page_title: Afghan National Police
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Afghan National Police / History
caption_attribution_description: The Afghan national police commander marches to greet distinguished visitors at the graduation of Afghan National Police Academy cadets. Upon graduating the three year course, cadets become ANP officers and earn a degree in criminal justice. The academy trains men and women from more than 34 provinces. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Brian Ybarbo/RELEASED)
context_page_description: The Afghan National Police is the national police force of Afghanistan, serving as a single law enforcement agency all across the country. The agency is under the responsibility of Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior Affairs, headed by Wais Barmak. The ANP had 116,000 members in December 2018.
  The Afghan police traces its roots to the early 18th-century when the Hotak dynasty was established in Kandahar followed by Ahmad Shah Durrani's rise to power. The police force gradually became modernized after 1880 when Emir Abdur Rahman Khan established diplomatic relations with British India. In the 1980s it began receiving training and equipment from former Soviet Union. The current ANP was established after the removal of the Taliban government in late 2001.
  Several government agencies from the United States as well as Germany's Bundespolizei and the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence Police provided most of the early training. In 2007, the EU-led mission was heading the civilian policing in the Kabul area but by 2005 the United States established training programs in all the provinces of Afghanistan.
context_section_description: The Afghan police force has its origins in the Hotak and Durrani empires in the early 18th century, and over the centuries it was modernized to its current form. In the 1950s a group of army officers were reassigned to the police forces to develop a new cadre and modernize the police organization. And in the early 1960s five of the top police students from the Kabul police academy were sent to Munich Germany to get their master's degrees in criminology and police work. Among those were Farouq Barakzai, Farouq Yaqobi, Assadullah Ahmadzai, Sidique Wahidi, Saadullah Yusufi, and some others. The agency became stronger throughout the 1980s Soviet occupation until Kabul fell in 1992 to the insurgents. The country at that point descended into civil war and then came under the heel of the Taliban government, which enforced a primitive and barbaric justice system. 
  After the collapse of the Taliban government in late 2001, there was little in the nation resembling a functional police department as private armed militias of warlords quickly filled the vacuum left behind by a lack of central governance. The Ministry of Interior in Kabul, under the new Karzai government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, exercised little control over provincial police structures and was unable to effectively secure the remote provinces. Most of these problems were established after the Fall of Kabul in 1992, when the Soviet-backed government of Najibullah fell apart and the country entered into anarchy and chaos. From 1978 to 1992 the Afghan police had firm control over the country, much thanks to the Soviet Union and other factors related to the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan or the Soviet war in the country. Traditionally, police officers were poorly paid, recruited or conscripted from the poorest classes of society and frequently held in contempt by the communities they served. Compounding these factors, over two decades of unrest had also resulted in an illiteracy rate conservatively estimated at over 70% for police recruits.
  Although early efforts had trained 35,000 officers in basic recruit schools during 2003 and 2004, this training was insufficient to strengthen the structures and senior command levels needed to create an effective police force. Germany, as lead nation for police under the Bonn II Agreement, concentrated its efforts on setting up the Kabul Police Academy and drafted the long range blueprint for restructuring the police services. Except for Kunduz Province which had a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), Germany's program had only limited reach into the provinces. As the US Department of State International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Bureau's (INL) activity at this time was limited in resources and scope, the US Departments of Defense and State, in 2005, decided to shift the implementation of the police training and equipment program to the Office of Security Cooperation-Afghanistan (OSC-A), under the authority of the Commanding General, Combined Forces Command (CFC-A). In 2006, OSC-A became the Combined Security Transition Command – Afghanistan (CSTC-A) keeping the OSC-A mission.
  The 2005 changes led to an increased impetus to implement significant reform programs, particularly the reform of higher staff levels at the Ministry of the Interior, the placement of police mentors throughout the country, substantial pay increases in the police salary plan and an impending, complete restructuring of the police payroll system. A nationwide reassessment of infrastructure and equipment needs was also undertaken, followed with the distribution of critically needed weapons, ammunition, vehicles, and office/dorm furniture. Although progress has been made in the areas of infrastructure, equipment and payroll distribution, these programs would take some time to reach fruition.
  In the late 2000s the number of ANP officers getting killed in the line of duty jumped very sharply, with over 1,600 officers being killed in the years 2008 and 2009. By 2012, Afghan officials estimated that about 200 police officers are killed i
caption: ANP commander marching to greet distinguished visitors at the Afghan National Police Academy (ANPA) in 2010.
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