Afghan police school tries to fix struggling force

At the gate to the National Police Academy, on the western edge of the Afghan capital, the guard's rifle bolts into firing position. "Stop!" he shouts.
     
It's 4 a.m., the street lights are not working and the guard's superiors had neglected to tell him that the red Toyota Corolla would be arriving. Time and again, suicide bombers have attacked Afghanistan's police and army outposts. So one of the first lessons taught at the academy is diligence.
    
The readiness of Afghanistan's security forces is central to U.S. and NATO plans to withdraw all forces from the country by the end of 2014, and the academy's new commander wants to help turn around a 146,000-strong national police force long riddled with corruption, incompetence and factional rivalries.
     
Such problems are not always acknowledged publicly. On Thursday, President Hamid Karzai said that his military and police are prepared to take full responsibility for security if the American-led international coalition decides to speed up the handover. And a statement released this week by the NATO-led force, ISAF, called the Afghan National Army the most respected institution in the country and said "the Afghan national police also rank highly."
     
But the National Police Academy's director, Mullah Dad Pazoish, presents a different viewpoint.
     
"There are police who don't even know the meaning of the word 'police,'" Pazoish said in a recent interview. "We have generals who have no training. They are the jihadi commanders."
     
International observers warn that the largely illiterate police force will disintegrate after 2014 into factional militias more loyal to local warlords than to the state.
     
There are also questions about the ability of the Afghan army, which continues to suffer from a high rate of attrition.
    

AP