specific province, making only limited impact against the insurgency. 22

In a perfect world, the number of ALPs members should be mission dependent (or METT-T). But since we operate in Afghanistan, a cap on the total number of ALPs is necessary in order to assuage President Karzai and the Afghan Government's inherent fear of militias. We would approximate, though, that the number of ALP members needed in order to achieve a crippling blow to the insurgency’s momentum should more realistically be somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 men. Therefore, in order to arrive at the requisite numbers, we recommend three courses of action: 1. Clarify with GIRoA that the 10,000 ALP figure does not include individuals already currently involved in ongoing initiatives, like the Village Stability Platform (VSP); 2. ISAF units partnered with ANSF units should urgently implement the ALP program under current GIRoA limitations in order to demonstrate (and widely publicise) early success so as to encourage further expansion of the program; 3. Each Regional Command (RC), spearheaded by Special Forces, should conduct an ALP assessment to determine a “wish list” of ALP locations and numbers of ALP personnel. The assessments should give ISAF Headquarters greater fidelity between the optimal number of ALPs and the acceptable number of ALPs by GIRoA. Somewhere in between those two figures is the reasonable number of ALPs to make a COIN-effective program.
ALP Training, Recruitment, and Uniforms
We must not forget that the main task of Afghan Local Police (ALP) members is to protect their own communities, and to mitigate Taliban safe havens in rural villages by helping to solve the identification and ubiquity problems that regular COIN forces encounter at the local setting. As such, they do not require the formal, extensive training that GIRoA is proposing for the program. Working together with ANA Commandos and assisted by conventional security forces, it should be the Special Forces that provide basic training in marksmanship, communications, deterrent patrolling, and the Rules of Engagement (ROE). Indeed, Special Forces already have substantial experience in training local defense forces (LDFs); this should carry over to the training of ALP. ALP training should be done on-the-job, and be specific to the local culture and the social environment in which village they will be operating. In terms of supplies, Hesco barriers, radios, better weapons, and sufficient provisions are about all they really need to carry out their work. If GIRoA and ISAF wish to seize the opportunity and the apparent growing momentum of anti-Taliban resistance, then they do not have the luxury of immersing ALP recruits in four weeks of training while the battle for Kandahar rages on. What the Taliban should face in the coming months is a hard fight against ANSF and ISAF forces; then, when they retreat to rural villages expecting to recuperate and obtain logistical support from an acquiescent population, they will instead find themselves staring down the barrel of a gun, courtesy of the ALP program. Selection of possible ALP sites should follow the three clear and simple criteria used by Special Forces field commanders in Arghandab. If current conditions do not seem to fit the selection criteria, then creative field commanders will need to investigate and to assess whether it is possible to exogenously 'shape' current conditions. This should not be done in a top-down fashion, but in conjunction with attempts to get elements of the population involved in grassroots efforts at reshaping local conditions. While it is true that every setting, every village, every population has its own complex characteristics which makes it "unrealistic to think that [one] model can simply be replicated in other areas," 75 it is also true that individuals are not slaves to social structures and cultural traditions. Individuals can, and do, change their social-cultural conditions in a variety of creative ways, when it is in their interest 23

