US working with Afghan police

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Afghan Police at a checkpoint in Kandahar City (Photo: Ben Gilbert)

Afghanistan’s president said it again this week. Hamid Karzai promised to close foreign private security companies by the end of the year. International officials are urging Karzai to reverse his decree. They warn that aid workers can’t rely on Afghan Police to protect them. As it turns out, US forces in Afghanistan have been trying for some time to improve the performance of the local police forces. Progress has been erratic. Ben Gilbert was embedded with the 504th Military Police Battalion in Kandahar City when he sent this report on the training of the Afghan police. Download MP3

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Ben Gilbert on The World:
• The war in Afghanistan, nine years on
• Stabilizing Afghanistan
• More coverage by Ben Gilbert

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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. Afghanistan’s president said it again this week. Hamid Karzai promised to close foreign private security companies by the end of the year. International officials are urging Karzai to reverse his decree. They warn that aid workers in Afghanistan cannot rely on Afghan police to protect them. As it turns out, US forces in Afghanistan have been trying for some time now to improve the performance of the local police forces. Progress has been erratic. Ben Gilbert was embedded with the 504^th Military Police Battalion in Kandahar City when he sent this report on the training of the Afghan police.

BEN GILBERT:  A year ago, the Afghan National Police in Kandahar City were famously corrupt.  Afghan civilians and US troops described them as little more than illiterate, drug abusing, bribe-taking thugs who stood at checkpoints, only occasionally in uniform. Back then, one hundred American military police were in the city to train the police. Now, there are 500 US Army MPs here. They’re living at the police stations and they’re standing at the checkpoints with the Afghans. Lt. Colonel John Vorhees is the commander of the 504th Military Police Battalion.

JOHN VORHEES:  And I think we’ve certainly made a difference. I mean there’s less reports of them out there on the checkpoints collecting money from the people. Some of that is we’re simply with them all the time. But I think we show them what right looks like, it kind of takes off from there, so it takes a minute, that’s for sure.

GILBERT: The police are the most commonly seen face of the Afghan state here in Kandahar. And having them behave like hooligans wasn’t helping the US-led coalition to empower the Afghan government here. Afghans’ opinion of the police was so low, that some preferred the Taliban because, the reasoning went, they might be vicious but at least they’re honest. So, part of this summer and fall’s Kandahar offensive has focused on improving the quality of the police.

NICKOLAS ZAPPONE: We have a training schedule that I published up there..,

GILBERT: American MPs, like Lt. Nickolas Zappone are now living with the Afghan police in all of Kandahar’s police substations. Zappone commands nineteen MPs who just arrived to station number five early this month. They’re still getting settled and getting to know the Afghan police. 202nd Military Police Company commander Andrea Acosta says so far it’s gone well.

ANDREA ACOSTA: They’re eager to learn, but I think they’re also eager for a little bit of stability, and I think we’re bringing that to them. It’s not every day a different group of coalition forces coming in, it’s the same group of soldiers that they’re going to work with. And now that they see that we’re 100% dedicated in the station, and all over Kandahar City, it’s made an impact. They’re like wow, these people, they’re really here, and they’re going to hold us accountable. So I have not seen any traces of corruption. I have not seen any of that myself. I mean I think for the most part, I’ve just seen a lot of eager ANP who want to learn, who have a vested interest in what we’re trying to provide them.

GILBERT: But the rosy assessment is best taken with a grain of salt. No matter how good the police may be, there’s still the tricky problem of cultural gaps. At one point, an Afghan policeman named Ali Ahmed stood on the roof of his police station and watched as two women walked by. One had her face uncovered.

SPEAKING PASHTO

GILBERT: “Cover your bleeping face,” Ali Ahmed yelled. I asked an interpreter standing with him why he said it.

SPEAKING PASHTO

GILBERT: “It’s not our duty, but you know, it’s bad,” Ahmed said. “We have sisters and mothers. We men can’t look at women or girls who are not our relatives.” Lt. Zappone says it may not sound nice, but he’s not here to tell the Afghans how to act in their culture. He says he’s here to train them to be police.

ZAPPONE: I try to stay away from how their culture influences the way they think. As long as I don’t see them, or my guys don’t see them beating women, treating them with just blatant disrespect in public, I can’t tell them how their culture should run. It’s just not our place to say.

GILBERT: A few hours after the incident, the Afghan police crudely shaved the head of a man detained for smoking hashish. Then they made him clean their toilets, before releasing him without charge. Not exactly the best way to win hearts and minds. Bill Harris is a senior US official on the team that oversees Kandahar’s reconstruction and government development programs. He says the police were pretty much ignored for much of the last eight years.

BILL HARRIS: When we began to train a security force here in Afghanistan we focused on the Afghan National Army. There were good reasons for doing that. But I think it’s fair to say that the police were neglected, and police training was sub par, equipping even worse. And we’re paying the piper for some of that today.

GILBERT: Due to what Harris says was a focus on quantity over quality, few of Kandahar’s police officers have ever gone through the police academy to train in courses like this one on riot control. Now, all Afghan national police must graduate from the six week basic training course. It includes two hours a day of literacy training for a police force with around a 10% literacy rate. The police also get target practice. For some of the officers, it’s the first time firing their weapons. They get two days on the shooting range, and get to fire 60 rounds each time. The Canadian police trainers say they fired well over 1,000 rounds during their training. The Afghan police lack lots of other things as well, equipment for one. But US officials say things are on the right track. The State Department’s Bill Harris says since the MPs arrived, public opinion about the police has started to change. But it is a race against the clock. It takes time to improve the quality of a police force that’s been left to stew in its own mediocrity for the past eight years. For the World, I’m Ben Gilbert in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

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