A friend sent me this link to a very interesting article from Mother Jones on the Afghanistan National Police. Given that the views of Mother Jones makes me look like a conservative, I hesitated linking the article to OP-FOR. However after consulting Lt Col JPP who provided some great insight into what the article said I am providing the link for your reading enjoyment. Here is the link to Mother Jones.
Here is what Lt Col JPP had to say about the article:
“there’s a lot of veracity there, although i think we’d both agree that MJ would put a cynical negative spin on it. the ANCOP is supposed to be (if i remember correctly) the gendarmerie/constabulary of afghanistan. for that reason they are of course one of the linchpins of the whole deal. the police have, across the board, not been particularly well regarded or effective, to say the least. this is in the process of changing, i’m happy to say. the ministry of interior has made enormous strides at the natl level, and the quality of the police is beginning to improve markedly. the ANCOP is now on the receiving end of a lot of training and mentoring from the RCMP, the french gendarmerie, the italian carabinieri and others.
drug use is a sad fact across the afghan natl security forces, and across afghanistan as a whole. (if i was an afghan, i’d be a dope smoker too.) so is illiteracy. a still sadder fact is that there is NO institutional memory of a respected, effective, functional national police force (or a government, for that matter). many people mistake what is a pervasive confusion about how their own society can and should work for the afghans not wanting a union and an effective central government. NOT TRUE. afghans want good governance, and they do have a pronounced sense of nationhood. in general they prefer decentralized government, but they do want sound governance. sound like anyone else we know?
the average lifespan of an afghan male is 42. that means that a 42-year old man today, by the time he got to be about 12 years old and can see and observe, afghanistan goes into its 3-decade tailspin. and we wonder why they’re just plain fucked up.
