The Torch: Kandahar: RCMP working with US Army MPs

Obviously related to the situation described in this post. One wonders how often the RCMP has operated with a foreign army:

U.S. [military] police to bolster Canadian cop ranks in Afghanistan

Canadian police mentors in Kandahar City are going to get help soon from the U.S. army.

"These are not just any Americans. It is a company of military police," assistant commissioner Graham Muir of the RCMP said in an interview on Wednesday.

...
Photo Credit: Matthew Fisher, Canwest News Service

"What is about to unfold," the senior Canadian police officer in Afghanistan said, is that Canadian mentors based in the country's second largest city are going to be "a little more robust in the field" because the U.S. military police that they will soon work with "have fighting skills."

The more than 100 newcomers from the U.S. are to work directly for Brig-Gen. Jon Vance, the Canadian who runs Task Force Kandahar [as part of Joint Task Force Afghanistan]. A battalion of U.S. army infantry already reports to Vance [see end of this post], whose command will soon number more than 4,000 troops, including 2,800 Canadians .

The move to add the U.S. military police officers was planned weeks before a truck bomb killed 43 Afghans and injured scores of others Tuesday night in Kandahar. But that attack underscored why bringing more security to the notorious Taliban bastion in the country is a key priority of NATO commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal...

The U.S. MPs are to live alongside Canadian police mentors at a Canadian base in Kandahar. Their presence should allow the mentors to have greater mobility which in turn should permit them to spend more time with Afghan police from nine or 10 sub-stations in the city, Muir said.

"It is a force multiplier for us to be in the presence of the ANP with considerably more frequency," he said, adding "as much as humanly possible, coaching and training needs to be done in the field."

The goal was for Afghan police to be able to move at will, own the night and know their neighbourhoods better, said Muir, a veteran of previous tours on behalf of the RCMP in the Balkans and Haiti.

"If the police can move freely, the corollary is that there is less space for the bad guys," Muir said. "To own the night is self-explanatory. Knowing your public means knowing who belongs (in an area) and who doesn't."

But such an approach is an uneasy fit with Afghanistan's existing police culture.

"The police here are mostly static at checkpoints, guarding buildings or waiting in their stations to be called," he said, referring to this as "a garrison mentality [emphasis added]."
"There is an operational imperative that attaches to the process. It must be pragmatic and clear. That is to enable the Afghan police who as part of the Afghan National Security Forces have a responsibility for counter-insurgency.
"This is a country at war. These are not normal policing circumstances [quite--see end of this post from July 2008]."
The risk to foreign police assisting Afghan police was made plain nearly two weeks ago when a Taliban car bomber blew himself up near NATO headquarters in Kabul. Sgt. Brian Kelly of the RCMP was badly injured in the attack and is now recovering at a hospital in Ottawa. That incident was a stark warning about the dangers that the 42 Canadian police officers currently posted here [emphasis added--not all Mounties] face every day...
...whether they are on mounted patrols or on foot with Afghan colleagues, Canadian police in Kandahar only go out in the field with support from Canadian infantry who create "a sufficiently permissive environment," Muir said. The same "force protection" principles would be followed when Canadian police go out with the U.S. military police.
Unlike Canada's mentors who spend much of their time walking the beat with Afghan police, hundreds of police mentors from Europe here mainly assist at the strategic level and seldom venture "outside the wire [emphasis added--see Uppestdate here]."