Afghanistan Security: U.S. Programs to Further Reform Ministry of Interior and National Police Challenged by Lack of Military Personnel and Afghan Cooperation

The United States has invested more than $6.2 billion in the Afghan Ministry of Interior (MOI) and Afghan National Police (ANP). The Department of Defense's (Defense) Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CSTC-A), with the Department of State (State), leads U.S. efforts to enhance MOI and ANP organizational structures, leadership abilities, and pay systems. This report assesses the status of U.S. efforts to help Afghanistan (1) restructure MOI and ANP, (2) retrain ANP units, (3) screen MOI and ANP personnel, and (4) enhance MOI and ANP pay systems. GAO reviewed Defense, State, and United Nations (UN) data and met with officials in the United States and Afghanistan.

U.S. agencies and Afghanistan have achieved their goals of restructuring and reducing a top-heavy and oversized MOI and ANP officer corps, modifying police wages, and planning a reorganization of MOI headquarters. These efforts are intended to help ensure that the MOI and ANP are directed by professional staff that can manage a national police force. U.S. agencies and MOI cut the officer corps from about 17,800 to about 9,000, reduced the percentage of high-ranking officers, and increased pay for all ranks. MOI is scheduled to implement a U.S.-supported headquarters reorganization. CSTC-A has begun retraining ANP units through its Focused District Development (FDD) program, which is intended to address district-level corruption that impeded previous efforts to retrain individual police. FDD is achieving promising results, according to Defense status reports. In February 2009, Defense assessed 19 percent of FDD-retrained units as capable of conducting missions, 25 percent as capable of doing so with outside support, 31 percent as capable of partially doing so with outside support, and 25 percent as not capable. However, a lack of military personnel is constraining CSTC-A's plans to expand FDD and similar programs into the rest of Afghanistan by the end of 2010. Defense has identified a shortage of about 1,500 military personnel needed to expand FDD and similar police development programs. CSTC-A has previously obtained military personnel for ANP training by redirecting personnel from its Afghan army training program. However, the army program's demand for personnel is likely to increase as the Afghan army grows from 80,000 to 134,000 personnel. MOI and ANP officers were screened by Defense and State, but the full extent of the screening is unclear because State did not systematically compile records of its efforts. The screening effort was intended to improve the professionalism and integrity of the officer corps through testing by CSTC-A and background checks by State. At least 9,797 (55 percent) of the nearly 17,800 officers who took the tests passed, according to CSTC-A. State was unable to provide us with statistics concerning the results of background checks because it did not systematically compile its records. U.S.-supported pay system efforts are intended to validate MOI and ANP personnel rosters and ensure that wages are distributed reliably. Despite progress, these efforts face challenges that include limited ANP cooperation and a shortage of banks. U.S. contractors have validated almost 47,400 MOI and ANP personnel but have been unable to validate almost 29,400 personnel--who were paid in part by $230 million in U.S. contributions to a UN trust fund--because of a lack of cooperation from some ANP commanders. As of January 2009, 97 percent of all reported MOI and ANP personnel had enrolled in an electronic payroll system and 58 percent had enrolled to have their salaries deposited directly into their bank accounts. However, growth of the direct deposit system may be constrained because almost 40 percent of ANP personnel lack ready access to banks.

Following the withdrawal of US and coalition forces from Afghanistan, in August 2021 the State Department requested that GAO temporarily remove and review reports on Afghanistan to protect the safety of individuals associated with US assistance or programs. As a result of that review, GAO decided to redact some information from this report.