Comparing U.S. Counternarcotics Operations in Afghanistan and Colombia

Since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Plan Colombia’s authorization in the late 1990s, the U.S. has played a pivotal role conducting counternarcotics operations in Afghanistan and Colombia. Afghanistan and Colombia are major hotspots for the cultivation, production, and trafficking of illicit narcotics, which drives U.S. counternarcotics cooperation efforts. While the United States cooperates with Afghanistan and Colombia on a wide range of counternarcotics efforts, in particular Washington has invested in capacity building for the Colombian National Police (CNP) and the Afghan National Police (ANP). Since domestic law enforcement agencies serve a critical role in suppressing transnational narcotics organizations, there is much to be gained from examining whether successful implementation of Plan Colombia via the CNP can be applied to future assistance to the ANP or to other countries.By the time Congress approved the first major round of Plan Colombia in the late 1990s, the CNP was commonly described as a “weak, corrupt, and ineffective institution.” Colombian President Andres Pastrana tasked his CNP commander with turning the department into an effective counternarcotics force that could extend the protection of the state beyond its cities.1 In his initial attempts to salvage the CNP, Pastrana purged 12,000 police officers accused of corruption and human rights abuses, further depleting a police force of 100,000 personnel tasked with protecting a population of 40 million Colombians.Although corruption remains prevalent in the CNP, Colombia’s commitment to rooting out corruption and returning stability to guerrilla-controlled areas provided the necessary space for U.S. assistance to make a difference. From 2000-2008, Washington spent $1.4 billion to improve CNP operational capabilities by providing combat and intelligence training, starting a CNP aviation program, reforming the judicial system, improving investigative functions, and strengthening crime scene and forensics capabilities.2 Colombian President Alvaro Uribe augmented this aid package by instituting a war tax that generated $780 million to support U.S.-funded programs.Currently, Colombia faces a far more manageable situation than that of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The manpower of guerrilla organization FARC fell from 20,000 to 7,500, the number of municipalities that suffered terrorist attacks declined by over 40%, coca cultivation fell from 140,000 to 40,000 hectares, and the number of households cultivating coca continues to fall. This success can be attributed to CNP’s growth to 150,000 personnel, which allowed the police force to target high-level FARC commanders and apply resources and training toward intelligence gathering. These high-profile targeted killings, the reduced level of violence, demobilization of the ELN insurgent group, and the entrance of FARC into peace negotiations demonstrate how U.S. assistance to the CNP via counternarcotics aid helped reverse the growth of the Colombia’s illicit narcotics trade and arrest its decline into a failed state.Alternatively, in Afghanistan the ANP has made “remarkable progress” in its overall capacity, but cannot reliably conduct missions moving forward without first addressing management deficiencies, particularly in its organizational relationship with the Counternarcotic Police of Afghanistan (CNPA). While provincial CNPA units are supposed to provide a permanent counternarcotics presence in each province, the CNPA headquarters in Kabul handles overarching policies, while the ANP provincial commanders appropriate funding and assign operations to their provincial CNPA counterparts. As a result, provincial CNPA units do not receive funding for building maintenance, equipment requests, or prisoner transportation because the responsibility to fund provincial CNPA units has become a political football between CNPA headquarters and provincial ANP commanders.Additionally, a lack of centralized control over provincial CNPA units opens them to blatant misuse. Corrupt politicians exploit eradication and interdiction efforts by targeting uncooperative farmers or pointing counternarcotic forces toward the opium farms of political rivals. Although the CNPA can conduct counternarcotics operations, corrupt leaders use the police force as a pawn in power struggles, severely hampering its ability to fulfill a comprehensive counternarcotics strategy.Between inefficacy and misuse, the CNPA faces serious problems. These issues are further illustrated by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, which could only track $13,529 of the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid given to the CNPA for capacity building. Despite multiple commitments by former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, no major reforms occurred to improve the performance of either the ANP or CNPA. While new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani appears to be making major changes in an effort to improve governance, it is too early to tell how successful his reforms will be or whether those reforms will affect the CNPA’s ability to carry out its counternarcotics mission.U.S. counternarcotics assistance programs certainly appear more effective in Colombia than in Afghanistan, but situational differences in both countries warrant further consideration. Washington has always partially justified its provision of counternarcotics assistance by citing