In Afghanistan, police reform is an important focus of international efforts. After over a decade of assistance, however, there are still daunting challenges of public trust and police effectiveness. From a civilian perspective, the role of the police is a crucial one—and very different from that of the military. Communities, being at the very heart of security challenges, are well positioned to understand the intricacies of security and development. A police service able to work closely with communities plays an important role in managing conflict in the long run. Recognizing this, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior Affairs (MoIA) has steadily increased its efforts in community-oriented policing (COP), despite a deteriorating security situation since the withdrawal of US troops in 2014. This paper explores how COP in Afghanistan links with local communities and institutions to ensure both peoples’ security and trust. It begins by considering police-community relations through a broad lens of human security, which comprises the social, economic, political, cultural and legal aspects of their everyday lives. We then examine international assistance to police reform, how the Afghan police have developed their COP philosophy, and how this has played out in re-defining police-community relations. Using field data from Nimruz Province, we then look at the role of local institutions of chowkidari and shura in addressing people’s insecurities, and opportunities for linking these with COP efforts of the police. We conclude that there is a real potential for COP in Afghanistan that his locally owned and sustainable, if enough attention is given to inclusive processes and developing creative and flexible trust-building relationships with local institutions and organizations.
The need for more knowledge on the complex security and humanitarian challenges in post-conflict societies is critical. In post-conflict situations, there will clearly be a need to protect and keep order as people reconstruct their lives and livelihoods. The best way of doing this in such diverse, volatile environments, however, cannot be determined at a state level alone, but also at the local level. Those best positioned to understand the complexities of security, development and humanitarian assistance are the communities who are in the midst of these conflicts and whose lives are actually at stake. The effects of conflict can be devastating, but also varied. This is the case in Afghanistan, which after more than 18 years of international assistance remains in the midst of many internal and external conflicts, both old and new. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Interior Affairs (MoIA) continues to expand its efforts towards a civil approach to policing through the activities of its community-oriented policing (COP) department Police-e Mardumi (PEM). What processes have influenced this direction, and what has constrained and enabled this move? Is community-oriented policing merely a pre-defined and imported concept introduced by the international community, or does it represent an effort to build on local institutions, customs and norms? What are these local institutions? What efforts have been undertaken by both the police and civil society to build trust and at the same time to address the complexity of issues faced by communities experiencing conflict and insecurity? This paper explores how COP in Afghanistan links with local communities and institutions to ensure both peoples’ security and their trust. To do so, it analyzes the evolution of COP in Afghanistan, looking at those activities which were implemented in line with international police reform processes, those pilot projects which sprang from civil society initiatives and are grounded in local institutions, customs and norms, and those initiatives which evolved locally without international intervention, as exemplified in our case of Nimruz. In this, we explore the spaces between the government and civil society where trust is negotiated, and innovative ways to address complex issues are created. We argue that the active inclusion of civil society in COP, and efforts to evolve trusting relationships between the police and local institutions such as the
In post-conflict situations, the transition from military to civilian-based security is crucial. The police represent one important institution working with security issues. An accountable national police service that is capable of upholding the rule of law in the whole country is an important prerequisite for any state-building effort [
COP [
In Afghanistan, insecurity includes both internal and external dimensions. Issues like poverty, social and economic inequalities, scarcity of resources, ethnic and tribal rivalries, domestic violence, illiteracy and lack of basic education, unemployment and weak political and government institutions are some of the major internal factors contributing to insecurity and conflict. This is also reiterated by Afghanistan Human Development Report [
External factors such foreign invasions, cross-border terrorism, and insurgencies advocated by Taliban or ISIS also contribute to insecurity and conflicts, interlinking with internal dimensions. It is in this complex context that the police interact with communities.
