Security, Governance and Development Beyond the Pavement: A Quantitative Assessment of the Afghan Local Police
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The Afghan Local Police (ALP) was the most robust local defense mobilization effort used in the War in Afghanistan. Funded by the United States and under the purview of the Afghan government, The ALP program aimed at fostering self-defense among local communities while reinforcing the authority of traditional governance institutions. Active from 2010-2020, the program amassed a force of 34,000 men, composed over 8% of the Afghan National Security force, cost the US government $1.2 billion, and even gained a reputation as the American “exit strategy”. Still, little quantitative work has been done to assess how the Afghan Local Police lived up to its ambitious goals of establishing sustainable political order in the countryside. Moreover, only anecdotal evidence provides insight into the ALP's impact on the lives of individual villagers. In this thesis, I build a theory integrating the Afghan Local Police with governance, security, and economic development outcomes. To explore this theory, I measure variables such as nightlight radiance, (a proxy for economic development) and survey data on support for the local government and belief in the local government’s ability to maintain security. I find that, despite originally aspiring to be a crucial part of the local governance and security strategy, the Afghan Local Police failed to correlate with any of these outcomes. I conclude by contextualizing these findings in the broader War in Afghanistan, highlighting how the international coalition's disregard for rural areas contributed to the Taliban's eventual takeover.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | June 1, 2023 |
| Date modified | June 27, 2023 |
| Publication date | June 27, 2023 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Cohen, Alison |
|---|
Subjects
| Subject | Afghanistan, Local Security, Economic Development, Afghan Local Police, Local Governance |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Cohen, A. (2023). Security, Governance and Development Beyond the Pavement: A Quantitative Assessment of the Afghan Local Police. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/rq923cx7757. https://doi.org/10.25740/rq923cx7757.
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Stanford University, Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. (CDDRL)
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