Central and South Asia

Kandahar’s security lacking

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James Murray reports on what Canadian soldiers found when they conducted an unnannounced check of police checkpoints in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. There was evidence of some gaping holes in the city’s security. Murray is embedded with the Canadian forces.
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LISA MULLINS: One of the short-term goals in Afghanistan is to improve security prior to the presidential elections next month. US and other international troops cannot reach that goal alone. They depend on Afghanistan’s police forces to do their job. Recently, Canadian soldiers performed an unannounced inspection of Afghan police checkpoints in the city Kandahar.  Reporter James Murray of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was able to go along.  He’s embedded with the Canadian military in the region.  Murray reports that the inspection revealed some gaping holes in the Kandahar security system.

GREG AITKIN: I’ll show you guys the alleyway.

JAMES MURRAY: Sitting, deserted in the middle of a long empty Kandahar lane is our first sign that something’s wrong.    This alley shouldn’t be empty.

GREG AITKIN: There is supposed to be a guy here 24/7.

MURRAY: Afghan police officer standing guard behind a small pile of sandbags surrounding the corner of a building.  It’s the perfect place to keep watch.  But no one is watching.  Recently, someone walked down this alley and tossed a grenade over the mud wall and killed an Afghan National Police officer.

AITKIN: Now you tell me how a guy managed to walk there and throw a grenade over?

MURRAY: That’s Constable Greg Aitkin of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police trains Afghan police officers in the field. Today, he’s doing a bit of detective work.

OFFICER: Maybe it was the guy on guard who did this, ho! You never know!  You don’t think about that.

MURRAY: Maybe it was the guy on guard. In Kandahar sometimes the bad guys wear the badges. The police can be the problem.  You’ll see what I mean in a moment.  First we have to move from checkpoint to checkpoint in Kandahar’s notorious “district nine.”  Most of the people who live here aren’t from here.  They’ve run away from the terrifying combat that’s swallowed up neighboring Helmand province.  Some are from Pakistan’s Swat Valley.  There’s no running water, no electricity; just mud-walled houses and makeshift mosques.  Everywhere there are angry eyes.

High on a hill, overlooking the district, sits police station number nine, and the Sergeant in charge of  security, the man responsible for many of its abandoned checkpoints

Bezwallah,  Biz for short, greets me with a big sweaty hug and calls me his new brother.  He isn’t wearing a shirt and that’s almost unheard of in a country where modest long sleeves are worn  even in 120 degree heat.

Inside, we ask about the empty checkpoints.  He show us two of his men who were wounded by an Improvised explosive device (IED) blast.  If he’s going to fight the Taliban, Biz says, he needs more bullets.  Constable Greg Aitkin says no way.  He still doesn’t know what happened to the bullets Biz has been given already.  They’ve mysteriously disappeared.  The two men smile and argue.  Then Biz throws down a threat.  He says his men won’t show up to protect the public on election day, when the world is watching Afghanistan, if he doesn’t get more bullets

AITKIN: We keep going around in circles Biz.

MURRAY: As the haggling continues, some teenage boys come and sit and start to smoke.  Some are police officers some are most likely chai-boys, personal servants to the officers.   They look like they have been smoking some of the marijuana that’s growing just outside the door.

Our constable holds firm:  Biz isn’t getting any more ammo, not today anyway.

Not every checkpoint we inspect is abandoned. Some sergeants are doing their jobs. At two locations officers are stopping cars, checking for weapons, and for the ingredients that make IEDs.

Our interpreter tells me that most days maybe half of the city’s security grid is abandoned.  On the other hand, half is manned and that’s better than a couple of years ago when there were no real checkpoints at all.

In about a month’s time this city’s security will be put to the test.  The Taliban have vowed deadly disruptions in the period leading up to voting day.   Right now, it’s anyone’s guess how many Afghan police officers will show up to try and stop them.

For The World, I’m James Murray in Kandahar

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