Predictability and Order in Counterinsurgencies

By Fester:

The cornerstone of US counterinsurgency doctrine is to improve the legitimacy of the host nation by providing numerous public goods that the insurgent force is incapable of providing.  The most important public good is security within a framework of the rule of law.  Rule of law means predictability in that certain actions are punished with a known and high probability, other actions are known to be rewarded and another class of actions are shrugged at. 

So when I see the following two stories this week concerning who is capable of providing basic predictability in Afghanistan, I see bad news.

First from Nir Rosen: 

“The police are highly corrupt,” a senior UN humanitarian official in Kabul explained, “and they are at the centre of the collapse of the state and the Karzai government. They are involved in everything from corruption to harassment. Locals feel alienation from police and they have been the best promoters of the Taliban. The police make them support the Taliban.” The British intelligence officer was more blunt. “People might hate the Taliban,” he said, “but they hate the government just as much. At least the Taliban have rules.” [my emphasis]

People may hate the rules that the Taliban imposes, but at least their is some predictability as to what the Taliban will and will not do and what actions will prompt reprisals.  Corrupt police don't even off that minimal public good.

And via the Yorkshire Ranter is this article from the New Yorker concerning a conversation between Packer and Kilkullen:

Police are another main issue. We have built the Afghan police into a less well-armed, less well-trained version of the Army and launched them into operations against the insurgents. Meanwhile, nobody is doing the job of actual policing—rule of law, keeping the population safe from all comers (including friendly fire and coalition operations), providing justice and dispute resolution, and civil and criminal law enforcement. As a consequence, the Taliban have stepped into this gap; they currently run thirteen law courts across the south, and ninety-five per cent of the work of these courts is civil law, property disputes, criminal matters, water and grazing disuptes, inheritances etc.—basic governance things that the police and judiciary ought to be doing, but instead they’re out in the countryside chasing bad guys. Where governance does exist, it is seen as corrupt or exploitative, in many cases, whereas the people remember the Taliban as cruel but not as corrupt.