As a basis for our understanding of the complexities involved in security and insecurity, the concept of human security is useful. Human security, with its focus on the security of people rather than only states [
Police reform in post-conflict contexts, however, is also complex. Foreign actors, including donor countries coordinated under multilateral organizations such as the EU and UN, provide substantial support to police reform. The result is a myriad of advice from the international community, which may be substantively inconsistent. In such a setting, power relations both between donor countries and between the international community and national governments, steered by funding and politics, can easily determine the character of police reform efforts [
There are also concerns of local ownership in reform processes. As a concept, local ownership has become a mantra of post-conflict reform and development and is often cited as a specific criterion of success in international interventions [
This paper is based on field data from Afghanistan collected between November 2015 and April 2018. In Kabul, staff of MoIA, civil society organizations (CSOs), and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were interviewed, as well as international police and policing experts based in Kabul and internationally (who had worked in Afghanistan). The local researcher also attended police training sessions in COP, and workshops organized by MoIA, EUPOL and CSOs as a participant observer. We have also consulted secondary data including research papers, reports and policy documents. To study links between communities and the police more closely, interviews and focus group discussions were held in Nimruz province at both provincial and district levels with MoIA staff, CSOs and local community women and men, in urban and rural areas. Nimruz was chosen as a case for several reasons. It has been one of the provinces with the lowest level of international intervention—it never, for example, had a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), and there have been relatively few aid organizations operating in the region. This means that Nimruz has remained under the international radar and under-researched, which makes it possible to study police-community relations outside of the direct influence of the international community, providing an interesting contrast to the project-based cases of COP in other areas of Afghanistan that we examine. Also, Nimruz province has one of the highest number of migrants and internally displaced people in the country due to conflict and economic hardship, making it an interesting case to examine what migration might mean in terms of social relations and trust-building in communities. These aspects make Nimruz a unique case in some ways, however, the findings can nevertheless be relevant for understanding police-community relations in other provinces in that they provide new perspectives on how to understand the variety of local institutions in post-conflict settings.
The international community has been assisting the Afghan government in security sector reform since the Bonn Agreement in 2001. The roadmap provided by the Bonn agreement divided the responsibility of security reform amongst five countries; Germany took responsibility for police reform, Italy for judicial reform, the UK for counter narcotics, Japan for disarmament, demobilization and the US for military reform [
To assist MoIA in coordinating international efforts in police reform, the International Police Coordinating Board (IPCB) was established in 2006 comprising ambassadors of member countries (donors), and international organizations involved in security sector reform [
Despite the dominance of NATO and ISAF in initial meetings [
The ANP itself comprises uniformed police forces carrying out general police duties, and specialized police forces responsible for border control, terrorism and counter narcotics and public order [
During the first years of police reform, bilateral and multilateral donors set up several training institutions both in Kabul and in the provinces. There was, however, little strategic thinking on how the ANP could develop a comprehensive training and education system. This has improved in recent years. Currently, recruitment requirements are mainly based on educational background. For example, to become an officer the minimum requirement is a bachelor’s degree from either the Police academy in Kabul or a foreign police academy which is recognized by MoIA. To become a non-commissioned officer (NCO) with the rank of 2
The challenges in building the capacity of the police are not confined to police training and education. One of the biggest challenges faced by MoIA and police, as well as Afghanistan in general, is widespread corruption. According to Transparency International [
Over the last decade, COP has become increasingly visible in MoIA’s policing policies, albeit under a variety of names, with the most common being Police-e Mardumi (PEM) [
Interest in COP began already in 2009, when the idea for a democratic policing pilot project was introduced to MoIA by EUPOL and later by UNOPS. This initiated a process whereby the philosophy was introduced to both the ministry and civil society actors, and activities were initiated within MoIA to move the Afghan National Police towards a more democratic and accountable policing service. The purpose of these activities was to strengthen the relationship between the local population and the police, and to make police more responsive to the communities. The area of focus was a combination of activities initiated by both the police and by civil society, mainly with the support of the international community, which included: family response units, links between police and health care personnel, activities with youth in the Scouts, an outreach project for women and children, community consultations through establishment of new Shuras and action plans, mobile police teams to register complaints from citizens, and mobile phone literacy programs for female police officers. There were also community engagement programs like sports events between the police and community, creating awareness among school students on firefighting measures and training on basic traffic rules (see next section).
The Police-e Mardumi program also contributed to a change in the terminology used by the police. In our interviews we noted the use of terms like ‘the cooperation between the people and the police’, and how problems have to be solved with close ‘cooperation and coordination’ of the people (a recurring theme). MoIA and civil society actors began to publicly express the importance of COP by referring to it as a ‘style of policing’, or ‘bridge between the community and the public’ in which ‘people are the best source of information’ [
PEM, however, did not develop in isolation. There were several other MoIA processes prior to and during the development of PEM that contributed to its growth and current position in MoIA. Some of these focused on structural, organizational and political issues within the Ministry itself, while others focused on the provincial, district and community levels.
