Afghan police corruption 'hits Nato pullout' - World Politics, World - The Independent
Afghan police corruption 'hits Nato pullout'
Britain and the US at odds over 2014 deadline for withdrawal, as experts condemn local forces' brutality and lack of training
By Kim Sengupta in Lisbon, Jonathan Owen and Brian Brady
Sunday, 21 November 2010
Afghan police recruits undergoing training at the Afghan Police Academy in Kabul last month. Western experts complain that many officers do not know the law they are paid to uphold.
Afghanistan's security forces are crippled by corruption, poor training and high attrition rates, senior British and US officials have revealed, casting doubt on the West's plan to leave the country within five years.
As Nato leaders rubber-stamped a strategy to transfer leadership for the fight against the Taliban to Afghan forces by the end of 2014, Western experts have complained that the vast majority of Afghanistan's police are untrained and do not even know the law.
A review of the past year by the head of the Nato Training Mission in Afghanistan (NTM-A), seen by The IoS, warned that the "transition" would not happen with the current shortfall of hundreds of experts needed to train the local police and army.
One of Britain's top representatives to Afghanistan has warned that, amid enduring suspicions over the reliability of local forces, Afghans are turning to the Taliban for justice.
Karen Pierce, the Foreign Office's special representative for Afghanistan, said the Taliban is providing a "very effective form of dispute resolution".
The grim assessment of the coalition's chances of an early exit emerged last night as the Nato summit in Lisbon was marked by conflict over the timing of the coalition withdrawal from Afghanistan. At the heart of the division was David Cameron's insistence that British troops will finish their mission by 2015 whatever happens, while other major countries declared that conditions on the ground would dictate their forces' actions.