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Meet Afghanistan's model police force: inexperience, drugs and double agents

Source: The Guardian

Nov 04, 2009

Summary

Nato chiefs and independent reports blame unsuitable trainers and low entry criteria as reasons force is corrupt and weak

The Afghan National Police has become a byword for a badly-trained force riddled with drug addicts and, many fear, secret Taliban agents. But the ANP is increasingly seen by both counter-insurgency experts and desperate western politicians as vital for gradually bringing the eight-year conflict in Afghanistan to a close.

Experts like US analyst Seth Jones have long argued that areas that have been expensively cleared of Taliban by foreign troops cannot be held unless there are enough local police to move in and keep the insurgents out.

And Gordon Brown is not alone among leaders of troop-contributing countries who want to see Afghan forces take a leading role in a fight where each Nato soldier killed erodes political support back home.

Stanley McChrystal, the US general commanding Nato forces in Afghanistan, has called for an increase in ANP numbers from its current size of 84,000 to 160,000, even as the organisation battles with an estimated

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