Working with and training the Afghan police

Embedded in the field with them--note their name has been changed from Afghan National Police to Afghan Uniformed Police (I have a few comments in the first excerpt and at the end):

To get an idea of the daunting task facing Canadian troops who are trying to improve the notoriously inept and often corrupt Afghan police forces you need only look at a recent patrol in the Panjwaii district, one of the most violent areas of Afghanistan.

Canadian soldiers and an RCMP officer mentoring the police were ready to head out on foot patrol through the streets of Bazar-i-Panjwaii at the crack of dawn.

However, the Afghan officers never showed up.

The official explanation was the Afghans were suddenly called away by their commander to conduct a raid in Kandahar City, 40 kilometres away. An unofficial reason that leaked out later was they set off for one of the few banks in the city to see if they were getting paid.

Either way, the Canadians were caught by surprise, about to get all dressed up in their battle gear with nowhere to go.

Making a bad situation look even worse was the fact the these Afghan police are supposed to be among the cream of the crop, having recently graduated from a special U.S.-led eight-week training program to improve their skills and weed out corruption.

However, in the bizarre world of policing in Afghanistan, this could actually be evidence that things are improving.

For one, the officers were not out shaking down Afghans for bribes as they have done for years. For another, they are finally getting paid on a semi-regular basis through a bank in Kandahar City instead of being shortchanged by their government officials who routinely skimmed money off the top. That they even have bank accounts is evidence of progress [that is very real progress, given the primitive state of the Afghan banking system--this change has been arranged by Combined Security Transition Command - Afghanistan--under US Central Command--which does most training of the Afghan army and police; more here from a Canadian Brigadier-General who just spent a year as Deputy Commander of CSTC-A, and on Canadian involvement at the Upperdate here].

And the officers returned to work later that day, heading off on the next patrol as if nothing had happened.

"People forget in Canada whether it's the Afghan National Army or the police or the justice system or anything, we are building things from nothing, absolute nothing," said Capt. Sheldon Maerz, an infantry officer with 3 Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry based in Wainwright, Alta. "This is an incredibly complex task. It's not like you're trying to build a police force in Saskatoon, Sask., with a bunch of people that don't know anything about policing, but at least they can read and write. Here we can't even assume that."..

Realizing that dismal reputation was undermining the Afghan government's credibility with the public, Canadians here have focused on the police this year, copying their existing program widely praised for mentoring the Afghan National Army.

Locals, though, remain skeptical...

As a way to signal that the widely despised ANP is indeed changing, the force is now being called the Afghan Uniformed Police (AUP) [emphasis added] to reflect the new eight-week training program an increasing number of officers are receiving. That might not seem like much by Canadian standards, but it's a quantum leap by Afghanistan's.

Coupled with a boost in pay -- from the equivalent of $75 a month for an untrained officer to $110 for the new upgraded officers [their pay is now roughly equal to army pay - MC] -- the police force in Bazar-i-Panjwaii is slowly becoming more professional.

The progress might look like baby steps in the grand march toward Afghanistan's modernization but they are part of what the chief of the defence staff, Gen. Walt Natynczyk, recently classified as "localized fragile signs of success."..

Consequently, Canadians are training local police in the basics of combat survival so the Afghan officers can stay alive long enough to one day practice the basics of police work.

"Because this is Panjwaii, we have to be realistic," said Capt. Maerz. "This isn't a benign policing environment. ... Someday maybe they could be a police officer in the true sense, but they're not going to be if we just fling them out there and they walk around there like the Keystone Kops and they all get slaughtered."

Adding to the risk to the fledgling police force is the threat from even the officers' allies. On the weekend, nine Afghan police were killed when U.S.-led troops mistook them for militants and called in air strikes during a battle that lasted four hours.

And here's an account by a Canadian mentor with the Police Operational Mentoring Liaison Team (POMLT)--well worth the read. Some key points:

...
Due to the nature of the operating environment in Afghanistan at this time, the ANP is a paramilitary police force and not a civilian police service of the modern Western type, but this situation should change as the security situation improves. At present, however, the ANP faces an insurgency on top of the normal public order and public safety challenges, so the mentoring teams include infantry soldiers, to teach security and fighting skills, as well as military police members to mentor basic police tactics, techniques and procedures...

Living and sharing experiences and hardships with the ANP in close quarters allows us to mentor to a very high standard, and lead by example in all aspects of their professional life. At my PSS [Police Sub-Station], we often ate evening meals with the ANP officers, conversing through hand gestures, our broken Pashto and their broken English, but often relying on the interpreter for more in-depth conversations. Due to the tribal nature of the culture in Afghanistan, many ANP become fiercely loyal to their mentor teams, to the extent that ANP officers have shielded Canadian soldiers with their own bodies during attacks.

Currently, several reform and restructuring initiatives are under way for the ANP in Kandahar Province. One of the most important is an intensive eight-week professional police training course delivered at the Regional Training Centres in Herat and Kandahar City, which more than 400 Afghan policemen have completed to date...

Other info I have learned:

*The US is, as the excerpts suggest, putting a major effort into police training.

*Unlike the Canadians, most NATO forces will not work directly with police in the field.

*The police need to be paramilitary; in 2007 three times as many were killed as army personnel--but the Europeans are nonetheless uncomfortable with the paramilitary role (and have done nowhere near enough in training police).

*Under Afghan law the police are mandated as paramilitary; they are essentially a public order force. Indeed under the law they do not investigate crimes--that is done by a separate judicial police (a European model).

*Unlike the army, most police serve in their own locality.

*Although the army is being massively re-equipped with Western (US in most cases) weapons (M-16s), vehicles (Humvees), etc., the police will stay with Warsaw Pact-type equipment.