Afghan police training plan in disarray

The strategic plan of creating an Afghan security force to replace United States and British troops fighting in Afghanistan is in serious disarray with local forces a fraction of their reported size, infiltrated by the Taleban at senior levels, and plagued by corruption and drug addiction.

And the way in which their capacity has been assessed over several years, during which time tens of billions of dollars have been spent on building up Afghan security forces, is so flawed it has been scrapped, an Independent on Sunday investigation reveals.

Less than a quarter of the Army and less than one in seven police units are rated as "CM1" - meaning they are capable of operating independently. Yet the true picture is worse.

An audit of the Capability Milestone rating system used to rate police and Army units has revealed a misleading picture of the true level of progress.

Arnold Field, US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction described the system as "unreliable and inconsistent".

His audit warns that Afghan military and police assessments "have overstated operational capabilities", with even the top-rated units unable to operate independently.

As many as 50 per cent of police units in some areas are failing drugs tests, it notes. On one occasion, coalition soldiers witnessed Afghan police openly smoking cannabis.

The report details how Army units can be as low as 59 per cent of their supposed size when it comes to going on duty. On average, only 74 per cent of Afghan soldiers in combat units were found present for duty, the report said.

The International Security Assistance Forces (Isaf) leaders acknowledge problems with the local security forces, as they brace themselves for an increase in attacks.


Isaf hopes to increase the combined strength of the Afghan Army and police from less than 200,000 at the start of last year to more than 300,000 next year, in the hope this will accelerate a withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan.

But the true strength of the Afghan security forces - those that have been trained and judged to be able to operate independently - is barely 34,000.

Insurgents have been able to infiltrate Afghan security forces at senior levels. In one case, a police commander was found to have been involved in a number of attacks using improvised explosive devices on coalition forces, as well as the murder of a American civilian. In another, a Taleban commander was serving in the Afghan Army.

Both examples, cited in a US Department of Defence report, highlight what coalition forces are up against in trying to push through political pledges of building up a sustainable Afghan security force. Corruption is so rife within the Army that officers are now allocated postings through a lottery to try to stop people buying positions.

A purge of the corruption-riddled police force by the Afghan Ministry of the Interior resulted in more than one-in-five senior police leaders being sacked or prosecuted for corruption or misconduct in the past 18 months.

Barely a tenth of police units are rated effective. About 70 per cent of police are illiterate, and half have had no formal training, according to experts.

A trail of confidential correspondence between British Foreign Office officials highlights the concerns within the British Government.

The drive to speed up training in response to political pressure for an exit strategy has led to officials lowering the bar.

"We want high-quality recruits - as high a quality as we can get for forthcoming activities. This means lowering the bar - a bit - in terms of literacy, but maintaining it in terms of [for example] the threshold on drug addiction," admitted an official in the British Provincial Reconstruction Team in Lashkar Gah in June last year.

- INDEPENDENT