The Afghanistan National Police (ANP)

[Ken White]

Here's one: LINK. A search will turn up a couple of others.

[tequila]

BR does a nice little roundup of opinion on Afghanistan based off Rosen's article from Andrew Exum, Syed Saleem Shahzad, Aziz Hakimi, Andrew Bacevich, and J. Alexander Thier here.

[davidbfpo]

Hat tip to an article by Christina Lamb in 'The Spectator', in a scathing IMHO review of the UK presence in Afghanistan.

Link: http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/al...-targets.thtml

Amidst was this illustration of how the ANP behave:

A recent report from the (US) Institute of War details how British forces took the district of Nad Ali last year, losing a number of soldiers. They then handed control over to the Afghan police, who set about raping young boys. Eventually the people got so fed up that they asked the Taleban to come back to protect them.

The citation comes from a report by a US think tank and a slightly fuller account:

The Afghan Police did not maintain a significant presence in the area (Nad Ali). Those who were present prior to September 2008 were distrusted by the local population. According to villagers in the area, “the government’s police force was so brutal and corrupt that they welcomed the Taliban as liberators.” According to accounts from local villagers, the ANP’s exploits included beatings, robbery and rape. Locals stated that police would practice “bachabazi” (sex with pre-pubescent boys); “if the boys were out in the fields, the police would come by and rape them… you can go to any police base and you will see these boys. They hold them until they are finished with them and then let the child go.

Link:http://www.understandingwar.org/file...HelmandPDF.pdf

I put this account recently to a UK Minister at a talk 'Why are we in Afghanistan' and it caused him to pause.

The think tank has several others reports on the war, a more recent one is on Kandahar and the ANSF. Note the founder is Kimberley Kagan, a name that has appeared on SWC before.

[William F. Owen]

David. Thanks for this, but I would disregard the Lamb item.

Hat tip to an article by Christina Lamb in 'The Spectator', in a scathing IMHO review of the UK presence in Afghanistan.

Lamb is a journalist, and a nice lady by all accounts. She has lived there and has done time on the ground, but her "poisonous" account of the 16 Air Assault ambush makes it patently clear she has no understanding of what she is seeing, and she seems to only be interested in the human and emotional stories - with entertainment value.
What Lamb believes about military operations in A'Stan is interesting but irrelevant.
Sit in a UK mess with Officers who have been on the ground, and they simply do not reference any journalistic opinion, except to point out 99% is wrong.
I submit, we should all cease doing it as well. By various collect means, we do have access to the real facts, worthy of analysis.

The citation comes from a report by a US think tank and a slightly fuller account:

Link:http://www.understandingwar.org/file...HelmandPDF.pdf

Thanks - this I will read!

[davidbfpo]

Found on a Afpak watcher's website: http://watandost.blogspot.com/2010/0...g-project.html that cites a NYT article on 2/2/10: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/wo...l?pagewanted=1.

Opens with:

ABUL, Afghanistan — The NATO general in charge of training the Afghan police has some tongue-in-cheek career advice for the country’s recruits. “It’s better to join the Taliban; they pay more money,” said Brig. Gen. Carmelo Burgio, from Italy’s paramilitary Carabinieri force.

NYT article ends with:

These guys wear the uniform of a policeman, but that is all that is police about them.

No wonder there is caution about building up the ANP and the Afghan people themselves know far more what the ANP provides.

[Bill Moore]

How long will it take for our government to revamp the laws the govern security force assistance? Our SECDEF has stated this will be our primary effort and the means to a sustainable victory, yet almost 9 years into the fight we're still having turf battles over who should control the training and serious resource constraints. Based on the enclosed article the coalition does a poor job of training these forces (several factors involved, but maybe if we would stop trying to make them look like western police forces and train to their level we would make some progress?), we do a poor job of equipping the forces, we don't pay them well, and if you believe the article the only metric we value is the number trained.

We should either drop the security forces assistance myth and do it ourselves, or we should fix the security forces assistance process. The Cold War legacy method is not adequate. I hear the call for Gramm-Rudman Act to fix the interagency (would be nice), but most pressing is a Gramm-Rudman Act to fix our ability to build partner capacity (the 5 meter fight we're in today). If the consensus is this is the way to win, then we need to resource the winning strategy with the right authorities, funding, and apply the right approach to ensure it is done effectively.