Overview

Policing is not a popular topic of serious scholarly research. Although a vast literature on policing exists, it is mostly technical in nature and only rarely analytical. Even the police forces of Western Europe and North America have rarely been investigated in depth as far as their history and functioning goes. In particular, the politics of policing, its political economy, have been largely neglected. This book is a rare in-depth study of a police force in a developing country which is also undergoing a bitter internal conflict, further to the post-2001 external intervention in Afghanistan. Policing Afghanistan discusses the evolution of the country's police through its various stages but focuses in particular on the last decade. The authors review the ongoing debates over the future shape of Afghanistan's police, but seek primarily to analyse the way Afghanistan is policed relative to its existing social, political and international constraints. Giustozzi and Isaqzadeh have observed the development of the police force from its early stages, starting from what was a rudimentary, militia-based, police force prior to 2001. This is a book about how the police really work in such a difficult environment, the nuts and bolts approach, based on first hand research, as opposed to a description of how the Afghan police are institutionally organised and regulated.

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9780199327942

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Reviews

<br> This is the first serious, comprehensive and convincing account of how policing in Afghanistan really works. Giustozzi and Isaqzadeh's impressive study of the political dynamics of Afghan policing extends the police-studies agenda and is essential reading for anyone interested in the political economy--or reform--of policing. --Alice Hills, Chair of Conflict and Security, University of Leeds, and author of Policing Post-Conflict Cities<p><br> The most comprehensive account to date of the history of policing in Afghanistan, especially of the critically important and yet highly problematic post-2001 efforts to rebuild an effective police force in Afghanistan. The book contains a wealth of details about the structure and organization of the police, recruitment and retention issues, and the various reform efforts of the past decade. The most useful contribution of the book, however, is that it looks at policing not simply from a technocratic perspective, which other studies of police reform efforts in Afghanistan have tended to do, but as an inherently political task...this study provides a much clearer and compelling explanation for the successes and many more failures of internationally-driven police reform efforts in Afghanistan. --Andrew Wilder, Director of Afghanistan and Pakistan Programs, United States Institute of Peace, and author of Cops or Robbers? The Struggle to Reform the Afghan National Police<p><br> I enjoyed reading this book, from which I learned a great deal about the processes and problems of policing Afghanistan. It is well-researched and, given the public and academic interest in Afghanistan, ought to find a wide readership. --Cornelius Friesendorf, Frankfurt University<p><br>

Author Information

Antonio Giustozzi is a Research Fellow at IDEAS, London School of Economics. Mohammed Isaqzadeh holds an MPhil from Oxford University and teaches at the American University in Kabul. He is co-author of a paper on Afghanistan's paramilitary policing.

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