Training Female Police Officers in Afghanstan

Read an article about training female police officers in Afghanistan by Canadian police.  See "Training female Afghan police officers rewarding, but challenging for Canadian", The Montreal Gazette, November 23, 2010.

Afghan Police on Track for Taking Over According to Defense Spokesman

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21, 2010 – Significant progress over the last year in training the Afghan National Police has put Afghanistan’s interior ministry on track to care for its country’s own security by 2014, a senior official involved in the training effort said today.

Maj. Gen. Stuart Beare of the Canadian army, deputy commanding general for police at NATO Training Mission Afghanistan and Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, briefed Pentagon reporters via teleconference from the Afghan capital of Kabul.

Beare said he’s impressed by the scope of the intervention playing out across the International Security Assistance Force mission, especially in the training mission for the “comprehensive development of the Afghan security forces, both army and police, from the [interior] ministry to the troops in the field.”

“I'm also struck by the scale of the intervention in terms of the quality of people and the amount of people that we are now covering down on or using to cover down on -- ministries, institutional systems, training centers and partnering in the field -- and the amount of money that is being applied to that to make it all work,” Beare said.

In terms of strength, the police force numbers have risen from 95,000 to nearly 120,000 in less than 12 months. The Afghan police force comprises uniformed police, border police, civil order police, the anti-crime police forces and the Afghan public protection forces.

“We're on track to growing the forces entirely to 134,000 by this time next year,” Beare said. “And we know we have the capacity in our training system to do that. We know we have the recruiting base to achieve that. And we've taken on enough trainers to be able to continue to deliver that.” More trainers will be needed, however, to grow and sustain the force beyond 2011, he added.

The challenge of growing and “professionalizing” the Afghan police force also depends on the effectiveness of ongoing anticorruption efforts in Afghanistan, Beare said, noting that Interior Minister Gen. Bismillah Mohammadi has six priorities for the police force: training and education, leadership, anticorruption, taking care of the force, structure reform, and using a reward-and-punishment system.

http://www.defense.gov//News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=61374

Building Police Capacity in Afghanistan - Report from NATO Training Mission - Afghanistan

A report by the NATO Training Mission - Afghanistan (NTM-A) provides information about the plan to build police capacity in Afghanistan.  Read "Building Police Capacity in Afghanistan: The Challenges of a Multilateral Approach", NDU Press, November 2010.