[DEBATE] : Death rate for Afghan police force `staggering'

[Riaz K. Tayob]

Death rate for Afghan police force `staggering'  TheStar.com - World - 
Death rate for Afghan police force `staggering'
With 1,150 officers killed in 18 months, replacements can't be trained 
fast enough
October 01, 2007
Bruce Campion-Smith
OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF

KANDAHAR–In rural Panjwaii and Zhari districts, Afghan cops are being 
killed faster than they can be replaced, says one of their Canadian mentors.

That terrifying fact stands as a huge roadblock to Canada's efforts to 
turn over security in these troubled regions to the fledgling police force.

"The rate at which they're losing policemen can never be replenished, 
unfortunately," RCMP Cpl. Barry Pitcher said.

In Panjwaii district alone – an insurgent hotbed west of Kandahar – 
police officers recently had six trucks destroyed in a 20-day period 
through roadside bombs and ambushes.

In July, 71 police officers were killed in regional command south, a 
territory that includes Kandahar province. Nationwide, 650 officers were 
killed from March 2006 to March 2007. Government officials say another 
500 have been killed since then.

Just yesterday, two more died trying to defuse a large bomb in the 
centre of Kandahar city, police said.

"They're in the front lines. They're doing the counter-insurgency 
warfare. How are we replenishing the ranks? That's a staggering, 
staggering casualty rate," said Pitcher, one of eight Canadian police 
officers here helping train the Afghan force.

While serious concerns have been raised about the training and integrity 
of Afghan police officers, the fatality rate highlights the stark 
dangers facing this low-paid, ill-trained cadre of officers.

"In places like Panjwaii and Zhari, they're what the military calls soft 
targets because they're visible, they're not as well armed, they don't 
have air support and quite often they're hit bad," Pitcher said.

While Canadian soldiers move at night in armoured vehicles with night 
vision gear and the ability to call in reinforcements, the Afghan police 
have only Toyota trucks with six officers riding in the back, each armed 
with an AK-47.

"They're more guerrilla warfare fighters than policemen," said Pitcher, 
a fraud investigator in St. John's, Nfld., before he accepted a 
year-long assignment in Kandahar.

"Policing in a counter-insurgency environment is probably one of the 
most difficult arenas to enter. You're trying to impart peacetime police 
training in the middle of a war zone," he said.

In recent weeks, the Canadians have helped Afghans reclaim territory and 
establish new police substations. Canadian soldiers will remain at the 
checkpoints until the Afghans are ready to assume responsibility for 
security.

That comes after complaints that Canadians abandoned the Afghans during 
the summer, allowing insurgents to overrun the positions.

The danger is just one challenge facing the Afghan police force – and 
the Canadians who have high hopes of passing over responsibility for 
security in the rural areas.

Lt.-Col. Alain Gauthier, who heads the Canadian battle group in 
Kandahar, says it will take "years" to develop the police into a 
professional, capable force.

"It takes many, many years to train a professional security force to be 
able to sustain themselves," he said.

He said most of them have been deployed with little, if any, training, 
at low wages and in "very poor" working conditions.

"All of this has been recognized and they're working on all those 
specific points to improve their living conditions," he said.

The Canadian military, for example, has just launched a new training 
course, bringing 20 Afghan officers at a time to forward operating bases 
for a 10-day policing course.

Meanwhile, civilian police officers like Pitcher are schooling their 
Afghan counterparts in checkpoint training, roadside bomb awareness and 
police techniques such as handcuffing and ethics.

Pitcher knows that Afghan police have a reputation for being on the 
take, but he urges caution before passing judgment – it's often because 
they haven't been paid in months.

"They're in a situation here where if they're not being paid and 
corruption is an accepted way of life, they get caught up in the 
environment," Pitcher said.

"They want to be policemen ... This is why they decided to wear a police 
uniform ... You want to serve a greater good."

http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/262109