Afghan villagers had complained to the US Marines for days: The police are the problem, not the Taliban.
They steal from villagers and beat them. Days later, the Marines learned firsthand what the villagers meant.
As about 150 Marines and Afghan soldiers approached the police headquarters in the Helmand River town of Aynak, the police fired four gunshots at the combined force. No larger fight broke out, but once inside the headquarters the Marines found a raggedy force in a decrepit mud-brick compound that the police used as an open-pit toilet.
PHOTO: AP
The meeting was tense. Some police were smoking pot. Others loaded their guns in a threatening manner near the Marines.
The US troops ousted the police two days later and installed a better trained force they had brought with them on their recently launched operation into southern Helmand. The original force was sent away for several weeks of training the US is conducting across Afghanistan to professionalize the country’s police.
But the encounter last week highlights one of the largest problems facing the international effort to stabilize Afghanistan in the face of an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency: The need for competent, trustworthy police. What many villagers see now is the opposite — a pot-smoking, ragtag, thieving force that makes the Taliban look disciplined in comparison.
Afghans across the country complain bitterly about the country’s police, whose junior ranks earn only about US$150 a month. Police pad their salaries by demanding bribes at checkpoints or kickbacks to investigate complaints, and police in opium poppy-growing regions turn a blind eye to drug smuggling for a cut of the profits, many Afghans complain.
The role of the local police is especially sensitive here in Helmand Province, the center of the lucrative opium poppy industry and a Taliban stronghold. A main goal of the ongoing US military operation is to restore Afghan government control — which requires a disciplined police force that commands public respect.
Over the past year, the Interior Ministry has tried to overhaul the police and dozens of corrupt officials have been fired. The US has faced similar problems in Iraq, where years of effort have so far failed to produce a police force with the same level of skill and professionalism as the Iraqi army.
Some 4,000 of the 21,000 additional troops US President Barack Obama ordered to Afghanistan this year will train Afghan police and soldiers, a belated boost to a lingering problem. US commanders have long complained of a shortage of trainers.
As Captain Drew Schoenmaker pulled his men out of Aynak’s police compound after that first meeting, the company commander told his Marines to “watch my 6 o’clock” — his back — in case the police again opened fire.
“I don’t trust a single one of them,” Schoenmaker said quietly.
“We had some complaints about the police force and the ways they did business,” Schoenmaker said later. “As I met the police force for the first time, there was an air of tension between us. We had received shots from their vicinity that day.”
The police commander told Schoenmaker his men had fired on the US-Afghan force because he didn’t know who they were.
Two days later, the Marines made a second visit to the police headquarters. Schoenmaker’s commander told him to kick the police out and install the new backup force. US fighter aircraft patrolled overhead in case a fight broke out.
A Marine radio operator sat outside the compound as the police packed up. He got a report from a nearby unit that villagers complained that the police had just stolen jewelry and money from them. The ragtag force tore out of the compound, speeding their green, US-bought Ford Rangers toward Helmand’s provincial capital, just 14km to the north.
Police corruption has long been a problem in Afghanistan. A 2007 International Crisis Group report titled Reforming Afghanistan’s Police found that Afghans often view the police “more as a source of fear than of security.”
It said ending corruption was critical if police were to provide a “professional, consistent service to citizens.”
The Marines landed in southern Helmand earlier this month as part of the largest Marine operation in Afghanistan since 2001. Within hours of their arrival bands of villagers told the Americans that the local police force was a bigger problem than the Taliban. Sergeant
Bill Cahir, who heard some of the complaints, saw the candor as a good sign.
“It was encouraging that a big group was willing to sit down and talk with us,” Cahir said. “And they were pretty candid talking about the corrupt local police.”
One villager in Aynak, Ghulam Mohammad, who appeared to be in his mid-20s, said that villagers were happy with the Afghan army, but not the police.
“We can’t complain to the police because they take money and abuse people,” he said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of