Americans who left the movie Zero Dark Thirty thinking that the dark stain of torture is behind us should be cautioned by the US exit strategy in Afghanistan.

As the 2014 deadline for ending the US combat mission in Afghanistan approaches, US forces have been working with the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan National Police (ANP) to build their capacity to fight the Taliban and other insurgent elements on their own. Yet even as the ANA and ANP cost US taxpayers billions of dollars a year, there are still swaths of the country that the national army and police cannot control.

Faced with an impending withdrawal deadline and tightening budgets, US planners created another security entity, the Afghan Local Police (ALP), which they have pitched as an affordable short-term fix to fill this security vacuum. However, the name is a misnomer, since members do not have police powers and are essentially village militias armed with AK-47s. Highlighting its prominence as a key feature of the US exit strategy, General David Petraus described the ALP program in 2011 as ‘arguably the most critical element in our effort to help Afghanistan develop the capacity to secure itself.’

Despite some success in achieving security […]