Saturday, December 16, 2006

Reform in Afghanistan...

Police reform, or lack thereof:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/12/4/12331/0864

Report Faults Training of Afghan Police

By JAMES GLANZ and DAVID ROHDE
Published: December 4, 2006

Five years after the fall of the Taliban, a joint report by the Pentagon and the State Department has found that the American-trained police force in Afghanistan is largely incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work, and that managers of the $1.1 billion training program cannot say how many officers are actually on duty or where thousands of trucks and other equipment issued to police units have gone.

I'll try to get my head wrapped around this later, rather than just posting articles. I will say this, almost every interaction I've had with the police has been uncomfortable and usually frightening. Random stops at night where they ask 'where the vodka is' and 'is this guy your relative'. Frequent stops just to harass and ask for bribes. The police are a mess and one of the most obvious (and sore) points of reform failure. This just isn't international failure, mind you, it's failure on the Afghan side too. But damn, Dynacorp (they're the managers of the training program) ain't helping.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

wow. it IS hard to wrap my head around the enormity of the corruption.

so depressing, coming from the US, where we're taught early in life to run to the police if we're lost or need help.