The Afghan National Police (ANP) is critical to Afghanistan’s ability to shoulder the security burden increasingly thrust upon them as the international military presence draws down. For Afghanistan to stay on an even keel and advance and sustain overall stability, the ANP, alongside the Afghan military, must be marginally better than the armed non-state groups that threaten the current political order. But the ANP is very ineffective, hamstrung by widespread corruption, attrition, illiteracy and public distrust. Progress is being made, albeit slow and uneven, but this is unlikely to significantly alter the bottom line by 2014, when the international military combat mission in Afghanistan formally draws to a close.

Training the ANP has been the centerpiece of the EUs engagement in Afghanistan since 2007. What began as a German-led police training mission in 2002 became an EU-led mission in February 2007, christened EUPOL. The German effort was found wanting or, in the words of then-SACEUR James Jones, “very disappointing”. Today, after six years, the conventional wisdom of EUPOL and its results generally echo Jones’ verdict. This will undoubtedly cloud the EUs legacy in Afghanistan. But the conventions should not overshadow EUPOLs strengths, for herein lies a lesson can be leveraged in future statebuilding missions.

The EU was widely seen as the ideal candidate to lead the police training mission in February 2007. The EU had extensive experience and expertise from police training missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Georgia and elsewhere. In European capitals many saw the mission as an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the EUs capabilities in a war that still enjoyed broad public support in most European countries. Finally, there were few serious alternatives to the EU. President Bush had recently announced a military surge in Iraq to enable a dramatic shift in strategy, effectively rendering a larger US role in Afghanistan unfeasible at that time.

As stipulated and adopted by the European Council, EUPOLs mandate was ambitious in scope – although also somewhat ambiguous – explicitly emphasizing the need to link the mission of training the Afghan National Police to a broader undertaking of strengthening rule of law in Afghanistan. Since its inception, however, EUPOL has severely struggled to fulfill this ambition. It hit the ground stumbling, not running. The means were never commensurate to the ends. Results were meager. In recognition of the ill state of the Afghan police and army, and their centrality to Afghanistan’s future and a viable international withdrawal,  the US led a push in late 2009 to form the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM-A). Eventually it came to dominate the entire training effort and symbolize the ineffectiveness of the EUs parallel effort.

What when wrong? EUPOL has suffered from ineffective leadership, dysfunctional internal procedures and political and bureaucratic in-fighting since 2007. The first EUPOL-chief resigned after just three months at the helm. Since then, the quality of leadership has varied greatly, but regardless of the person, they have all been hampered by consecutive battles to secure and retain institutional autonomy. This was a fight on several fronts. In Brussels, a strong EU bureaucracy and the contributing member states were reluctant to delegate authority. In Kabul, the EUPOL-chief had a rocky relationship with the EU Special Envoy, who, acting on behalf of the EU, would insist on being the EUPOL-chiefs in-country principal. This was ostensibly a cause of the first EUPOL-chief’s quick resignation. Even withinEUPOL infighting was common. Seconded staff had national agendas, methods and interests specific to their preferences and domestic political context. This further weakened the EUPOL-chiefs authority as well as EUPOLs autonomy and decision-making process.

Moreover, EUPOL has been dramatically and consistently under-staffed since 2007. The mission never had sufficient means at its disposal to achieve its objectives. EUPOL was planned to have 400 police trainers, but for most of its existence the mission has hovered between 200 and 300 trainers. Even if the staffing threshold had been met, it would still have been incommensurate with the task at hand. It paled in comparison to the thousands of trainers NTM-A devoted to build the Afghan national security forces since 2009. This severely limited EUPOLs capacity to drive the ANP forward. Leaving quality aside for now, the output was simply too slow and too little.

