Program on National Security

Afghan Police Reform and the Future of Afghanistan

Achieving a minimum level of stability in any post-conflict society is an absolute prerequisite for effective and durable reconciliation and reconstruction. To achieve even the most basic level of stability requires a well managed, competent and impartial police force operating within an institutional framework defined by law. Evidence strongly suggests that the Afghan National Police (ANP) has not achieved even a minimum acceptable standard expected of a police force in a democratic society. Without reform, the ANP will be incapable of maintaining law and order in Afghanistan or of becoming an institution capable of underpinning and protecting Afghanistan’s fledgling democracy.

The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) and the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) completed a study on how best to reform the Afghan National Police and presented their findings in a report released at a September 17, 2009 briefing held at the Reserve Officrs Association in Washington, D.C.

Report

Additional Papers

Briefing

About the Speakers

Michael Clarke is the Director of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies. Until July 2007 he was the Deputy Vice-Principal and Director of Research Development at King’s College London, where he remains a Visiting Professor of Defence Studies. He was the founding Director of the International Policy Institute at King’s College London from 2001-2005 and Head of the School of Social Science and Public Policy at KCL in 2004-05. He was, from 1990 to 2001, the founding Director of the Centre for Defence Studies at King’s. He was appointed as Professor of Defence Studies in 1995. He lectures regularly at many universities in the UK, as well as at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, at the Royal College of Defence Studies, at the NATO School in Oberammagau and at the Clingendael Institute in the Netherlands. He has been a Guest Fellow at The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, and a Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. He has been senior Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Defence Committee since 1997, having served previously with the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee 1995-97.

Andrew Garfield is a Senior Fellow at FPRI and US Director of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies. He is former European Director of the Terrorism Research Center, Deputy Director of International Policy Institute at King’s College London, and Senior Director of Influence and Insight for the Lincoln Group. Mr. Garfield is also a former senior British military then civilian intelligence officer and former senior policy advisor at the UK Ministry of Defense. While serving in the UK Defense Intelligence Staff he led two major studies that reviewed key aspects of that organization’s approach to post-Cold War intelligence analysis and recommended radical changes to policy and organization that were subsequently implemented in full. After moving into academia with King’s College London, he devised and successfully led three major projects for the U.S. Department of Defense focusing on the terrorist threat; likely adversary asymmetric warfare strategies; and the development of U.S. strategic influence operations and cultural intelligence.

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