U.S. Aid to Afghan Police Said to Lack Oversight, Endgame

A $471 million U.S. cash program designed to train and equip local police forces in war-torn Afghanistan suffers from poor auditing, diverted supplies and the absence of a plan for integrating village police into the Afghan National Police, a watchdog found.

“As the drawdown of U.S. and coalition military personnel continues, the U.S. government will become increasingly reliant on the [Interior Ministry] to improve implementation and oversight of the” Afghan Local Police program, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction wrote in a report released Monday. “The window of opportunity to address these problems is narrowing, and this may be the last opportunity to ensure that the ALP program is responsibly managed and sustained, and oversight of U.S. funds is improved.”

Current plans call for the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan to spend $121 million annually on the local police—headquartered in Kabul but based mostly in villages—until 2018.

But SIGAR found that the local police “lack adequate logistics support, oversight, and a plan for either disbanding the force or incorporating it into the Afghan National Police,” auditors found. “ALP supplies are often diverted to other units, delayed significantly, of inferior quality, or heavily pilfered. Without necessary supplies, ALP performance will be hindered and the likelihood of ALP attrition increased.”

Another problem with the program, which was launched in 2010, is that local police have been“used inappropriately as bodyguards for Afghan government officials,” while time-and-attendance reporting is spotty or corrupted. Transferring recruits to the national police is not easy, however, because of age limitations and literacy requirements, auditors wrote.

SIGAR faulted the Pentagon for not conducting audits of salary disbursements or implementing previous auditing recommendations from the Defense Department inspector general. Whether the program gets extended, the report signed by Inspector General John Sopko added, depends on the Afghan government’s clarifying its goals for the program and plans for future funding.

SIGAR recommended that future funding be conditioned on new steps being taken by the U.S. Special Operations Joint Task Force–Afghanistan and the Interior Ministry. They include solidifying supply routes, tightening audit controls, ending use of local police as bodyguards for officials and creating a plan for disbanding the Afghan Local Police

The U.S. command largely agreed.