to do so; the trick for the outsider, however, is to find ways to facilitate social change in a manner that is acceptable to the people that one is dealing with. It is important for the effectiveness and integrity of the ALP program that recruits to a local ALP force truly come from that community, and are known to the inhabitants. Nobody fights harder to protect a family than a member of that family. The appointment of local commanders should be left to the elders to decide in shura, in order to avoid the top-down mistakes that we presented examples of, above. Indeed, it is only the community members themselves who can solve the 'identification problem,' so long as the ALP does not turn into a huge gang of individuals both from inside and outside the community. As much as possible local elders should always be consulted on ALP matters. Furthermore, to keep the ALP system from stagnating, regular meetings should be held with local elders and authorities at least up to the district level. Besides providing training, ISAF Special Forces and ANA commandos should provide a 'rapid reaction' force that is embedded within every district where the ALP functions, with the capacity to provide immediate fire support when required. In turn, a population organized into ALPs will be the protective defensive barrier against insurgent ambush and attack for the rapid reaction team. “Do not build walls between yourselves and the people. The people will protect you. The people are your wall against the insurgents,” was the guidance issued by an AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) commander to his troops on Jolo island.
76 And it worked. After the AFP ground force commander issued the above guidance to his troops, they moved to occupy a previously Abu Sayyaf Group controlled village on Jolo Island. They built no walls or fortifications between themselves and the people they were supposed to protect. This instantly built rapport and trust between the villagers and the troops. As the troops moved down a dirt road towards the nearby beach to pick up supplies they were stopped by one of the villagers. The troops were told about daisy chained 81mm mortar rounds with a pressure detonation device that was left behind by the ASG to inflict damage on the AFP troops. The force protection measure worked. In ethnically heterogenous districts, one might consider forming elite groups of ALP whose members are drawn from the various ethnic groups living in the district, just like the Comandos Especiales of Peru. This might be a way of diffusing inter-ethnic competition around ALP projects, while at the same time creating or strengthening bridging social capital between various villages. Over time, such elite ALP teams could also take over the tasks from Special Forces of helping to train new ALP recruits. Most importantly, they can be the vanguard that keeps the general will to resist the Taliban high, thus ensuring that the ALP movement does not succumb to organizational inertia. As we have seen in the case examples of Peru's Comités de Autodefensa y Desarrollo, and the Sons of Iraq, uniforms are symbolically important for irregular defence forces; for it gives members a sense of corporate identity, pride, and respect. Therefore, some type of uniform is a likely a good idea in order to distinguish the ALP from the enemy. According to Special
Figure 6: LDF uniform in Zer-e-ko valley. A model for the ALP?
24

Forces personnel and local Afghans, there is a general opinion in rural communities that local defense volunteers do not want to be specifically associated with the police. To force recruits to dress up in uniforms that look very similar to the police might even turn off local village men and elders from the program. During the time one of the authors of this paper was embedded with an ODA team in the Zer-e-ko valley, he observed what locals regarded as an 'appropriate uniform' for the local defense forces. This uniform consisted of traditional Afghan garbs in different colors to differentiate separate LDF sections, with a Roman numeral on the right shoulder (see Figure 6). In so far as they do not look like outsiders, the traditional Afghan garb keeps the LDF connected to the community. At the same time, they are easily identifiable to the ODA Team. The 'defenders' themselves were so pleased with the uniform that some individuals took off the Roman numeral, and wore their garb to the mosque, and in town. This type of uniform is a creative example of what the future ALP uniform should look like.
Conclusion
To reverse the momentum of the insurgency and defeat the Taliban, we need to beat them at their own game. The lynchpin to the Taliban’s strategy is to dominate local, rural villages in order to utilize them as sanctuaries from which to intimidate the population, plan attacks on the ANSF and ISAF, and to spread 'word-of-mouth' propaganda with which to alter the perceptions of the population. In the coming months, the keystone of ISAF’s strategy should be to empower rural villages with the capability to defend themselves from the Taliban, thereby eliminating their sanctuaries among the population and connect rural communities more strongly to GIRoA through the Afghan Local Police program. Both GIRoA and ISAF agree on the need for a local defense program. ISAF and GIRoA must now make a decisive choice as to its implementation. One choice is to roll out slowly a limited ALP program in which it is the MoI that is supervising, training, and paying the local volunteers. The resulting battle space would probably look like this: Alternatively, the choice can be made to implement more aggressively – over the next three to nine months – an ALP program that has SOTF and ISAF units in the lead, partnering with the ANSF at the local level. The goal will be to reverse the momentum of the insurgency by 25

forging a mighty counterinsurgency movement from below, which eventually will see the ALP at the spear point. In this vision, the battle space will look something like this: Obviously, we would recommend the second choice. For the reasons outlined in this discussion paper, the second choice is clearly the way forward for the ALP program. Aggressively expanding the ALP program in the way that we recommend certainly brings risks. It is possible, for example, that many villages that participate in the ALP program will engage in inter- and intra-tribal feuds. Yet, on their own, they will probably engage in such feuds anyway. The crucial difference is that through the ALP program, the Afghan Government could serve as the interlocutor between the feuding tribes in a Taliban-free environment. In Afghanistan, the government getting involved in resolving disputes between village shuras is what local people understand as 'governance.' The government providing salaries and infrastructure projects to villages is what locals understand as 'development.' Empowering and employing the 'perfect counterinsurgents' (i.e. the local people) to defend their own villages is what they understand as 'security.' Combine all of this together and you 26

