In Our Area the Taliban Are Paying More a Month

“than we are in some places because their life expectancy is much shorter.” quote from Col. Edward Kornish, Commander, Regional Police Advisory Command - South.

Today’s Bloggers’ Roundtable interview focused on the Afghan National Police in the southern and southeastern portions of the country. Here’s the transcript.

Co. Kornish’s region is made up of six provinces located in southeastern Afghanistan. It corresponds to the area controlled by the Afghan Army’s 205 “Hero” Corps.

10,000 Afghans are seving in the National Police in the region, a shortfall of 6,000. Part of that is due to the difference in pay between the police and the army that was recently corrected. Much of it is due to the increased risk taken by the ANP.

An ANP officer receives about $100 a month. Hundreds have been killed in the region by Taliban attacks. Kornish points out that the kill ratio is 10:1 or greater and that thousands of Taliban were killed in the same time period.

COL Kornish’s Region is the Wild West of the East. Pashtun tribal and clan chiefs with their lashkars, warlord jefes with their pickup trucks full of banditos, local security contractors with their pickup trucks full of “security officers,” and then there are the opium cartels and their bully boys, all going about their business while the Brits, Dutch, Canadians, Romanians and Americans hunt the Taliban, who are not readily distinguishable from the previously described gentlemen.

I asked him about the ethnic make up of the ANP in RC South. He said they don’t keep those kind of records, but most of the ANP in RC South were Pashtuns. The Pashtuns have their own laws, so Tajik’s in gherkin green ANP uniforms trying to enforce the writ of Kabul have their work cut out for them. The traditional Pashtun Code and the people still trying to live by it are under great stress from the outside world, from wars, narcoterrorism, and violent graduates of Deobandi madrassas. RPAC-S could really use a Human Terrain Team to sort all this combat anthropology out, but kandaks before cops. The Brits are trying “to increase their support for community defence initiatives, where local volunteers are recruited to defend homes and families modelled on traditional Afghan ‘arbakai’,” , but echelons above RPAC-S disagree with that. I asked COL Cornish if his British PMT’s were mentoring arbakai. He doesn’t know.

Read the rest at Civilian Irregular Information Defense Group

Two things:

1. The EU support for this country is shamefully transparent in its absence.

2. We should offer these tribes either more money or the even more convincing argument: We’ll give you less money than the Taliban but we also won’t kill you! Take Your Pick!

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.