Afghan National Police penetrated by Taliban at 'every level'

[denem]

Source: Telegraph UK

The Afghan National Police have been penetrated by the Taliban “at every level” with officers poorly trained, corrupt and some addicted to drugs, a former Army officer has said.

Capt Doug Beattie, who served two tours in Afghanistan working with the ANP, said many police officers are in the paid of insurgents and were more loyal to their tribes than the Afghan government.

British officers say that among low-ranking Afghan police, and particularly in more rural areas away from central control, there is widespread corruption and disloyalty.

Parts of the ANP play an active role in helping the Taliban and drug warlords get opium and heroin onto the international market. The police are poorly paid and educated, earning about $200 a month, so are vulnerable to corruption.

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6502175/Afghan-National-Police-penetrated-by-Taliban-at-every-level.html

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Peter Galbraith, a former deputy head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan said "Normally the police get an eight-week training course. That is actually very short and there isn't a lot of vetting of police before they are hired. And actually, in recent months, they shortened the training programme from eight weeks to five weeks because they wanted to get more police boots on the ground in advance of the elections."

[Flaneur]

1. Like the Afghan cop who killed five British soldiers today.

[denem]

3. I haven't said this before, but it's time to get the hell out.

An central administration, army and police force , compromised and corrupt at every level, presiding over warring, diverse tribes. Even Vietnam wasn't that bad.

[avaistheone1]

14. The Afghan cops have killed American soldiers in the past as well.

They have even killed American soldiers training them.

How is that for a thank you?

[Solly Mack]

2. "[Infiltration] affects the Iraqi police across Iraq as a whole"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4266304.stm

My point? Oh, I have one...

Just change the name of the country in the articles and reprint. Been there, done that. Heard it all before. SSDW (same shit, different war)

and this isn't the only such example...

and people really ought to be disgusted by now

[denem]

4. Actually it's worse. Iraqis didn't have a ready trade in herion

to fund bribery and "switching sides".

[bertman]

5. They did/do have illegal oil shipments to use for that purpose, though.

[Solly Mack]

7. True..they infiltrated because they wanted to

but the point is we're hearing the exact same things from both countries

[Mari333]

6. get the hell out for christs sake

wtf are we still doing there?

[Soylent Brice]

8. file this under "DUH".

K&R

[Gedankenaustausch]

9. LOL

exactly... I was like am I supposed to pretend to be shocked?

[denem]

11. Actually, you can bet the Pashtun Taliban aren't around in the North.

That would be the Northern Warlord guys.

[denem]

10. 5 weeks training for The Elections worked out well.

[Submariner]

12. Thanks for setting up this mess Bush & Cheney

Those 2 dipsh*ts have got to go down in history as THE MOST INCOMPETENT pair of assh*les to ever occupy the U.S. Executive branch. All this needless death and destruction for f'ing NOTHING, because the 911 planners and infiltrators ARE NOT THERE.

If the bad guys are anywhere, it's in the damn Pak-Afghan mountain range, or probably right under our nose listening to Glenn becKKK.

[JohnyCanuck]

13. Meet the Afghan Army....

Is It a Figment of Washington's Imagination?
By Ann Jones

snip

As for the police, U.S.-funded training offers a similar revolving door. In Afghanistan, however, it is far more dangerous to be a policeman than a soldier. While soldiers on patrol can slip away, policemen stuck at their posts are killed almost every day. Assigned in small numbers to staff small-town police stations or highway checkpoints, they are sitting ducks for Taliban fighters. As representatives of the now thoroughly discredited government of President Hamid Karzai, the hapless police make handy symbolic targets. British commanders in Helmand province estimated that 60% of Afghan police are on drugs -- and little wonder why.

In the Pashtun provinces of southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban is strong, recruiting men for the Afghan National Police is a "problem," as an ANP commander told me. Consequently, non-Pashtun police trainees of Hazara, Tajik, Uzbek, or other ethnic backgrounds are dispatched to maintain order in Pashtun territory. They might as well paint targets on their foreheads. The police who accompanied the U.S. Marines into Helmand Province reportedly refused to leave their heavily armed mentors to take up suicidal posts in provincial villages. Some police and army soldiers, when asked by reporters, claimed to be "visiting" Helmand province only for "vacation."

Training Day

In many districts, the police recently supplemented their low pay and demonstrated allegiance to local warlords by stuffing ballot boxes for President Karzai in the presidential election. Consider that but one more indication -- like the defection of those great Islamist fundamentalist mujahidin allies the U.S. sponsored in the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s who are now fighting with the Taliban -- that no amount of American training, mentoring, or cash will determine who or what Afghans will fight for, if indeed they fight at all.

snip

Recently Karen DeYoung noted in the Washington Post that the Taliban now regularly use very sophisticated military techniques -- "as if the insurgents had attended something akin to the U.S. Army's Ranger school, which teaches soldiers how to fight in small groups in austere environments." Of course, some of them have attended training sessions which teach them to fight in "austere environments," probably time and time again. If you were a Talib, wouldn't you scout the training being offered to Afghans on the other side? And wouldn't you do it more than once if you could get well paid every time?

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175116

[PurityOfEssence]

15. While Obama cautiously determines what will bother American reactionaries the least

and meticulously determines the precise middle of the road to hell, WE SHOULD GET OUT.

They're going to call you a spineless Democrat anyway, regardless of what you do, and quite frankly, the shoe pretty much fits here. They're going to call you soft on Islamists anyway.

It's a stupid war. We're not going to "break" religious zealots in their own backyard. The very idea of trying to out-macho these guys is ridiculous. We're not going to get the damned natural gas anyway.

It's the worst kind of predicament: expensive to supply, vulnerable to being cut off, not even the remotest concept of what would constitute "victory", a addle-headed oil-grab, pathetic posturing of toughness, vague wheezing of abstract heroic values and an almost certain sapping of wealth and credibility.

This is a breathtaking display of directionlessness and wishy-washy self-image concern.

It will only get worse. We should leave now.