Locals Rule: Historical lessons for Creating Local Defense Forces for Afghanistan and Beyond
This RAND study draws lessons from eight historical cases of local defense forces in counterinsurgency—Indochina, Algeria, South Vietnam, Oman, El Salvador, Southern Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Iraq—and applies them to the Afghan Local Police (ALP). The strongest finding is that the real value of local defense forces lies in intelligence, not manpower or combat power; the productive combination is local situational awareness paired with U.S. combat capability, which requires tight security force coordination to actually exploit. Effectiveness is limited when populations distrust government-affiliated paramilitaries based on past abuses, when friction develops between the U.S., the host government, and the local forces, or when these units are misused as semi-conventional offensive elements. Politics is paramount: building local defense requires more than military support (USAID and civilian agencies often need a role), the U.S.–host nation–local force triangle has to be carefully managed, and the eventual transition into formal security institutions or demobilization must be slow and deliberate—concerns now visible in worries that rapid ALP expansion could fray the current alignment between U.S. SOF, local actors, and the Afghan government.