One of the earliest activities focusing on improving relations between the police and communities was the Minister of Interior’s establishment of the 119 Information Center in Kabul city. This center, established in 2009 with financial support from NATO, currently has 58 employees (including seven women) working 24 hours a day, seven days a week and receives around 900 calls per day. Originally established to give citizens an opportunity to report complaints of police misbehavior, corruption, and human rights violations, the helpline expanded to include the reporting of criminal and terrorist activity as concern for crime and violence increased.
As a respondent from the ministry pointed out, most of the calls they receive pertain to violence, abuse and harassment against women. The helpline also has three other aims:
1) Corruption prevention and to receive feedback about conduct of police against citizens.
2) Criminal cases, if there is a crime such as murder or abduction to provide free legal services, and to provide emergency ambulance services.
3) To provide help to the police themselves. Police, and particularly female police, can call to complain and report harassment. Also, if police are in a siege, they can call 119 for backup.
The call center, however, faces significant challenges, including lack of adequate technical maintenance and support, low levels of training and knowledge transfer, and an overwhelming number of false calls coming in. Because the people who receive calls are not professional police, they face difficulties in registering and routing incidents, causing delay in appropriate and timely action by the police. In the provinces where staffing is more limited and routines are still new, there is a risk that a caller can connect to the police staff about which the caller is complaining.
Despite these challenges, 119 for MoIA has proven to be a useful channel for the police to get information from the public about police performance and service provided to the people. An important rationale behind this line is to facilitate trust between citizens and the police services. The helpline was extended from Kabul to five major provinces (Kandahar, Helmand, Nangarhar, Herat, and Balkh) in 2013, but according to MoIA officials, they lack sufficient funding for this expansion to be successful.
Another area where MoIA made early inroads in terms of community relations is their work on the protection of women and children. Already in 2005, MoIA established Family Response Units (FRUs), which deal with domestic violence and female and child victims of crime. The aim of the FRUs was ‘to address a wide array of criminal and civil family-related matters including: divorce requests, promissory notes, arranged/forced marriages, runaways, sexual assaults, domestic violence, self-immolation, attempted suicides, suicides, forced virginity tests, property disputes involving widows and estates, child custody issues, abandonment, financial and family support issues’ [
One of the most serious problems facing women in Afghanistan is gender-based violence [
In Nimruz province, the FRU handled about 58 cases within a period of ten months, of which 28 cases had been referred to the penal authorities for further investigation, while 30 cases were solved through the family consultation unit in the DoWA [
Another important measure undertaken by MoIA early on which has contributed to the development of a strong gender focus in COP is the establishment of the General Directorate of Human Rights, Child Rights and Gender in 2009. The Directorate focuses on gender issues both within the civilian population and the ANP. Issues like harassment and violence against women and children, gender equality within the police services, helpline for women, improving the rank of women police officers, providing safe transport for women police officers and child care facilities for women who are prevented from going to work are some of the key initiatives of the department. Recruitment, training, treatment and retention of women police officers within ANP are also important tasks for this office.
The Directorate also facilitates the Police Women’s Council (PWC) (established in 2014) with support from UNDP/LOTFA, UNAMA, EUPOL and ISAF. The purpose of the council is to improve welfare and build capacity among female police officers. The head of the directorate explained that the priorities and objectives of the council were to help in recruitment, training and retention of policewomen, in training to eliminate violence against women police, in building good working environments in police stations and in working against harassment of women police officers. The head of the PWC in Nimruz reiterated some of these points when interviewed, and mentioned specific problematic areas that she was trying to focus on such as lack of transport facilities, lack of changing rooms, poor working conditions for women, harassment from male colleagues, lack of kindergartens, late promotions and overall lack of security for women police officers. In her capacity as council head, she has established four
The establishment of units like FRUs and PWCs are important steps taken by MoIA in establishing communication and trust among vulnerable groups like women. The road, however, has not been easy for the women developing these initiatives, even with international support. Women police officers have been harassed, threatened and killed in their efforts to protect women’s rights. But these initiatives are expanding and have received increasing support from within MoIA, including the PEM Directorate.
