Corruption undercuts hopes for Afghan police

As part of his new strategy for Afghanistan, President Obama has announced plans to send 4,000 more American troops this spring to train the Afghan National Police and Army. But a shortage of American trainers is only one factor hampering the Afghan police. If the experience of the American troops already training police officers in Ghazni Province is any indication, better policing may be impossible for Afghanistan unless government officials at all levels stop cannibalizing their civil administration and police force for a quick profit. In two weeks of interviews in this mountainous region of poor farmers and shepherds, exasperated American soldiers said it was hard to determine which was their more daunting opponent–the few thousand Taliban who ruled villages through a shadow government of mullahs, or corruption so rife that it had deeply undercut efforts to improve the police and had destroyed many Afghans' faith in government. That lack of trust, coupled with the absence of security forces in almost all villages, further strengthens the hand of the Taliban as the only real power here. Ghazni's experience shows the challenge that corruption presents to efforts to establish better policing throughout the country. The list of schemes that undermine law enforcement is long and bewildering, according to American and Afghan officers who cite some examples: police officials who steal truckloads of gasoline; judges and prosecutors who make decisions based on bribes; high-ranking government officials who reap payoffs from hashish and chromite smuggling; and midlevel security and political jobs that are sold, sometimes for more than $50,000, money the buyers then recoup through still more bribes and theft. In some cases the American officers requested that their names not be used when discussing specific allegations or that the titles of certain Afghan government and police leaders be withheld, since it would otherwise make it impossible to work with these officials, an important part of their mission. But the frustration was palpable as they described the enormous corruption running the length of the civilian administration in this province of 1.3 million people, whose capital, Ghazni, lies 80 miles southwest of Kabul. Referring to one corrupt and high-ranking government official he sees routinely, Maj. Randy Schmeling, a 43-year-old Army National Guardsman who commands the American police mentoring teams in Ghazni, said, "I'd like to break down his door, stomp on his chest, point my 9-millimeter at his head and say, 'Stop what you are doing!' " Some of the troops' Afghan colleagues recognize the problem, too. "In every office there is corruption," said Col. Mohammed Zaman, the departing provincial police chief. "It's not only prosecutors and judges." "This is the reason no one accepts the rule of law," he said, "because the government is not going by the rule of law." The result is an ineffective and woefully undersupplied Afghan police force and a frustrating lack of justice for Afghans. Worse still, by comparison with the government's exercise of authority, the law imposed by the Taliban is far more certain–quick and clear, if ruthless. "The appointed officials and elected officials, the people don't trust them, and they don't trust them with good reason," Major Schmeling said. "They take from them and they give nothing back." He added: "Right now, there is no meritocracy here. It's, 'Hey, your sister has a pretty mouth–do you want to be a general?' " That culture of corruption affects everything: promotions, assignments, the resolution of cases. As one example, Major Schmeling pointed to a police officer who a year ago was a lowly patrolman and gate guard. Then, he said, the policeman scraped together the money for a new job: a top noncommissioned officer on the provincial police force. "As long as people are buying themselves into positions like that, the people will never trust the system," the major said. To those buying jobs, the payments are an investment they intend to recover, along with a profit. Jobs that bring more money, like posts near the Kabul-Kandahar highway that allow opportunities for extorting truckers and smugglers, sell for a premium, soldiers here say. But in the process, honest officials are passed over or punished. "You could say that the corruption you are involved in is an investment in your future, and your family's future," said First Lt. Craig Porte, a military intelligence officer in Ghazni, who said it was "fairly common to buy your position" in government. "If you are not involved in corruption, you are seen as an enemy of those who are, which has a tendency to get you fired." Many soldiers question whether anything will ever change. "The corruption here is a bigger threat to a stable government than the Taliban," said First Sgt. John Strain, the senior noncommissioned officer on the American unit training the Ghazni police. "If we stay here another year, or another 50 years, I think it'll probably only take two to three years after we are gone until it reverts to the way it was right before we got here," he added. "To have to admit that when you look at these kids," he said, referring to Afghanistan's children, "it really breaks your heart, to think that what you are doing is probably not going to turn out to be a hill of beans." Extortion by police officers is common. But there is fraud and swindling up the chain of command, too. Several police officials are part of a group that has been stealing thousands of gallons of gasoline a month, a major reason some districts receive less than half their allotments, said American officers, who are mostly powerless to do anything but report corruption to their superiors. As a measure of the corruption, the American officers said, one senior provincial official recently paid $50,000 to free a kidnapped relative–about five times his annual salary. American officers described another Ghazni provincial police official who had a lucrative side business: coercing police officers to sign requisitions for far more weapons than they actually needed. Then the official would keep the extra weapons and sell them, sometimes to the Taliban. The official was killed recently, officers said. In some places, government officials are believed to have paid off Taliban fighters to limit attacks, allowing smuggling that benefits provincial officials to continue without interference, several American and Afghan officials from Ghazni said. In this swindle, provincial "bodyguards" demand protection money from smugglers, anywhere from $400 to $2,000 per truck, for safe passage through Ghazni, said a Ghazni police official recently forced out of his job. "High-ranking officials in Ghazni have immunity from the law," said the official, who feared retribution and agreed to speak only if he was not identified. Likening many provincial officials to a criminal mafia, he added, "People have no choice but to go to the Taliban to solve their problems." Indeed, in Ghazni's impoverished villages, where the light brown of clay walls and mud homes is broken only by green plots of winter wheat, the Taliban exploit the widespread sense that the government does not serve people. When the Taliban were in power in the 1990s, corruption and official bribery were more limited. The lack of competent civilian authority aids the insurgents. Afghan Army officers trained by Maj. Daren Runion "don't like the Taliban," he said. But some believe "that in some ways parts of their rule were better." Police officers from a handful of Ghazni districts have gone through an intensive eight-week training course and returned to their districts to be overseen by American mentors. Nationwide, more than 3,000 police officers have gone through the course, a linchpin of the American effort to expand the police. The new training has helped the police on the ground. Patrolmen are more alert, with better weapons discipline and less absenteeism, American officers here say. But with little support from the government, most police forces remain a trivial presence in villages, marshaling their meager resources just to protect district centers and their small outposts. Even if the corruption were not so debilitating, American and Afghan forces would still face a sizable enemy. Major Schmeling estimates that there are 2,000 Taliban fighters in the province. "They still exercise the exact same control over these villages that they had up until 2001," he said. In Qarabagh, one of the largest districts, the Taliban use 40 villages as bases to dominate hundreds of other villages, said Qarabagh's deputy police chief, Capt. Mohammed Younus. Police recruits are easy prey. Twenty-four policemen have been killed in Taliban ambushes and roadside bombings in Qarabagh over the past year, Captain Younus said. "We don't have any presence with the civilians," he said. "Taliban live with them 24 hours a day." Residents take complaints to local Taliban leaders, not the police, he said. "They have a judge and prosecutor. The Taliban is active at the bazaar in each village." In Waghaz District, near Qarabagh, there are just 50 permanent Taliban members, among a population of up to 60,000 ethnic Pashtuns and 33,000 Hazara, said Abdul Azim, the subgovernor of Waghaz. Yet the Taliban do not need a large presence to dominate, he explained. Last year, he said, the Taliban took three men from their homes whom they suspected of helping the government. "They burned the three men and chopped their limbs off with axes," he said. "That's why the 60,000 cannot beat the 50."