What effect have attempts to alter the Security Sector Reform (SSR) agenda to meet immediate security challenges had on the overall state-building project in Afghanistan? This article by Mark Sedra provides an interim assessment of the SSR process and evaluates the strength of the foundations that it has set for the sector. The country’s precarious political balance, depressed national economy and volatile security situation have created a difficult environment in which to implement SSR.
The lack of a coherent overarching strategic framework to guide the SSR process, coupled with conditions ill-conducive for its implementation, has created a fragile foundation for the sector’s continued development. In its current trajectory the reform process will be hard-pressed to produce the effective, transparent, accountable and rights-respecting result envisaged by the model.
Afghanistan’s SSR process lacks a holistic overarching strategy as demanded by SSR orthodoxy. The process could be described as reactive. In the absence of clear benchmarks to guide and sequence the process, it has become overly focused on quantitative rather than qualitative targets:
- Factional and ethnic allegiances continue to take precedence over loyalty to the state – SSR has failed to de-politicise and de-ethicise the security sector.
- The shortfall in resources has hampered the Interior Ministry’s ability to deliver public goods, implement its reform plans and engage in medium- and long-term planning.
- The imperative of professionalising security forces has overshadowed the need to reform and strengthen the country’s legal system.
- A tradition of clientilism and the absence of an efficient and well-resourced salary payment system have left all government ministries and institutions susceptible to high levels of corruption.
- The dearth of human capacity and endemic corruption has compelled many donor states to implement reform programmes unilaterally without sufficient consultation with local stakeholders.
- Competing donor agendas, rivalries, mistrust and competition over scarce resources have undermined the coherence of reform activities.
- Advancing the rule of law is not a secondary goal that can be postponed – it underpins all reforms and provides the foundation upon which the security institutions can be built.
- Dislodging prominent warlords and diffusing clientilistic networks would require a renewed commitment by the international community and Afghan leadership to the SSR process.
- One of the first priorities of an SSR process should be rationalise the sector’s wage scale.
- Restoring public trust and reinforcing the security sector’s image as the legitimate guarantor of people’s rights and security requires a concerted education and awareness campaign.
- Concerted donor support will be required for at least a decade to consolidate a stable, self-sufficient Afghan state with full sovereignty over its territory. However, Afghan ownership of the process is key to its success.
Efficient and effective security forces are crucial to secure a monopoly over the use of coercive force. However, if not subordinated to civilian authority and situated within clear legal boundaries, they could succumb to political or factional manipulation, or revert to systemic human rights abuses and criminality.
