Weak Afghan police threaten NATO plan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan | Outgunned, outmanned, poorly trained and underpaid, Afghan police are a weak link in the U.S.-led effort to stabilize the country and must improve or risk jeopardizing security seven years after U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban government.

The challenge is particularly acute in the southeastern corner of the country - the former Taliban heartland - where militants and criminal gangs strike with alarming frequency. Ambushes, assassinations and hijackings are common.

A recent insurgent attack on Kandahar city’s prison freed more than 1,000 inmates, including about 400 Taliban fighters.

Often, the only defense against gangs or the Taliban is the local police. But officers question whether it’s worth risking their lives for a salary equivalent to about $100 a month.

Compared with the Taliban, who have rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and high-quality AK-47 assault rifles from Russia, “our weapons are no good,” said Col. Abdulghafar Noorzi, deputy police chief in the city of Kandahar.

“The police are very weak,” said Najibulla, a laborer in a mineral water factory who is in his 30s and, like many other Afghans, uses only one name.

Concerned about rising insecurity, the United States is poised to move more U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year from Iraq and to continue to expand the Afghan army. But police are also a major priority.

After three years of focusing on the army, NATO is six months into an ambitious project to overhaul, reform and rearm the Afghan national police as part of a $7 billion security initiative. Progress has been minimal.

A stop last month at a police checkpoint in the center of Kandahar city revealed some of the challenges. Officers had no sandbags, concrete barriers or fortifications for protection. Many of the young recruits lacked formal training and complained about equipment.

“My gun locks after firing five times,” said Amanullah, 23, displaying his Chinese-manufactured AK-47.

Standing nearby, Abdul Malik, 16, wore a brown utility vest packed with clips of ammunition over his blue T-shirt. He looked more like an adolescent playing a game than a police officer trying to defend his country.

Col. Noorzi described many of his young recruits as “fragile hens that are let out of their cage in the open under the sun” and are “blind to oncoming ambushes and attacks.”

Even with few screening standards, the force is short-staffed. Police officials in the city said there were 3,666 officers as of July 14 in Kandahar province, which is spread over nearly 21,000 square miles.

Of the government’s 76,000 police officers, more are deployed to Kandahar than to any other province, Interior Ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashari said. But he conceded: “We can only work with what we have.”

A prevailing lack of trust between citizens and the police compounds the challenges. Residents accuse the police of corruption and improper conduct.

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