ABSTRACT
Modern police institutions have historically developed from government agencies involved with the suppression of political dissent (against the state) towards the development of independent expert institutions involved with the control of crime (in society) (Deflem 2002, 2009). This historical development towards an increasing bureaucratic autonomy of policing also has an important comparative dimension, for police institutions only reach a high degree of autonomy when a society is relatively peaceful and the polity is democratized. In autocratic regimes, conversely, police power remains closely tied to a government’s quest to maintain power and secure order. This typically occurs through violent means and in close conjunction with military forces that are not so sharply differentiated from police as is the case in democratic societies. As police institutions under autocratic polities tend to be closely associated with the military, civilian police duties (of crime control) are typically subsumed under a broader security regime (or order). In democratic regimes, by contrast, police and military are not closely intertwined except in exceptional circumstances, such as a period of warfare. These theoretical insights are used to analyze the evolving police condition in Afgha-
nistan since the invasion of the country in 2001. Accompanying the analysis of policing in contemporary Iraq (Deflem and Sutphin 2006; chapter 9 in this volume), it will be shown that the establishment of civilian police forces in Afghanistan, as in Iraq, is not only difficult and slow, but has also been hampered by violent attacks against the police by the Taliban’s deliberate efforts to impede democratization. From 1996 until the invasion of 2001, Afghanistan was politically controlled by the
autocratic Taliban. Based on the theory of policing that argues for the gradual development of professional police systems (Deflem 2002), it can be postulated that the police function under the Taliban was intimately tied to the political objectives of the state. As a result, civilian police functions will not have been well developed compared with those of the military, secret intelligence, and security agencies. However, since the invasion of Afghanistan and the introduction of a democratic system of government, these conditions will have led to a
democratization of the country’s polity and to a development of accompanying civilian police systems. This process of police professionalization, however, has been substantially hindered by Taliban fighters, who seek to disrupt Afghanistan’s path to democracy. The Taliban uses violent strategies against the newly instituted police forces in order to destabilize Afghan society. Like the insurgent activities that have plagued the development of policing in Iraq
(Deflem and Sutphin 2006), the militant activities of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, I argue, are purposely aimed at hindering the development of the newly established Afghan police institutions. Thus, the military intervention in Afghanistan has not only responded to the terrorism of 9/11, it has also brought about an entirely new set of conditions of terrorist violence. Given the connections between the development of civilian police and the democratization of society, I argue, the terrorist activities of Taliban forces in Afghanistan are aimed at the police institutions that are being established because a regularly functioning police would represent an important and highly visible indicator of the pacification and normalization of society. Civilian police forces are ironically a preferred target of terrorist activities, precisely at times when these institutions are needed, even more urgently than under peacetime conditions, to fight terrorist activities. This analysis is based on a variety of government and agency reports and international news sources.
