thedrifter
10-15-08, 09:06 AM
October 14, 2008 2:47 PM
Dangerous Ride—Training Afghanistan’s Police
by Dana Lewis
A ride-along with Afghan Police is the single most dangerous thing anyone can do in Afghanistan. One thousand policemen have been killed this year by insurgents and drug dealers, and they suffer casualties at three times the rate of coalition troops and the Afghan army.
What makes their job so dangerous is that they often get caught in the crossfire.
On this particular day, Kabul head of criminal investigations Gen. Ali Shah Paktiawal has been called out to investigate a French NATO attack on a civilian bus and seems stunned by the carnage. “Why do they do this?” he asks. “Why?”
NATO forces say they are often attacked on the roads, and the bus tried to overtake the French convoy even after being warned to stay back.
Paktiawal investigates almost every big attack or criminal incident in Kabul, and for that he has been targeted by insurgents and drug dealers — and perhaps even by forces within his own government.
By his own count he’s been the target of nearly a dozen assassination attempts. “They have tried to kill me 11 times, yes 11,” he said. He wears a bandage on one hand, an injury sustained in a bomb blast last month. Although he won’t specify who targeted him, he recounts other murder attempts, including a poisoning.
Kidnapping has become a commonplace in Afghanistan now, and many go unreported because victims don’t trust the police — and some suspect the police are involved.
Money dealer Mohammed Issa was kidnapped by men in uniform this year and tortured for seven days until his family paid his kidnappers a $500,000 ransom. “I don’t think anyone, any of the authorities would have done anything for me,” he told FOX News. “I was only released because I paid.”
Experts, including Americans leading the counterinsurgency fight in Afghanistan, say the troubles are greater than just police corruption.
“As you know the U.S. did not get fully involved in training of the police until the summer of 2007,” said U.S. Brig. Gen. Robert Cone, who is leading U.S. efforts to train Afghan police. “In that one year we’ve been doing this we’ve had tremendous progress, but the fact is we are about six years behind where we are in the army.”
U.S. forces now conduct 95 percent of police training in Afghanistan, taking over efforts that for years had been wobbly and largely unsuccessful. It’s a $7 billion commitment that the U.S. sees as a key ingredient in stabilizing security in the country.
Cone, an expert on counterinsurgency who ran an elite training center for U.S. forces at Ft. Irwin, Calif., pulls no punches in talking about the problems confronting Afghanistan.
“Previous attempts at reforming the police have failed because they were concentrating on training individuals and then firing them out into this cesspool and saying, ‘Stay clean, or stay cleaner,’” he said. “It doesn’t work like that.”
That cesspool of which he spoke is deep and dangerously murky — many members of the Afghan government are said to be linked to the drug trade, including President Hamid Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai.
Cone believes that a properly trained police force could work wonders. “This is in many ways a narco-state,” he told FOX News. “You ask yourself, what would happen if we had a really good police force?”
Where he has placed American mentors — U.S. soldiers who embed with the police and work with them in the field — there has been great progress, and a series of reforms has already improved their conduct.
Police were formerly paid only $80 a month — easy targets for bribes and corruption — so Cone upped their salaries.
He then discovered they weren’t getting paid anyway because local police chiefs or governors took the salaries or a substantial cut. So Cone introduced electronic banking, and police now get a bank card and receive their salaries directly from a bank machine. No middleman at all.
Where he discovered a local police chief had taken the cards for “safe keeping,” he dealt with the chief.
The U.S. Army has also gone into villages and taken the existing police force out for retraining, including replacing police commanders. In five villages, he says, the local population didn’t want their police replaced because they knew them. But soon as the new force had been there for two weeks, he said, “they called and said, ‘OK, we’ll keep these guys now.’”
Not all commanders on the ground are so sanguine. The commander of British forces in Afghanistan said publicly in early October that the war against the Taliban can’t be won. “We’re not going to win this war,” Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith told British media. “It’s about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that’s not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army.”
But insiders say the British have what some refer to as “risk aversion.” British soldiers don’t like to leave their bases because they get attacked by an enemy that is hiding in the local population. There is a lot of talk by American forces that the Brits have lost the art of counterinsurgency.
It’s not all bravado by competitive U.S. forces. U.S. Marines embedded with police in the South have taken losses but have had much success in bringing security even as their “risk-averse” British counterparts talk about losing the war.
While the Brits stay in their bases and come out only for the big missions, Americans have had to go into their backyard and conduct police training, taking losses — but cleaning out the Taliban and slowly winning the real fight to develop security.
Cone is diplomatic in his assessment, and says the British commander probably meant something else.
“I think in fact what he is trying to say is from a purely military perspective it was unwinnable,” he told FOX News. “The fact of the matter is there are other elements like economics and reconstruction, governance, reconciliation that are important.”
As Cone told FOX News, “This is a war; someone that doesn’t constantly check their strategy is not likely to win.”
So Cone checks his strategy, Kabul police chief Paktiawal checks his back a lot, and American commanders, who have had a reality check on just how dirty Afghan police can be, are now trying to overhaul the entire system of recruiting and deployment.
