Stars and Stripes stories on the ever continuing Afghanistan adventure

[unhappycamper]

U.S. puts hopes in bedraggled Afghan police
By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times
May 26, 2010 | 4:12 p.m

Reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan — Afghan national police checkpoint No. 4, substation 3, is a blighted shell of a building ringed by garbage and shaded by scruffy trees whose leaves are coated with fine gray dust. Here, nine police officers have the task of protecting the Shinghazi Baba neighborhood of southern Kandahar.

Sometimes they can't even protect themselves. Two months ago, an officer was fatally shot by an insurgent who escaped on a motorcycle.

"The force-protection posture is not really all that great," Sgt. 1st Class Arnaldo Colon, a U.S. Army military policeman, said as he arrived Wednesday morning for an inspection. He gestured toward dilapidated concrete barriers, a few sad strands of concertina wire and a yelping guard dog tied to a tree.

If the U.S. is to succeed in seizing control of Kandahar, Afghanistan's second-largest city, from the Taliban this summer, improving the performance of the Afghan police will be at the heart of that effort. The often bedraggled force patrols roads and operates neighborhood checkpoints, putting officers in daily contact with a civilian populace the U.S. is trying to win over.

Colon's unit, the 293rd Military Police Company, trains and mentors Afghan police in Kandahar. The U.S. military is attempting to put an Afghan face on policing, pushing Afghans to take the lead on patrols, searches and neighborhood sweeps. The police and army will be responsible for security when U.S. forces begin to withdraw, perhaps as early as next summer.



Afghan Opposition Leader Sees Chance In Kandahar
NPR (sorry)
May 26, 2010

The NATO strategy to secure Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, relies on a solid Afghan government that can take over when the Taliban leave. Opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah says that can happen — but that it depends on President Hamid Karzai.

"It is absolutely possible" for a civilian government to rule the area, Abdullah told NPR's Renee Montagne during a visit to Washington, D.C.

"But at the same time, if we are talking about the political will in the Afghan leadership — President Karzai included — that's the question."

The issue is that Karzai doesn't see the area the same way as the residents of Kandahar, according to Abdullah.

"They rank corruption and bad government as the problem No. 1, even before Taliban and al-Qaida," he says. "That's in the eyes of the people in Kandahar. So, the government of Afghanistan is not looking at it from that angle. That makes it problematic."



America's Fatal Flaws in Afghanistan
By AHMED RASHID
May 27, 2010

No matter how many times President Barack Obama and his senior officials tell the world that the Americans will not be pulling out of Afghanistan in just 13 months time, most Afghans believe that the US endgame is already well under way. The same is true for governments of neighboring countries known for their interference and influence-seeking in the Hindu Kush.

When Washington starts withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan in July 2011, its NATO allies in Europe will quickly rush to the exits. A power-sharing arrangement between Kabul and the Taliban is a less than ideal solution, but it is the only realistic option if the West pulls out.

That means everyone from Afghan warlords to Taliban and al-Qaida commanders to intelligence agencies in neighboring states have upped their game to undercut rivals, achieve their aims and further their influence. The danger is that Afghanistan will once again become, in the words of Lord Curzon, the 19th century British imperial figure, "the cockpit of Asia.''

Obama himself gave the game away when he said last December that even though 30,000 more US troops would be deployed to Afghanistan this year in a large military and civilian surge to drive back the Taliban, by July 2011 US forces will start withdrawing from the country and handing it over to the Afghans. By this October there will be 100,000 US and more than 40,000 other troops -- mainly from other NATO countries in Afghanistan -- and by next July they will start withdrawing.

More than $25 billion has been poured into efforts to rebuild the Afghan army and police, but they are still largely illiterate, undertrained and irresponsible and nowhere near ready to take over nation-building tasks. Of the 5,200 Western military trainers that the US and NATO agreed were needed to mentor Afghan forces, only half have been deployed. And despite numerous promises, only 300 of those are Europeans.

[TexasObserver]

1. Quagmire.