As mentioned above, starting in 2008/9, several COP pilot projects were initiated with the assistance of the international community. Bernard
The second pilot was the Afghan Democratic Policing Project (ADPP), established in 2012, and funded by the Dutch Embassy through UNAMA and UNOPS. This was a set of diverse projects run by eight civil society actors in 12 provinces. This was also a bottom-up program implemented by civil society organizations, but it was implemented with MoIA’s coordination. There was a broad range of activities, including school safety and scout programs, collaboration between the police and hospitals to protect rape victims, sports activities, and community consultations and action plans. The focus was on building peoples’ trust in the police in the course of everyday life. While these projects tackled specific issues, they simultaneously provided an opportunity for creative approaches to improve police-community relations for a large number of police. While this project officially ended in 2015, many of the activities have continued as a part of the current PEM.
The third pilot was the PEM project mentioned above. This was also established in 2012, funded by EUPOL, and implemented by MoIA together with a civil society organization. It was implemented in seven provinces, but not the same provinces or districts as the ADPP pilots. Many of the activities were similar to those in the ADPP, but additionally focused on building the capacity of the police in COP principles at a district level (or police station level in Kabul), and later at a strategic level through mentoring in MoIA [
Both the ADPP and the EUPOL mission concluded at the end of 2016. PEM, however, continues. Although it still receives some support from the international community (UNDP/LOTFA for example), PEM has its own policy, action plan and permanent staff, and is continually expanding its activities into new provinces and districts, including Nimruz, the site of our fieldwork. Despite its efforts to build capacity and take the initiative to interact with communities, PEM still struggles with people’s negative perceptions of the ANP - trust is still in deficit. Several studies [
According to respondent; “they believe that as long as corruption continues, they cannot expect their local police to carry out their duties effectively or establish good relations with the general public” (p.19). In other words, lack of police accountability is a serious alienating factor and hence there is a continuous need for strengthening public trust towards the police. This is no less important for PEM, which emphasizes police accountability in both its policy and activities.
As with any new endeavor, PEM has received both support and criticism from both national and international sources. One line of criticism points to a lack of real commitment to the principles of COP, claiming that COP remains at policy and speech levels, and that very little percolates down to the operational level. They also suggest that government representatives are more concerned with establishing their authority through service delivery rather than exploring the expressed needs of the people, and that the local police were more concerned with establishing their own power base with local elites than engaging with vulnerable communities and protecting them from violence. These claims were explained by some to be partly the result of a lack of ownership of COP. They felt most of the policy measures and changes proposed for the ANP were being forced on them by the international community and as such were not the initiative of MoIA. While the international community has clearly had an important and even dominant role in supporting police reform processes in earlier years, evidence suggests that this may no longer be the case. The leadership of PEM insists that PEM is now firmly grounded in MoIA. This was clearly expressed by the head of PEM in a recent interview, who said that ‘we should stop calling PEM a project, it is a process’. PEM is now institutionalized in MoIA, and is moving quickly to increase its civilian staff and become more oriented towards law and order issues. An important step in this direction was to appoint a minister with a managerial (rather than a military) background. Another step was MoIA’s newly developed strategic plan MISP to help coordinate efforts with other counter-corruption entities. These efforts have facilitated the Major Crimes Task Force (MCTF) to open more than 17 corruption cases in the first quarter of 2018’ [
A second and related line of criticism points to a lack of capacity and genuine interest by the police in discovering and addressing the actual insecurities of local communities. This refers to claims that PEM is not able to engage with communities in ways that the international community envisioned, particularly in terms of democratic representation in consultative meetings. One of the NGO leaders implementing the community-police consultation sessions explained, for example, that despite the fact that in some provinces women took more prominent roles in the consultative councils which were established to be the people’s focal point with the police, in most of the provinces and districts women were not present or only had a symbolic role. Also, the formation of the
The experiences from the pilots show that there are a wide variety of ways in which police and communities might interact to improve trust and address human security issues. In our field research, we are exploring in greater depth which local institutions already exist that could potentially link with police to address local security issues. In doing this, we consider the ways in which these institutions might both be sources of legitimacy and keepers of unequal power relations and entitlements in households and communities, while also noting their ability and willingness to adjust these aspects in light of new relations with the government.
