In this seminar, Andrew Wilder will provide an overview of police reform efforts in Afghanistan since 2002, and highlight key issues that will need to be addressed if future reform efforts are to succeed.

Despite some notable achievements, the overall result of police reform initiatives in Afghanistan since 2002 have been disappointing, and many Afghans still perceive the police to be part of the security problem rather than part of the solution. The resurgence of the Taliban since 2005 has led to a belated recognition by the international community of the importance of an effective police force in Afghanistan. As a result, 2007 saw more money committed to police reform than the previous five years combined, and a greatly expanded US role in police reform as well as the launch of the new European Police Mission to Afghanistan (EUPOL). Afghanistan is unlikely to ever again have the levels of international attention and resources devoted to reforming the police that it has today. It is therefore important to learn from past successes and failures in order to ensure that these increased resources are not wasted, but instead contribute to the development of an Afghan police force that will operate as "cops" rather than "robbers".

This meeting is the fourth in a series of seminars on Afghanistan organized jointly by PRIO and CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute). The seminar will be chaired Kristian Berg Harpviken, PRIO, with Henning Høgseth, NUPI, and Astri Suhrke, CMI, as discussants.


Please register for the seminar with: seminar@prio.no


About Andrew Wilder
Dr Andrew Wilder is a Research Director at the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University in the USA.

Andrew Wilder was born in Pakistan and has spent more than 30 years living, studying and working in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He has a bachelors degree from Georgetown University and a masters and Ph.D. degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

He is currently a Research Director at the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University in Boston. From January 2002 through April 2005, Wilder established and served as the first Director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (www.areu.org.af), which is now Afghanistan’s leading independent policy research institution. He is the author of The Pakistani Voter (Oxford University Press, 1999), and the author of many book chapters, journal articles and briefing papers relating to politics in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is currently conducting research on the assumed relationship between aid projects and security in counterinsurgency and stabilization operations. He is the author of the 2007 Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) publication, "Cops or Robbers? The Struggle to Reform the Afghan National Police."