[wvns] Afghan National Police penetrated by Taliban at 'every level'

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.

Afghan National Police penetrated by Taliban at 'every level'
By Thomas Harding and James Kirkup
04 Nov 2009
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6502175/Afghan-National-Police-penetrated-by-Taliban-at-every-level.html

Afghan National Police are seen in Lashkar Gar, Afghanistan Photo:
PA 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.

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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. More worryingly, a number are regular opium users and their addiction makes their behaviour unpredictable.
There has also been reports of police sexual abuse that has antagonised the local population.

Capt Beattie, who has retired from the Army, said: "It is absolutely right to say that the Afghan police are infiltrated by the Taliban at every level, from the very lowest to the very highest."

The police officer who killed five British soldiers on Tuesday is understood to have been in the police for at least two years. That raises the possibility that he was paid to switch sides. Capt Beattie said that many police officers happily switch sides for money.

He said: "Because they're militia they can be bought and paid off at will. If the government's paying them they're reasonably happy. But if they don't get enough money they're quite happy to be paid by the insurgency."

Under current planning it is hoped to increase the ANP force from 80,000 to about 140,000 but there are still worries about the quality of officers and their vulnerability to corruption.

Peter Galbraith, a former deputy head of the United Nations mission in
Afghanistan, said that recent attempts to speed up police training had raised the risk of infiltration.

"The process of police training and recruiting has been very rushed. 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."

The attack is said to bear the hallmarks of the Haqqani network of insurgents blamed for a number of attacks on Western targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Jalaluddin Haqqani, a Pashtun leader based in north Waziristan, Pakistan, has been labelled as one of the most wanted Taliban by US forces with a $3 million reward on his head.

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