Before looking into local institutions and community policing at the sub-national level, it is important to define what we mean by “local institutions”. While local institutions can refer to a variety of entities and practices such as tribal and sub-tribal gatherings, inter-tribal assemblies, locality-based ad hoc meetings, business-related bodies and sports federations, in this paper we primarily focus on the institutions of
In Afghanistan, the idea of shura has been used by the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) in its National Solidarity Program (NSP) to utilize the culture of “assembly” in its work at community level. In this scheme, local populations have been mobilized into Community Development Councils (CDCs) or District Development Councils (DDCs) that collectively make decisions about grants and the implementation of development projects at local levels. These are often referred to as NSP
Nimruz province is one of the most remote provinces of Afghanistan. It is located at the far southwestern part of the country, bordering Iran, Pakistan, Helmand and Farah provinces. Most of the people living in this province have migrated from neighboring provinces at different periods in time. According to government statistics, Nimruz province has a settled population of 82,021 [
Unlike other parts of Afghanistan, the majority of Nimruz’s provincial districts have escaped serious threats of insurgencies, terrorism and other serious conflicts that have plagued the rest of the country (with the exception of Khashrod and Delaram, which have seen sporadic insurgent activities). However, people we interviewed cited other factors of insecurity that they experienced, including: crimes related to human trafficking and drug business, drugs harvested from Helmand and Farah provinces smuggled into Iran from Nimruz province, and drug addicts who commit theft in order to finance their drug use. In addition, respondents reported a number of other causes of insecurity linked to livelihood security, like unemployment, poverty, corruption, migration, lack of adequate water resources and cultivable land. Many of these factors are interlinked, and can in practice mutually reinforce each other.
The Afghan Uniform Police (AUP) is the main police unit assigned to uphold the rule-of-law in cities, districts and villages of the country. The AUP in Nimruz is headed by the provincial chief of police, who manages general police activity in the province. While other police units such as The Afghan Public Protection Force (APPF), Police Special Force (PSF) and Border Control Police (BCP) are present, all of them operate under or in coordination with the AUP (although the relationship between the different police units can be unclear, even to police authorities).
A retired police officer in Nimruz told us that confusion within the police structure starts from the top of the chain of command in MoIA, given that every new minister brings structural and strategic changes. For example, the system of zonal police command units established by an earlier minister along military lines was dissolved and the provincial structure strengthened by the current minister. The border police were initially tasked with safeguarding borders and handling border crossing traffic and documentation, but a presidential decree in 2018 saw the majority of these duties handed over to the army. While the minister is the head of the MOI, the deputies working under him exert varying degrees of authority in overseeing the daily routine of their sections. For example, the Deputy Minister for Security, who is in charge of all police units, exerts a great degree of power in spite of working under the minister. In Nimruz province, this has created disagreement between the chief of the police and his deputy for security (Deputy Chief of Police for Security); while the chief of police considers himself the representative of the minister and the overall commander, his deputy for security considers himself the representative of the Deputy Minister for Security, and therefore expects the chief of police to consult him before making any changes to leadership and/or management of the units under his purview. Interestingly, a young former police officer told us that this “mess” results from the transition from a “communist” to an “American” police force; nobody knows is who is who, or why there are so many similar units in the police.
Nonetheless, it is still possible to describe how the chain of the command functions at the provincial level in Nimruz. The chief of the police is the overall head of the police in the province, and responsible for both operations and administration. Some units are directly under the chief of police office such as the Directorate of Human Rights, Child Rights and Gender and PEM, while other units are led by his deputies. This includes his deputy for security, who oversees security in cities, districts and villages. The next unit of command consists of the Police Districts (PDs), which are stationed in both city and provincial districts, each having an estimated 40 to 50 police personnel. Zaranj, the capital city of Nimruz province, has four PDs, with one in each of its provincial districts. Finally, the PDs have their own smaller units called Samt, which consist of larger, more permanent neighborhood-based check points, and are in charge of setting up temporary check points.