attendant improvements in governance, a task far less daunting in Colombia than in Afghanistan. Colombia has weathered decades of insurgency and never hosted invading armies. By contrast, Afghanistan has a tumultuous history of governance imposed by both domestic and foreign actors.The stability of national governance in Colombia has given it time to build institutions and a sense of national identity, which increases the probability of the population’s acceptance of a national police force as a part of the populace.3 Colombia founded the CNP in 1891, while Afghanistan started the ANP in 2002 and the CNPA in 2003. The CNP’s long presence in Colombia allowed U.S. operators to tap into an existing police force that demonstrated perseverance, while the ANP and CNPA suffer from issues characteristic of new institutions.Problems in newly formed police forces must be addressed more quickly than in existing institutions, especially in places such as Afghanistan, where losses in governance inflame preexisting security issues. Karzai never followed his anti-corruption statements with significant action, which left corruption free to embed itself in the ANP. This corruption worsened public opinion toward the new Afghan government, increasing sympathy and recruitment for militant groups and forcing farmers to grow opium instead of legal crops. In effect, the complicity of ANP/CNPA—intentional or accidental—with corrupt practices exacerbated the narcotics problem.4 U.S. counternarcotics aid worsened rather than ameliorated these dynamics. By contrast, Colombia is still conducting high-profile trials of corrupt counternarcotics officials to root out corruption at its source.Based on the dramatic differences between Colombia and Afghanistan, several tentative lessons learned may indicate whether U.S. counternarcotics aid will help or hurt the host nation. First, U.S. counternarcotics aid is effective when the recipient country’s leadership reforms the national police force to more effectively conduct counternarcotics operations and improve governance. Second, the maturity of the national police force receiving U.S. assistance may determine whether the organization has the legitimacy needed to address major structural issues and to what extent national police actions can sway public opinion. Lastly, the management structure of the counternarcotics units within the national police force can greatly affect the operability and sustainability of units. The reformation of corrupt or inept national police is the most important indicator of whether U.S. counternarcotics intervention will be effective. If Ghani removes corrupt officials from the ANP/CNPA, the United States should immediately increase its assistance to seize the positive momentum of the reforms, just as timely U.S. assistance helped Colombia.Increased U.S. counternarcotics aid to a reliable Ghani counternarcotics force will help reduce ANP/CNPA flaws related to organizational immaturity. Further capacity-building through collaboration with foreign counternarcotics police forces will help prepare current and new Afghani counternarcotics units to better fight the illicit narcotics trade, reduce the amount of casualties inflicted on Afghani forces and civilians, and minimize the amount of errors that occur during operations. Such collaboration should stem from the increased amount of funding for CNP trainers to go to Afghanistan, since their experience provides valuable insight into similar conditions.If Washington moves to increase aid to Afghan counternarcotics forces, the CNPA’s management and finance procurement structure will need restructuring as a condition of future aid. The financing and operational directives of CNPA provincial units should be centralized rather than fragmented among ANP provincial commanders. By centralizing the CNPA, its provincial units have a greater chance of getting the funding necessary to carry out operations without provincial political influence and corruption. As the U.S. experience in Colombia demonstrated, sometimes significant progress requires the right person to be in charge. If Washington decides a slower timetable for withdrawal of American forces in the coming years, it provides a small but extended window of opportunity to build upon any momentum that Ghani may produce in the years to come.

1. The CNP is an entity within the Colombian Ministry of Defense, which is why a military general assumes the post as head of the CNP. However, the CNP is a civilian law enforcement agency. Unlike in the United States, Colombia does not have local police departments and Colombia depends on the CNP for such law enforcement functions.2. Intelligence training included the CNP’s use of informants and the aviation program included aerial eradication, interdiction, and unit transportation. U.S. aid to the CNP comes from the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of State, Department of Justice, and the U.S. Agency for International Development.3. For institution-building, see in part p. 56 of Catalina Munoz, "To Colombianize Colombia: Cultural politics, modernization and nationalism in Colombia, 1930--1946" (January 1, 2009). Dissertations available from ProQuest. Paper AAI3363572. http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3363572.4. Unknowingly engaging in corruption could include destroying a rival politician’s opium field at the request of another politician trying to remove the competition. The CNPA unit would be conducting its mission, but the root of the action would still be corrupt.