have a future strategy for stability in rural Afghanistan that is connected to the Afghan Government. Ultimately, in following a ‘clear, hold, and build’ counterinsurgency strategy within in a predominantly rural and geographically rugged country like Afghanistan, expansion of the ALP program is more a necessity than a choice. The rewards far outweigh the risks when the choice is between an ISAF-backed local police program, or simply letting a village become dominated by the Taliban. Every policy decision in Afghanistan has risks. While there may be costs and some risks to aggressively expanding the ALP program, its reward could be the winning of the war. 27

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Theidon, Kimberly. The Micropolitics of Reconciliation in Postwar Peru. Journal of Conflict Resolution 50(3): 433-457. Trinquier, R. (1964) Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency. New York: Praeger. (First published in 1961.) United States Army. (2006) Field Manual No. 3-24. Washington: Government Printing Office. Headquarters United States Forces – Afghanistan (HQ-USFOR-A) (2010) “Executive Summary for AR 15-6 Investigation, 21 February 2010 CIVCAS incident in Uruzgan Province.” (Re-graded Unclassified when Separated from Classified Enclosure) 31

1 Koelbl 2010. 2 Quinn 2010. 3 provide them with policing and security at the local level, but rather have relied on their own communities (see Giustozzi 2009). 4 See Boone 2009; Chandrasekaran 2010; Filkins 2009; Koelbl 2010; Lawrence 2010; Indeed, over the centuries Afghans have seldom looked to the central government to Jones and Muñoz 2010: ix. 5 Boone 2009: 15; also see Koelbl 2010. 6 Lawrence 2010. Also see Partlow and De Young 2010. 7 Police. See Sengupta 2010. 8 Afghanistan. Interview was done through a translator, Shahin Mayan, who was provided to the author by the Counterinsurgency Advisory & Assistance Team (CAAT), HQ-ISAF. 9 Army infantry officer, who had served for 16 months in Helmand province as a company support leader. 10 War," Mao writes: "Besides employing trained armies to carry on mobile warfare, we must organize great numbers of guerrilla units among the peasants. One should know that the anti-Japanese volunteer units in the three northeastern provinces are only a minor demonstration of the latent power of resistance than can be mobilized from the peasants of the whole country....properly organized and directed, [the Chinese peasants] can keep the Japanese army busy twenty-four hours a day and worry it to death" (1996b: 193) 11 political-military struggle to deny the insurgent actor the opportunity to establish control over the population of a territory, and in so doing to prevent or minimise an erosion of the incumbent’s ability to exercise legitimate governance. 12 Afghanistan the guidance to “secure and serve the population.” “Only by providing them with security and earning their trust and confidence can the Afghan government and ISAF prevail,” he writes in his COMISAF’s Counterinsurgency Guidance document (Petraeus 2010: 1). 13 COIN operations often require a high ratio of security forces to the protected population” (United States Army 2006: 1-2). 14 Decree Number 3196, dated 16 August 2010, officially promulgated the Afghan Local Interviewed conducted by author on 18 August 2010 at Ministry of Interior, Kabul, Interview conducted by author at HQ-ISAF, Kabul, on 9 August 2010 with a former US For example, see Mao Tse-tung 1966b, Guevara 1975. In his essay "On Protracted Trinquier 1964: 8. In this paper we will define ‘counterinsurgency’ as a protracted McChrystal 2009: 1. His successor, Gen. David Petraeus, give ISAF and US Forces in The problem is recognised, but not elaborately discussed, in FM 3-24: “…successful Ubiquity is the property of being present everywhere. 15 Flynn et al. 2010: 13. 16 Kalyvas 2006: 119. 17 Mao 1966a: 174. 18 Kalyvas 2006: 89 19 Crawford 1958: 87. 20 In Cooper 1979: 89. 21 HQ-USFOR-A 2010: 1. 22 In DESO 1989: 128. Ayacucho Department was the epicentre of the Shining Path insurgency in Peru, between 1980 and 2000. 32

