WASHINGTON, Oct 5: The United States has spent $6 billion on training the Afghan police force since 2002 yet “not a single unit is capable of operating on its own, says the chairman of a key congressional panel.

Congressman David Ackerman, who chairs the Middle East and South Asia Subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, blamed the Bush administration for Afghanistan’s failure. “That’s quite a list of accomplishments after almost six years of effort and investment of $15 billion,” he said.

Mr Ackerman was particularly critical of the Afghan police force, noting that despite putting so much money and efforts into its training, “we’re not even sure how many Afghan police there are.”

Two recent reports by the US Government Accountability Office point out that the 76,100 Afghan police that are claimed by the Afghan interior ministry represent the number that have been trained, not the number who show up for duty.

In addition, the equipment distributed to provincial police headquarters is hoarded, insufficiently maintained and lacks end-use accountability. “So not only don’t we know who’s going to show up on a given day, we also don’t know whether they still have their equipment,” Mr Ackerman said. Blaming President Bush for Afghanistan’s plight, he said, Mr Bush “walked away” from Afghanistan, although he had both domestic and international support to stay engaged in that country.

The United States, he noted, has spent $3 billion on counter-narcotics in Afghanistan but the country is ready to produce yet another record-breaking crop of opium bearing poppies. “And what is truly agonising about the current situation in Afghanistan is that it could have been a success … the United States could really have helped Afghans recover from decades of senseless slaughter and destruction,” Mr Ackerman said.

“Afghanistan isn’t lost yet, but it’s on its way,” he warned.

“On the president’s watch, Al Qaeda and the Taliban have again found a safe haven.

And the continued failure to provide either security or governance throughout Afghanistan, combined with growing exhaustion in Nato, leads inevitably toward the kind of failed state that gave rise to Sept 11.”