Same old, same old for Afghan police
Friday, May 8, 2009 at 2:52AM FRONT PAGE: "Corruption Undercuts U.S. Hopes for Improving Afghan Police," by Richard A. Oppel Jr., New York Times, 9 April 2009.
When I traveled to Afghanistan on my now-infamous trip with Fallon, everyone--U.S., foreign mil, locals--I interviewed about the country had the same complaint: the big failure to date was in rooting out corruption in the Afghan police.
Almost a year-and-a-half later, everybody seems to be saying the same thing: the police remain a predatory, cannibalizing agent in the worst way, sabotaging development efforts across the board. Popular dissatisfaction centers on this problem, significantly more than on security (as nasty as that is in some areas). It's hard to underestimate the popular anger on this subject. People seem to feel hopeless about the possibility of progress.
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