23 Flynn et al. 2010: 8. 24 ibid.: 11. 25 See Starn 1999. 26 Fumerton 2002: 75. 27 Perito 2009: 7. Also see Sarway 2008. 28 Asia Foundation 2008. 29 ABC, BBC, and ARD 2010, in Jones and Muñoz 2010: 9. 30 McChrystal 2009: 1. 31 British Army 2009: 1-12. 32 33 Based on their investigation and assessment of the situation, Jones and Muñoz find that “although there are disagreements about the force ratios needed to protect a local population, we judge that there is a gap in force requirements to protect the Afghan population” (Jones and Muñoz 2010: 11). Branch 2009: 117-139. 34 Fumerton 2002: 116. 35 Quoted in Fumerton 2001: 487-488. 36 37 This is very important as it relates to Afghanistan, especially in the sense of Information Operations. ALP needs to be framed by IO and perceived by locals as "local villagers repelling the Taliban," and not as "GIRoA auxiliary forces." Similar to Peru, Afghanistan has a "myth/word-of-mouth" communication culture, where 1,000 villagers repelling the Taliban will turn into 100,000 by word of mouth, fomenting a veritable anti-Taliban movement, not just an additional 10,000-man police force. Fumerton 2002: 134, 184-185; also Theidon 2006. 38 Kalyvas 2006: 107. Emphasis added. 39 Flynn 2010: 23. 40 Kalyvas 2006: 109. 41 42 In this paper we interpret social capital as "norms, obligations, reciprocity, and trust embedded in social relations...that enable its members to achieve their individual and community objectives" (Narayan 1997: 50). 'Bridging' social capital refers to "the type of social capital that links, or cuts across, different communities/groups" (Harpham et al. 2002: 106). Lalay's story is told in Chandrasekaran 2010. 43 44 Whereas we discuss here only government-sponsored local defence or policing initiatives, it is important to know that there has historically also existed traditional institutions of local policing in Afghanistan. These include Tsalweshtai, Arbakai, Chagha, Chalweshtai, and Lashkar. For an excellent discussion of traditional institutions of local policing in Afghanistan, see Jones and Muñoz 2010: 26-32. Lefèvre 2010: 5. 45 ibid.: 6. 46 ibid. 47 ibid. 48 49 The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) found that "police trainers estimated as many as one in 10 of the ANAP recruits were Taleban agents" (RUSI and FPRI 2009: 7). Lefèvre 2010: 7. 50 51 "Interview with recruits showed that ANAP was being used not to supplement the police but to regularise hundreds of men belonging to existing informal armed groups" (ibid.: 6). ibid.: 7. 52 Drawn from a January 2009 MoI document, quoted in Lefèvre 2010: 8. 53 Lefèvre's interview with Halim Feda'i in Kabul, February 2010. 33

54 55 Lefèvre's interview with several provincial officials and elders in Kabul, February 2010. The Afghanistan Analysts Network received a copy of this statement. 56 Lefèvre's interview with senior police officer in Kabul, February 2010. 57 Lefèvre 2010: 9. 58 Lefèvre's interview with Ghulam Muhammad in Kabul, February 2010. 59 Lefèvre 2010: 10. 60 ibid.: 13. 61 ibid.: 15. 62 2010: 15. 63 From Final draft, Local Defence Initiative Strategy, March 2010, quoted in Lefèvre ibid. 64 ibid. 65 ibid.: 16. 66 Quoted in Lefèvre 2010: 17. 67 Element of the United States Army Special Forces. 68 ODA stands for Special Forces Operational Detachment-Alpha, and is the Basic Joe Quinn, RC-West CAAT Embed Report: Village Stability Platform, pp. 5-6. 69 Lefèvre 2010: 17. 70 ibid.: 18. 71 ibid. 72 Lefèvre 2010: 18. 73 Kilcullen 2006: 34. 74 Lefèvre 2010: 2. 75 ibid.: 22. 76 Counterinsurgency Center Blog ( Lt. Clark, “Force Protection: WHO SHOULD WE PROTECT?” USA and USMC http://usacac.army.mil/blog/blogs/coin/archive/2009/09/23/force-protection-who are-we-protecting.aspx
). 34