QALAT (Afghanistan): “Go, go, go!” shouts a burly American as dishevelled Afghan men leap off the back of a truck and uncomfortably assume the pose of a policeman carrying a rifle.
This is a mock vehicle search by men who will in a few days be given real guns and uniforms and call themselves policemen, having 80 hours of training at a US-military-led base in rural Zabul province under their belts.
They are among the newest recruits to Afghanistan’s projected 11,200-strong “auxiliary police” force, likened to community police in the West.
The force is being assembled after the bloodiest year in the Taliban insurgency to back the undermanned, often inept and famously corrupt police, who at about 60,000 are severely undermanned for this violent fractured country.
The ragged recruits, some apparently still in their teens, will be sent home to police their remote districts in Zabul, part of a swathe of southern border regions where the insurgency is its fiercest.
“We are not worried about the Taliban because when we graduate from here, we will be able fight against them,” says Gulbaddin, an eager trainee in his early 20s. “The Americans have more experience than us.” If Gulbaddin sticks to his new job, he will get three weeks more training over a year, adding up to the total for the regular police which he will have the option of joining.
Straightaway he gets a uniform, a gun and a policeman’s salary of $70.
Some observers give little credence to these new recruits, fearing instead that local militias are being handed guns and badges and that national security will be further compromised.
“They are ill-trained. We are talking about men getting 10 days’ training and guns and badges,” says International Crisis Group analyst Joanna Nathan.
“Nearly everyone you talk to fears the police rather than looking to them for security. So putting out people who are more ill-trained and less controlled is no solution.
“I think it will prove in many cases to be little more than local militias now given badges by the government,” she says.
It is a desperate measure that could sabotage a “very painful” process under way to disband and disarm hundreds of private armies in Afghanistan, added a European diplomat.
And it remains to be seen if they will indeed be loyal to the police command, he said on condition of anonymity.
Colonel Gary Stafford, the head of the auxiliary police programme in the US-led coalition force, has met scores of the trainees and is not concerned.
“They are there because they want to serve their country,” the Canadian officer says. “The majority are going out to do the right thing.” Nearly 3,400 auxiliary policemen have been trained and equipped nationwide, most of them in the tribally divided south which was last year the focus of Taliban violence and will get nearly half of the completed force.
One group was easily overwhelmed by Taliban in the southern town of Musa Qala early February.
Back in Zabul the trainers brief their students, most of them probably illiterate, on human rights, ethics and the constitution on top of more conventional policing subjects like stopping vehicles.
The programme aims to instil national pride and loyalty to the government instead of local powerbrokers, say Steve Barlag, a trainer from private US military contractor DynCorp.
Recruits are also vetted by the police ministry, he says, though he concedes that the trainers have no real way of knowing who their students are and even if they meet the minimum age of 18.
“We leave it up to the Afghans to bring us the people to train,” he says.
Nearly 500 of a planned 800 have already gone through the Zabul course.
Asked if Taliban or criminals try to sneak in, he says: “I can only think of two that the police came to us and wanted removed because of something they had found out.” Another handful were thrown out for using or carrying hashish.
Zabul’s acting chief of police, Colonel Ghulam Rabanni, is aware of the potential shortcomings of the project but he is desperately short of policemen.
The province has a population of about 258,000 people but fewer than 500 regular policemen; it needs seven times as many, he says.
“If they are left without any follow-up training, there might be some problems because they might change over time,” he admits. “But if they are trained properly, we are very optimistic they will serve the nation.” He wants the first recruits to be sent to the “vast, open border with Pakistan” where militants cross to launch attacks including suicide and roadside bombings.
But Qalat base commander, Lt-Col Kevin McGlaughlin, emphasises the community policing aspect of the new force in what he says is a relatively stable area.
“This is not the Wild West. You do not have people carrying guns and shooting people in the streets,” he says.
When there are “guys with tanks and big guns and stuff we have the entire Afghan national security forces to deal with that – trained soldiers who have heavier weapons that will support the police where required.
“This is about strangers coming in and stealing, and all the things we are used to at home,” the American says, above the shouts of the drill masters.—AFP