Ellie
Dangerous Ride—Training Afghanistan’s Police
by Dana Lewis
A ride-along with Afghan Police is the single most dangerous thing anyone can do in Afghanistan. One thousand policemen have been killed this year by insurgents and drug dealers, and they suffer casualties at three times the rate of coalition troops and the Afghan army.
What makes their job so dangerous is that they often get caught in the crossfire.
On this particular day, Kabul head of criminal investigations Gen. Ali Shah Paktiawal has been called out to investigate a French NATO attack on a civilian bus and seems stunned by the carnage. “Why do they do this?” he asks. “Why?”
NATO forces say they are often attacked on the roads, and the bus tried to overtake the French convoy even after being warned to stay back.
Paktiawal investigates almost every big attack or criminal incident in Kabul, and for that he has been targeted by insurgents and drug dealers — and perhaps even by forces within his own government.
By his own count he’s been the target of nearly a dozen assassination attempts. “They have tried to kill me 11 times, yes 11,” he said. He wears a bandage on one hand, an injury sustained in a bomb blast last month. Although he won’t specify who targeted him, he recounts other murder attempts, including a poisoning.
Kidnapping has become a commonplace in Afghanistan now, and many go unreported because victims don’t trust the police — and some suspect the police are involved.
Money dealer Mohammed Issa was kidnapped by men in uniform this year and tortured for seven days until his family paid his kidnappers a $500,000 ransom. “I don’t think anyone, any of the authorities would have done anything for me,” he told FOX News. “I was only released because I paid.”
Experts, including Americans leading the counterinsurgency fight in Afghanistan, say the troubles are greater than just police corruption.
“As you know the U.S. did not get fully involved in training of the police until the summer of 2007,” said U.S. Brig. Gen. Robert Cone, who is leading U.S. efforts to train Afghan police. “In that one year we’ve been doing this we’ve had tremendous progress, but the fact is we are about six years behind where we are in the army.”
U.S. forces now conduct 95 percent of police training in Afghanistan, taking over efforts that for years had been wobbly and largely unsuccessful. It’s a $7 billion commitment that the U.S. sees as a key ingredient in stabilizing security in the country.
Cone, an expert on counterinsurgency who ran an elite training center for U.S. forces at Ft. Irwin, Calif., pulls no punches in talking about the problems confronting Afghanistan.
“Previous attempts at reforming the police have failed because they were concentrating on training individuals and then firing them out into this cesspool and saying, ‘Stay clean, or stay cleaner,’” he said. “It doesn’t work like that.”
That cesspool of which he spoke is deep and dangerously murky — many members of the Afghan government are said to be linked to the drug trade, including President Hamid Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai.
Cone believes that a properly trained police force could work wonders. “This is in many ways a narco-state,” he told FOX News. “You ask yourself, what would happen if we had a really good police force?”
Where he has placed American mentors — U.S. soldiers who embed with the police and work with them in the field — there has been great progress, and a series of reforms has already improved their conduct.
Police were formerly paid only $80 a month — easy targets for bribes and corruption — so Cone upped their salaries.
He then discovered they weren’t getting paid anyway because local police chiefs or governors took the salaries or a substantial cut. So Cone introduced electronic banking, and police now get a bank card and receive their salaries directly from a bank machine. No middleman at all.
Where he discovered a local police chief had taken the cards for “safe keeping,” he dealt with the chief.
The U.S. Army has also gone into villages and taken the existing police force out for retraining, including replacing police commanders. In five villages, he says, the local population didn’t want their police replaced because they knew them. But soon as the new force had been there for two weeks, he said, “they called and said, ‘OK, we’ll keep these guys now.’”
Not all commanders on the ground are so sanguine. The commander of British forces in Afghanistan said publicly in early October that the war against the Taliban can’t be won. “We’re not going to win this war,” Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith told British media. “It’s about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that’s not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army.”
But insiders say the British have what some refer to as “risk aversion.” British soldiers don’t like to leave their bases because they get attacked by an enemy that is hiding in the local population. There is a lot of talk by American forces that the Brits have lost the art of counterinsurgency.
It’s not all bravado by competitive U.S. forces. U.S. Marines embedded with police in the South have taken losses but have had much success in bringing security even as their “risk-averse” British counterparts talk about losing the war.
While the Brits stay in their bases and come out only for the big missions, Americans have had to go into their backyard and conduct police training, taking losses — but cleaning out the Taliban and slowly winning the real fight to develop security.
Cone is diplomatic in his assessment, and says the British commander probably meant something else.
“I think in fact what he is trying to say is from a purely military perspective it was unwinnable,” he told FOX News. “The fact of the matter is there are other elements like economics and reconstruction, governance, reconciliation that are important.”
As Cone told FOX News, “This is a war; someone that doesn’t constantly check their strategy is not likely to win.”
So Cone checks his strategy, Kabul police chief Paktiawal checks his back a lot, and American commanders, who have had a reality check on just how dirty Afghan police can be, are now trying to overhaul the entire system of recruiting and deployment.
Ellie