| | There's marijuana in their socks The Economist
11/21/2006
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Afghanistan's auxiliary police KNOWN as “thieves in uniform”, the standing of the Afghan police in the eyes of most residents of the southern province of Kandahar is just below that of the despised stray dogs. Their habit of turning roadside checkpoints into extortion rackets is just one blatant example of their criminality and corruption. The police force is one reason why, five years this week since the austere and brutal regime of the Taliban was overthrown, so many people in Kandahar cannot decide whom they hate more: the new government or the Taliban revivalists fighting it. In the battered police station at Punjwai, where heavy fighting against the Taliban has dragged on for five months, police morale could not be lower. Over a frugal lunch of bread and dripping, the local commander, Bismillah Jan, says the Taliban would kill them if they went home, so they stay at the station day and night. Their pay, $70 a month, barely supports them, they are few in number, and equipment and training are dismal, with only 20 guns for 110 policemen in the district. The police's disarray has left a law-and-order vacuum across southern Afghanistan, which the Taliban and local warlords have been quick to fill. Now the government of Hamid Karzai is attempting a risky solution. The first “auxiliary policemen” are training. Unlike regulars, recruited and trained centrally, these will be local men. The aim is rapidly to increase police numbers from, typically, about 50 in each district to several hundred. They will be paid the same as regular policemen. Punjwai, which will get 300 of the new police, shows how badly they are needed. In September a big NATO offensive, Operation Medusa, supposedly cleared out the Taliban. But since there were so few police, and NATO's soldiers were tied up protecting two road projects, the Taliban soon reoccupied much of the ground. There are big dangers in building up the “auxiliary” force. It might become the tool of a tribal faction or local warlord. The idea is to recruit what is in essence a local security force, but with a broad enough base to ensure that the government is not merely supplying, training and arming existing militias. Careful screening of the recruits is supposed to maintain the tribal balance and keep out unsavoury elements. In Kandahar, only 109 out of 200 initial volunteers were accepted. Even so, the new recruits failed to impress Nasrullah Zarifi, who commands the main police-training centre in Kandahar. “These people have destroyed my training centre,” fumes the general. “They are just criminal people. Do we want quality or just to extend the numbers?” General Zarifi says he threw six men off the course for propagating Taliban ideology, and expelled several more after finding marijuana in their socks. Some recruits rioted after deciding that their beds aligned their feet with Mecca while they slept. With pay and conditions so poor, it is not surprising that the force fails to attract top-notch candidates, and training only lasts ten days, compared with eight weeks for regular police. More worrying are reports that recruits in several districts came disproportionately from one tribe. Conscious that local warlords might try to co-opt the new recruits, Kandahar's provincial police chief is planning to create joint stations covering two or three districts. The auxiliaries will work under the main police command not local police commanders, and form what he calls “a mobile reserve”. It is an intriguing idea, but hardly what was originally envisaged.
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