Has foreign aid impacted police?

Improving performance of the police by providing good physical environment, better salary packages and building capacity have always been hot topics of discussion with all and sundry. With this aim, different reform commissions and national and international bodies have made various recommendations from time to time.

The enactment of the Police Order 2012, and later on the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police Act have been steps undertaken to remodel and restructure the police on the lines of a functional specialisation in accordance with the democratic aspirations of the people.

The War on Terror particularly brought to focus the role of the police as the first line of responder and defender to international forums. As a result, the United States, EU, Japan and China in particular, through their aid bodies such as USIP, INL, DFID, UNPDP and UNODC started pumping in enormous amounts of finances and efforts to revamp the police to confront the challenge. Of course, their documents also focused upon improving criminal administration with an objective to ensure the rule of law and peace building, with an eye upon the citizenry to enjoy fundamental rights.

In this context, the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa was taken as a case study, because this was the region which bore the major brunt of terrorism. Initially for the police, it was a new type of terrorism in the form of insurgency, and it was very hard to counter the insurgent attacks and investigate. Gradually, by the time-tested trial and error method, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Police built up its own capacity in countering this kind of crime. Under this burden, the strength of the provincial police grew from 32,000 to around 85,000 by 2018. The procurement of weapons and other equipment was all done through their own budget.

The assorted donors offered their packages with strings attached to their own varied agendas, and fixed certain parameters upon the recipient, leaving no room for the beneficiary to wiggle. Most of the funds of the donors concentrated on intangibles, ignoring the fundamentals in the areas of infrastructural development, procurement of arms and other equipment. An overlap in themes and geographical areas had been observed, resulting in great wastage of resources. However, this flaw was cured by developing the Strategic Development Programme Log Frame, which was undertaken in alignment with the provincial budget during the period of 2013-2014, while the author was the home secretary of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The outcome of these programmes was stated to be: (i) Improved oversight, governance, and accountability of the security and justice sector; (ii) Improved security and justice service delivery to citizens through strengthened institutions, including reduced incidence of damage to life and property; and (iii) Trust between citizen and state increased. Of these outcomes, the output of (ii) enhanced processes and improved functional specialisation, including through infrastructure development and capacity building of police, prosecution, prisons, reclamation and probation, Provincial Public Safety and Police Complaints Commission, judiciary and legal professions, according to national laws and international standards; improved effectiveness of police investigation, including through improved production and utilisation of intelligence and forensic evidence; and improved capacity and processes of courts for efficient and effective delivery of justice services. Outcome (iii) focused on output in enhanced citizens’ legal awareness to demand and access services — improved availability of citizen-friendly and gender responsive policing and enhanced crime reporting systems.

In this context, the donor-supported projects were Strengthening Rule of Law in Malakand (assisted by UNDP), Criminal Justice Sub-Programme 2 (assisted by UNODC), Rule of Law Programme in K-P (assisted by EU), Peace Building initiative for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Project (assisted by DFID), and Conflict Victim Support Programme (assisted by USAID). Meanwhile the K-P government undertook the Safe City Project Peshawar (PC-II approved), De-Radicalisation Programme for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Automation of Home Department, 23 secure armouries across the province and construction of Joint Police Training Centre at Nowshera, Phase-I (assisted by INL) of police line Hangu, construction of Central Police Office in Peshawar, construction of Javed Iqbal Shaheed Police Line Kabal (assisted by INL), Special Development Support for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police (SDSP-I), Project Coordination Unit for Implementation of Law & Order initiatives in K-P, Special Development Support for K-P Police (SDSP Phase I and Phase III, the establishment of offices for Special Branch Police K-P, traffic warden system for Peshawar, construction of police lines Daggar, construction of police station at Kotkai and police checkpost at Miskni and Kambat, Dir-Lower, Special Development Support for K-P Police (SDSP-IV) and Creation of Model Police Stations (SDSP-V), enhancing and strengthening the capacity of BDU, construction and supervision of joint police training centre in Nowshera, construction of headquarters for CTD, development of police infrastructure for police stations at Kabalgram, Chauga, Olandar, Dandai Distt, Shangla, Swari at Distt Buner, Gawaleri and GAT-Poechar at District-Swat, Kuz Paro District Kohistan. Apart from that the construction of buildings for the school of investigation, school of intelligence, school of explosive handling, and school of riot and mob management are other feathers to the cap through our own funds.

While comparing the SDPF, one can easily assess that only INL and USAID made substantial contributions towards the construction of buildings for the Elite Police Training College at Hangu, and for the raising of security checkposts, equipping the special branch and building police lines and police stations. As compared to that, the others lagged behind and whatever funds they provided were either spent on intangibles or emoluments of the personnel engaged by those bodies without taking into consideration the priorities of the department. For instance, the top-most priority was the establishment of state-of-the-art forensic science laboratory and close circuit cameras, but the donors refused to fund such projects. They kept on spending millions of dollars by renting out buildings in Islamabad, paying salaries to their hired staff and meeting other expenditures on seminars in posh hotels with half-baked suggestions. The irony of it all is that most of the advisers associated with those teams had no experience at the operational and policy level in any of the conflict zones, and mostly remained confined to cozy rooms either in Islamabad or Lahore. The summary of the discussion is that although millions were doled out by donors in the name of capacity building, gender mainstreaming of police and image building, no impact appears to have been made thus far in any of those fields or anywhere else. Therefore, to have a meaningful impact, it is essential that funding to a few major projects should be made available to the police in order to avoid splitting of resources. Besides, third-party validations of such projects should also be done.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 3^rd, 2021.

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