EUPOLs mandate also was also constrained by restrictive and risk-averse caveats, preventing it from taking on roles in unstable areas such as in the South and Southeast, where a concerted EU training and advisory mission could have made a difference to the counterinsurgency campaign. Instead, EUPOL operated in relatively secure areas on the outskirts of Kabul and in Bamiyan province in central Afghanistan. That EUPOL could only operate in on the war’s periphery is a stark reminder of the limits of the EUs footprint and impact. Moreover, to the dismay of its critics in Kabul, EUPOL trainers were allowed to drink alcohol, were often not allowed to work on weekends, and had considerably more time off than their international counterparts at NTM-A and elsewhere. Tellingly, in the international community in Kabul – an environment were scathing sarcasm admittedly is a common refuge – EUPOL was an easy and popular target.

Much can and should be learned from these mistakes and shortcomings before the EU takes on a similar task. But given the politics and mechanisms of the EU, it is highly unlikely that these issues will ever be sufficiently resolved. Future EU police training missions will also suffer from lack of delegated discretion, in-fighting across national staff, limited resources and restrictive caveats. Instead, it its worthwhile to consider the strengths of EUPOL in order to gain a realistic understanding of how and for what specific objectives the EU can make a serious contribution to future, similar missions. EUPOLs flaws should not lead to a neglect of its special assets that, if leveraged with a narrow mandate, could make a valuable impact.

One of EUPOLs unparalleled strengths in Afghanistan was that its training effort was conducted by active policemen and –women with a wealth of professional experience from home and in post-conflict settings. This is in stark contrast to NTM-As effort, which is predominantly led by military personnel and contractors. The lack of civilian police trainers has reinforced the ANPs heavily militarized nature. The training, mindset and operational activities of the ANP is more green than blue. This is a significant obstacle to the ANPs long-term normalization from a war-fighting force advancing stability to a constabulary force advancing the rule of law. Most of the ANP today lack the skills to perform even the most basic police functions beyond preventing and deterring malign actors by the use or threat of force. Officers trained by EUPOL at the ANP Staff College near Kabul are educated and socialized as a truly blue police force. As the ANPs future leaders, they have the capacity to act as agents of reform (though it is unclear if they have the incentives to do so). 

In Bamiyan province EUPOLs training effort has had a tangible impact, providing a visible benefit for the local population in that their police units are more effective and trusted. Being heavily dominated by the ethnic Hazara minority – the minority most exposed to repression under the Taliban’s brutal rule – the insurgency will likely never attain a strong foothold in the province. Nevertheless, EUPOLs effort may have hardened the security against pressures from criminal networks and potential spill-over effects from less stable neighboring provinces. Moreover, while Bamiyan is relatively unimportant to the outcome of the counterinsurgency effort, EUPOLs presence there has somewhat counteracted what many Afghans point to as a morally hazardous incentive structure inherent in the international community’s strategy: the logic of counterinsurgency prevails upon ISAF countries to devote the lion’s share of their development resources in areas that are contested by insurgents in order to shore up fragile security gains. To many Afghans outside these unstable areas – such as in the orderly Bamiyan province – ISAF is essentially rewarding bad behavior.

The story of EUPOL is a testament to the limits of the EUs capacity to shoulder large, strategic burdens in the “hard” end of the spectrum of counterinsurgency tasks. EUPOL was never designed, resourced or able to build a sufficiently effective ANP – at least by 2014. Its results have fallen dramatically behind the goal envisioned when the EU took on the responsibility in 2007. As such, EUPOL will cast a cloud over the EUs legacy in Afghanistan. It has not been a success. But the silver lining sheds light on an important lesson: The EUs capacity to produce a high-quality, although incremental, training output is an asset that should not be forgone in future missions. In nascent security institutions, where professionalism is weak and internal cohesion low, effective leaders can make a truly decisive difference. Well-trained leaders have an amplifier effect. They can prove the difference between an ANP unit that stands its ground, builds rapport with the local community and prevails and a unit that preys upon the local citizens, colludes with malign actors or simply falls apart. The EU cannot supplant US-led actors like the NTM-A in large scale training efforts, but it can complement it in ways that, if leveraged effectively, can make a substantial contribution.

Christian Bayer Tygesen was an Anna Lindh Fellow at The Europe Center at Stanford University from September 2012 to January 2013. He was in Kabul from February to June 2011 and from May to June 2012 to conduct field research and other assignments.

