Links
Corruption, incompetence charges plague new Afghan police force
Although the members of Afghanistan's elite new police force have been touted as the country's best and brightest, U.S. military strategists find that they're plagued by the same problems as Afghanistan's conventional police, who are widely considered corrupt, ineffective and inept.
Nevertheless, U.S. and Afghan government strategists are counting on the new Afghan National Civil Order Police to play a central role in an operation this summer to seize full control of Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual capital in southern Afghanistan.
In the weeks since they were sent to Helmand province as part of the U.S.-led offensive in Marjah, ANCOP members have set up checkpoints to shake down residents, been kicked out for using drugs and shunned in some areas as outsiders, according to U.S. officials briefed on a recent analysis by the RAND Corp.
More than a quarter of the officers in one ANCOP battalion in Helmand were dismissed for drug use, and the rest were sent off for urgent retraining. One Western official who attended the briefing termed ANCOP's role in Marjah a disaster. The official spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.