Building Afghanistan’s National Defense and Security Forces: International Involvement and Corruption

Abstract

Bearing in mind that corruption and insecurity are reinforcing each other that can obstruct the democratic processes and jeopardize the security sector in different ways mainly through creating corrupt administrative systems, manipulation of contracts and procurements. After the decomposition of Taliban in 2001, the U.S.-led coalition had carried out Security Sector Reform (SSR) to (re) construct the Afghan National Police (ANP) and Afghan National Army (ANA) together known as Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF). Over critical literature, there are serious critiques concerning the U.S. and its allies’ scrimmage for their role in conducting the SSR in Afghanistan. Using the theory of liberal peacebuilding paradigm which had widely been used in the world’s hot spots of post-Cold War era, this inquiry tends to come up with response to the fundamental question of how international coalition led by the U.S. has allowed corruption to spring up in the Afghan security sector which has further left out tremendous security implications including subversion of the important mission of counter-insurgency on the ground. The findings in the Thesis argue that the lack of a long-term strategic vision for building the Afghan security forces as part of state-building process by the international community was a critical challenge. This crux has been exacerbated by the privatization of SSR and the contrast between the U.S. and its European allies on roles of police. This dichotomy affected the anti-corruption and law enforcement potentials of police which resulted in the present crisis. Additionally, this research figures out that insufficient oversight of contracts and procurements, training and advising processes of the ANDSF gave more room for misappropriation, theft, and fraud by both the local and international 5 contractors. Moreover, endless military operation without any tangible results has wearied the people, and further added fodder to the terrorist propaganda machine.