Just hours ahead of North Korea’s most recent nuclear test, an event which pushed the country once again into headlines around the world, a panel gathered at Stanford to discuss the challenges journalists face “uncovering” facts about North Korea.

The discussion, organized by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, was held on Feb. 11 at Stanford in conjunction with the 2012 Shorenstein Journalism Award.

Barbara Demick, Beijing bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times and recipient of the 2012 Shorenstein Journalism Award, said it was the lack of access to North Korea that inspired her to first want to cover the country.

“I felt like if I could not go to North Korea, I should be able to get into the mindset of the people,” Demick said. “I think this has been true for my entire career as a foreign correspondent—you are trying to really understand how people tick.”

Susan Chira, assistant managing editor for news at the New York Times, emphasized that reporters have a responsibility to piece together credible news from the fragments of often unreliable or biased information about North Korea.

“I always feel as an editor that your responsibility is to write in the caveats as clearly as possible so readers understand that you are dealing—to a much greater degree than with other articles we publish—with highly fragmented information,” Chira said.

Adam Johnson, an associate professor of English at Stanford and the author of the novel The Orphan Master’s Son, suggested that literary fiction can help bring to life the incomplete and untold stories of North Korea.

“For fiction, the things you can’t use in journalism—legend, rumor, story, whisper, and suggestions—these are all equally valid in my realm,” Johnson said. “Those can all be used to conjure a portrait.”

Katharina Zellweger, a former development worker who lived in Pyongyang for five years and who is the current Pantech Fellow at Stanford, spoke of the need to provide more balanced coverage of North Korea, especially of its regular citizens.

“Nobody has the full picture,” Zellweger said, “But I hope there will be more efforts to give the North Korean people the attention they deserve.”

A full-length video of the panel is available on the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center website.

Established in 2002, the Shorenstein Journalism Award recognizes the work of veteran American and Western journalists whose work has generated a greater awareness of the complexities of Asia. It also honors Asian journalists and media organizations engaged in helping build stronger U.S.-Asia ties by presenting a clear picture of key issues facing Asia’s society and politics.

For several decades, Southeast Asia’s tracts of dense, old-growth rainforest have served as fertile ground for lumber, and much land has been converted to agriculture. Now, palm oil plantations are being planted where forests once stood.

In 2011, Indonesia, one of the region’s most prosperous countries, instituted a two-year moratorium on clearing new areas of forest, which is set to expire this May and has been criticized as having several loopholes. Other countries, including Cambodia and Myanmar, are losing forests rapidly.

Out of concern for climate change, international initiatives such as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) have aimed to promote conservation and sustainable development in countries with significant forest cover. But these efforts do not always support local needs, and can inadvertently have negative impacts.

Tim Forsyth, a Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow, speaks about the gap between conservation efforts and economic and social development in Southeast Asia. He is visiting Stanford this quarter from the London School of Economics and Political Science where he is a reader in environment and development at the Department of International Development.

What major types of forest management do we see across Southeast Asia today?

A number of countries have put laws in place to restrict illegal logging, and have established national park areas. These are usually old-growth rainforests that restrict logging and agriculture. The problem with national parks is that they put so many restrictions on land use that the vulnerable populations living around them either suffer or are forced to cut other trees. I have spent some years working in poorer villages in Indonesia and Thailand on the edge of protected forests, and usually conservation policies avoid the fact that people need to get livelihoods somehow. Government policy should acknowledge how these people are vulnerable to changes in crop prices and the availability of land, or else these people might be forced into breaking the rules of national parks.

There is also production forest, which usually includes forest plantations. These can include softwoods such as pine, or hardwoods such as teak — and increasingly oil palm for food and biofuels. Forest plantations are attractive to governments and businesses because they earn money and can provide timber for construction and exports. Sometimes, plantations also gain carbon credits, although this is not a lot of money so far. In terms of conservation, destroying old-growth forest and replacing it with a monoculture plantation is not good for biodiversity. It also does not benefit those local people who want to harvest forest products or use part of the land for agriculture.