Prior to the fall of 2016, Community Policing or Police- e- Mardumi did not exist formally as an institution in Nimruz. However, during our fieldwork in 2016 at the Police HQ, the Directorate of Human Rights, Child Rights and Gender received a copy of MoIA’s new strategy on PEM. This 15-page policy was sent from the office of Deputy Minister of Senior Security Affairs, MoIA, informing the province that the purpose of PEM was to strengthen the relations between the public and police. This included dealing with issues such as people’s expectations of the police, police expectation of people, expansion and support of women in the police, Helpline119, holding meetings with people, public safety, cooperation with schools and scouts, and publication and communication. In our 2017 fieldwork we found that Police-e Mardumi Unit had been established in the province in late 2016 and had already facilitated the establishment of
Community respondents explained that strategies for coping with many of the above-mentioned insecurities and conflicts involve local institutions like the
The People’s Shura of Khaja Karim, located in the northeastern part of the city, is another example of how communities in partnership with police can curb crimes and insurgencies. The head of the Crime Investigation Department (CID) specifically mentioned the name of this
According to our respondent, before the establishment of this
The second reason for the establishment of the
The
The
This
Respondents from a border village also voiced similar views when asked about their relations with the police. This village (being near to the Iranian border) had close contact with the Border Police Base. The head of the
While the Khaja Karim People Shura is a neighborhood
Even though these
Citizen initiatives for safeguarding neighborhoods and business establishments are done through a kind of ‘informal policing’ called
Our findings from Nimruz draw attention to some little understood aspects of community-police relationships in Afghanistan. For example, our case shows how people’s effort and initiatives towards their own security strengthens arguments for the viability of a human security perspective as well as a bottom-up approach. Those best positioned to understand the complex interplay of security issues, livelihood challenges and conflict resolution are the community women and men themselves. As we mentioned above,
The presence of local institutions can offer both challenges and opportunities in police reform processes where COP is in focus. Since a COP approach involves the participation of a variety of state and non-state actors, challenges and opportunities can be perceived by these actors very differently. The way a
There are also challenges related to different ideas around the composition of the
There are generational shifts in the composition of the shura; young men are becoming more prominent in decision making. While previously, youth would have implemented
Minorities and other social groups are creating their own
The
Similar to the locally initiated collaborations between the police and
Such a bottom-up approach opens new avenues to learn more about insecurities experienced at the local level, and helps to identify local strategies. These insecurities can comprise livelihood challenges like poverty, unemployment, education and health service. They can also include conflicts over access to and use of natural resources like land and water, or issues like migration, divorce, sexual and honor-based violence and gender relations. Understanding the interdependence of these issues, including the complexities of local power relations and institutions is vital if police reform processes are to be operationalized and successful. Without such knowledge, it will not be possible to understand human security issues on the ground, or to know who might address them in what ways. As Marenin [
These experiences can in turn feed into security policy reforms that can bridge existing gaps between the police and communities, and can help to better understand the range of actors and interests operating at the local level to find the right mix of security and development. As Albrecht rightly reminds us: “Actors such as traditional leaders and vigilante groups are considered the primary providers of justice and security in most fragile environments, and deal with an estimated 70 to 90 per cent of local disputes in Africa and Asia” [
Post-conflict situations are complex, and addressing issues of security and insecurity are challenging. This is indeed the case for police reform in post-conflict Afghanistan. Police are often the first level of government people come in contact with, and how people perceive them is crucial to government legitimacy. In Afghanistan, police have been viewed with fear, suspicion and mistrust, and corruption levels are high. When the international community stepped in to assist in police reform in 2001, there was little focus on building trust between police and communities. While the reform efforts of MoIA and central government to create a trusted national law enforcement institution have been important, they have been insufficient to guarantee safety and security to all people, as they remained top-down and politically motivated. This changed in 2009, when the international community introduced COP as a way to build trust and to address the complex issues of human security in local communities. This also marked the entrance of concepts like local ownership, trust-building and sustainability to the Afghan police lexicon. The COP pilot projects, for example, took a community focus, both on building trust, and exploring how local issues can be addressed by the police and communities together. Through these pilots, COP became increasingly grounded in Afghan experiences, and as political power shifted within the ministry leadership, PEM has become institutionalized in MoIA. PEM continues to expand to new provinces and districts, where there are certainly new experiences in police-community that are emerging. We therefore argue that COP in Afghanistan was not merely an imported concept—the way that COP was implemented through linking with local institutions and civil society actors went a long way in making COP a locally-owned process addressing the diverse and complex needs of Afghan women and men.
An important aspect we have uncovered in this research is the varied ways in which the police interact with local communities and their institutions. Our research on COP implementation shows that the pilot projects introduced with the assistance of the international community were innovative in creating relations between the police and communities, including local
There are several policy implications inherent in the findings from this study. First, international assistance to police reform should explicitly require inclusive processes; police reform with a clear focus on inclusive processes of engagement with a diversity of local actors and institutions increases the chance of local ownership and sustainability. Second, inclusive COP requires capacity building of both the police and civil society, not only in terms of skills training in crime fighting and livelihood development, but also in the skills of dialog and trust-building. Finally, COP cannot be implemented by police alone—a clear policy of communication and collaboration with other government departments and civil society organizations in a ‘whole of society’ approach will increase the relevance and complementarity of reform processes.