Police and thieves pillage Helmand (raping pre-teen boys)

[ensho]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KG31Df02.html


The strategy of the major United States and British military offensive in Afghanistan's Helmand province aimed at wresting it from the Taliban is based on bringing back Afghan army and police to maintain permanent control of the population, so the foreign forces can move on to another insurgent stronghold.

But that strategy poses an acute problem: the police in the province, who are linked to the local warlord, have committed systematic abuses against the population, including the abduction and rape of pre-teen boys, according to village elders who met with British officers.

Anger over those police abuses runs so high that the elders in Babaji just north of Laskgar Gah warned the British that they would support the Taliban to get rid of them if the national police were allowed to return to the area, according to a July 12 report by Reuters correspondent Peter Graff.

Associated Press reporters Jason Straziuso and David Guttenfelder, who accompanied US troops in northern Helmand, reported on July 13 that villagers in Aynak were equally angry about police depredations. Within hours of the arrival of US troops in the village, they wrote, bands of villagers began complaining the local police force was "a bigger problem than the Taliban".

-snip-

The British and US forces in Helmand province appear to be unprepared to deal with the popular anger over police abuses. The spokesman for the US 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, Captain William Pelletier, told IPS in an e-mail that he had "no information about the allegations of misconduct" by police reported to British officers, despite the fact that the Marine brigade's headquarters in Helmand are right next to those of the British Task Force Helmand.
-snip-
-------------------------------


this article is also at Counterpunch

http://counterpunch.com/


A Bigger Problem Than the Taliban?
Afghanistan's US-Backed Child-Raping Police
-snip-
---------------------

[Peregrine Took]

1. Our new BFF's - the brutal Afghan police. Wonderful.

Thanks for posting.

[Echo In Light]

2. "bands of villagers began complaining the local police force was "a bigger problem than the Taliban"

Go figure.

[Echo In Light]

3. Bumping for night crew