KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - NATO commanders in Kandahar are hoping to lure a handful of tribal militias into the Afghan National Police as a way of further cementing law and order in the region, says a senior officer.
But the plan is not without critics, who describe the notorious corrupt police force as a "broken institution."
A defence source said Wednesday one of the more prominent targets of negotiations is expected to be Gen. Razik, who has built his own militia around the Adozai, a prominent branch of the Achakzai tribe in the border region on Spin Boldak. There are other smaller community-type tribal militias in Kandahar, whom the coalition would like to persuade to join the police.
Canadian Brig.-Gen. Craig King, director of future plans for NATO's regional command south, would not name the tribal militias being considered, but said you can't have multiple police-type forces running around the countryside.
"There's a couple around right now and we're in delicate stages, trying to build the force and bring them in," King said in a recent interview with The Canadian Press.
He estimated about 100 militia members might be brought in during the initial stage. But they would have to agree to be screened and trained just like the thousands of other police recruits who are the subject of intense mentoring.
King also made a clear distinction between tribal militias -- or village constabularies -- and private security forces for local powerbrokers.
"We're not talking the same sort of thing as warlords, private armies (that) operate outside the authority of the government," he said.
They would have to have "a certain degree of authority within the tribal framework."
Throughout Afghanistan NATO is walking a fine line as it tries to build a competent police force to provide security in a ramshackle collection of isolated desert and mountain villages.
In the eastern portion of the country near Kabul, the United States has undertaken a different program of arming tribal militias for village security, reminiscent of the "Sons of Iraq" who took up arms against the insurgency in that country. The Americans have not gone all of the way and made the motley collection of gunslingers in Wardak put on a steel blue police uniforms or put them through formal training.
The one-year-old Afghan Provincial Protection Force program has been controversial, and critics warned arming 1,200 villagers with Kalashnikovs would lead to less security, not more. But the force has been praised by the provincial governor as not only delivering stability, but also facilitating the defection of former Taliban fighters.
The Canadian government was deeply skeptical sand privately critical of arming the villagers in Wardak last year.
"I have personal reservations about tribal militias," said Defence Minister Peter MacKay in a recent interview.
He said Ottawa would be prefer to see more emphasis on training the Afghan police and building it into a national institution. During a recent visit to Kandahar, Mackay suggested Canada was prepared to stay past 2011 in a police mentoring capacity.
"So, I think that's where we're concentrating our effort."
But there are those who believe the police, which have a dismal reputation among ordinary Afghans, will never work the way Canada and other western countries want because hidebound villagers will not accept them.
"We've been grasping at straws," said Thomas Johnson, a research professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and an expert on Afghanistan.
He said he would have "no faith" in the tribal militia plan in Kandahar because the Afghan Police are "one of the most corrupt and disliked organizations in Afghanistan."
Underpaid cops have been known to take bribes and shakedown residents for cash. Coalition countries have taken to paying the police directly because malfeasance is so widespread.
And often they are infiltrated by the Taliban.
Although the biggest problem with the police is they are a reflection that NATO and the Afghan government have failed to build a political consensus at the village level, said Johnson, who in 2008 compared the troubled western effort to the failed Soviet occupation of the 1980s.
"Afghanistan has a long history of community policing, going back a millenia," Johnson said in an interview.
"The political institutions were shattered by the Soviets. We tend to do everything, including this from the top down, rather than seeking political consensus. That's why I don't have a lot of faith in this."