Finally, there are community forests that are supposed to be places where people can grow food, live, and have forest cover. The definition of “community forest,” however, varies from place to place. In Thailand, for example, the way the government defines it is not very different from a conservation area, and consequently there is not much space for agriculture. The Philippines, on the other hand, is more decentralized and local people can shape the nature of the forest landscape more. Corruption, however, is a problem.

Is there an ideal model that successfully supports sustainable development? How does your research approach this issue?

There has been much progress in collaborations that involve willing governments, international advisors, and local actors — often in accordance with an international agreement such as the Convention on Biological Diversity. These collaborations are more useful than a single actor working alone, and they acknowledge a wider range of objectives.

A new initiative is Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+). This is meant to encourage governments to slow down deforestation by rewarding them financially through carbon credits. But REDD+ has a number of challenges. The main problem is that the value of the credits is so low at the moment. REDD+ also overemphasizes forest cover, rather than forest quality. This means that if a satellite image of a country shows a lot of forest cover, that is good according to REDD+. But this gives no indication as to the biodiversity or the diversity of livelihoods inside a forest. It is a green light to all of the people who want fast-growing tree plantations, which makes them money and supplies them with wood for construction. In addition, it keeps a government happy because it supplies their country with timber and tax revenue, but this is not necessarily what you would call sustainable development.

There are elements of good models in different places, and it really depends on one’s viewpoint. Nepal offers a good example of community forestry because, in principle, it aims to engage local people more effectively and equally, and so can combine local development with the protection of national forests. From a development perspective, some forms of conservation can hurt poorer people and actually undermine conservation efforts. Therefore, in my work, I try to promote policy that acknowledges the needs of the more vulnerable populations. My research tries to make climate change policy more relevant to development processes in Southeast Asia. In my current project, I am seeing how policy recommendations about forests can be reshaped and reinterpreted locally in developing countries in order to address local interests. My goal is to understand how expert knowledge about climate change can be governed more effectively in order to enhance both development and conservation in Asia with better outcomes for everybody.

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The practical problem of dealing with forest destruction and climate change in Southeast Asia is also a function of social and economic trends. As countries become more prosperous, more and more people live in megacities, drive cars, live in air-conditioned apartments, and frequent shopping malls.

A couple of years ago in Bangkok, I took lots of photographs of t-shirts printed with global warming messages and of people carrying reusable bags. When I was there recently, all of these things had disappeared. In other words, there is a tendency for people to think of conservation efforts as a fashion trend.

I do not think that any city in Asia is doing enough. We have to start planning cities in ways that use fewer greenhouse gases, and also to encourage people to realize that they can be real agents of change. At the moment, many urban citizens believe they can implement climate change policy by managing rural and forested landscapes. Instead, they need to realize the problems of these approaches, and to see what they can do themselves.

North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test on Tuesday, prompting President Barack Obama to call the detonation of a miniature nuclear device a “highly provocative act” that threatens U.S. security and international peace. It is the third nuclear test by Pyongyang since 2006 and is escalating concern that the isolated Stalinist state is now closer to building a bomb small enough to be fitted on a missile capable of striking the United States and its allies. The test was conducted hours before Obama’s annual State of the Union speech.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said the test was conducted, “in a safe and perfect way … with the use of a smaller and light A-bomb, unlike the previous ones, yet with great explosive power.” The statement said the nuclear device did not impose “any negative impact” on the environment.

North Korea said the atomic test was merely its “first response” to what it called U.S. threats and said there would be unspecified “second and third measures of greater intensity” if the United States remains hostile to the North. Washington had led the call for more U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang after the North launched its first rocket and put a satellite into obit in December. While the North said the launch was for its civilian space program, the Obama administration believes it was part of a covert program to develop ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads.

We ask two Stanford experts on North Korea to weigh in: David Straub, the associate director of the Korean Studies Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), and Nick Hansen, an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation who is an expert in foreign weapons systems.   

Q. Why conduct the test now?

Straub: Since the two previous North Korean nuclear tests took place on American holidays and the North Korean themselves have announced that their moves are "targeted" at the United States, many observers have concluded that the this test was especially timed to coincide with President Obama's State of the Union address. It is also possible that, as others have speculated, the North Koreans also took into account that Feb. 16 is the birthday of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's father, Kim Jong Il, the man who is said to have instructed North Koreans to proceed with the nuclear weapons and missile programs. Others have speculated that the North Korean leadership wanted to test the device before the Feb. 25 transition in South Korea from the current president Lee Myung-bak, to the president-elect, Park Geun-hye. The timing could be intended to punish Lee, whom the North Koreans say they despise, while, the argument goes, making it a little easier for Park to reach out to the North before her inauguration.

Q. What message is North Korea’s young and relatively new president, Kim Jong Un, trying to send to the world with this test?

Hansen: Kim seems to be saying: I’m going to do what I say I’m going to do – and nobody is going to dissuade me. The North said they were going to launch a satellite, and by God they did. They said they were going to touch off a nuclear test after that, and by God they did. Now we have to wait and see what’s next.

Straub:  The North Koreans themselves are saying that the test is a response to the military threat posed to it by the United States and to U.S.-led UN sanctions imposed on North Korea after its rocket test in December. The North Koreans have complex motivations for pursuing nuclear weapons. Many North Koreans may actually believe that having nuclear weapons will defend them against the United States. But the fact of the matter is that the United States and South Korea have never attacked North Korea over the decades, while the North Koreans have repeatedly attacked South Korean and American targets, most recently killing 50 South Koreans in 2010. North Korea's top leaders see nuclear weapons and missiles as a panacea. Fearful of opening up to the outside world because of the lies they have told their people, Pyongyang wants to believe that it will eventually maneuver the United States and the international community as a whole into accepting its possession of nuclear weapons and forcing the removal of sanctions against it. That won't happen, but even if it did, it would not resolve Pyongyang's basic problems, which stem from the totalitarian nature and history of its regime.

Q. What concerns you most in the wake of this test?

Hansen:  The thing I’m worried about now is that they also said they’re going to launch more satellites and long-range missiles. They displayed one in the military parade of 2010, an intermediate-range missile that can probably go 2,000 miles. When you think about that, 2,000 miles, or maybe a little bit longer, it puts just about every U.S. base in Asia under its threat, including Guam, Okinawa, Taiwan and everything in Japan. It’s a threat if they could put a warhead on it. The KN-08 is a bigger, three-stage rocket and is more of a threat, with the potential of hitting at least Alaska, Hawaii and maybe the U.S. West Coast. But remember, the North has tested neither.

Q. The test was in defiance of Pyongyang’s chief ally, Beijing, which had urged Kim not to risk confrontation and said the North would “pay a heavy price” if it proceeded with a test. How will China respond?

Straub: China is key in dealing with the North. China provides North Korea with most of its external support, including vital food and energy supplies. Chinese leaders are certainly not happy with their North Korean counterparts, as China would prefer peace and stability in the region, so it can focus on its own economic development. But Chinese leaders are fearful that putting a great deal of pressure on North Korea might result in chaos, with unpredictable and possibly very dangerous repercussions for China and the region. Thus, before North Korean nuclear and rocket tests, typically the Chinese press Pyongyang not to proceed. But immediately after a test, the Chinese begin to urge "all parties" to exercise restraint. In the United Nations, where China has a veto on the Security Council, it reluctantly agrees to the minimum condemnations of and sanctions against North Korea. After the dust settles, however, China doesn't seriously implement the sanctions. In fact, since North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006, Chinese trade with North Korea has dramatically increased as a result of a PRC government decision to support North Korea. China may agree to a stronger resolution this time, but ultimately this pattern will almost certainly repeat itself.

Q. The North Koreans have said the test poses no risks to the environment or its people. Is this accurate?

Hansen: It takes a while for the particles that are released from the test to get released from the cracks in the rock and get into the atmosphere. My guess is that because of this very hard rock, they probably don’t have much of a radiation release problem. It probably will just seep through naturally and should not be of any danger. Engineers seem to have done a good job from a security and safety standpoint; the way the tunnels make right-handle turns and then there are the blast doors and piles of dirt to soak up any release.

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