T. Christian Miller, Mark Hosenball, and Ron Moreau have a piece in Newsweek called The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.  Their piece explores reports that the six billion dollars that the US has spent since 2002 to train Afghan Security and Police has been an utter waste.

Since receiving a report last year that this was the case, Richard Holbrooke, the highest State Department official in the area says he "has been drilling deep into this.'  Holbrooke has in the past called the police force "an inadequate organization, riddled with corruption."

Since the troop withdrawal planned by the President in 2011 is predicated on the ability of Afghan police to replace American troop security, this must come as a real blow.

At a March 12 Presidential briefing on Afghanistan, he asked if police will be ready to take over operations.  The head of the training program, General Lt. General William Caldwell, told him by video link from Afghanistan:

"We just never trained them before. All we did was give them a uniform." (He may have forgotten to mention guns.)  The president looked stunned. "Eight years," he said. "And we didn't train police? It's mind-boggling." The room was silent.

Given that the training was thought to be going 'too slowly', in 2003 Virginia-based DynCorp was contracted to get things up to snuff.  The recruits they receive are mainly rural young men, 90% are illiterate, many smoke hashish, and few know how to drive.  The authors also reported that few know how to use a toothbrush, and tend to plug up the septic tanks with stones instead of using toilet paper, but that's another set of problems, I'd think.  They are holding hygiene classes now, though: two days' worth.  (I will avoid editorial comment here.)

I take it back; sorry; I can't: Is it a US goal to keep the Afghan People safe from gum disease?  (Okay; now I can skip the rocks vs. toilet paper thing.  Whew!)

An anonymous DynCorp official claimed that the eight weeks of training allowed by the State Department was inadequate, though now some courses have now been cut to six.  Whether or not recruits pass their firearms tests, they pass the course.  Of the 170,000 men trained, some 30,000 are counted as still in the police force. 

Ammunition disappears at a high rate, including rocket-propelled grenade launchers.  I believe that similar 'disapperances of ammunition and guns' were endemic among Iraqi police.  Some police claim to have conducted mock firefights, just so those who care could hear gunfire and assume battles were being waged.  Locals claim many join up in order to have the uniforms and guns to extort money from them.

Government investigators have found significant irregularities in invoices; some 320 million dollars of possibly bogus invoices, or at least ones that don't prove goods billed, goods received, basic standards.  DynCorp officials are checking into it. 

The company's $1.7 billion dollar contract had three State Department contract monitors keeping watch.

In January thirty-five Italian carabinieri showed up to help out at the Kabul police training camp.  Marksmanship tests were abysmal; they discovered that none of the rifles had been sighted in; they were perplexed.  No kidding.

The icing on the contract cake came just as Blackwater/Xe was about to get awarded the next contract for training police in Afghanistan.  Initially only they and Northrop Grumman had bid; it was a one billion dollar contract.  Previously it had been decided that 'the program would be folded into an existing anti-drug and counterterrorism program overseen by the U.S. Army's Space and Missile Defense Command. Bids were limited to companies already under contract to the missile command, effectively shutting out DynCorp, thereby 'speeding up the bidding process.  Boo-yah!  But DynCorp appealed to the GAO, who upheld their right to compete, so the deadline for the contract award will be extended.  DynCorp's contract runs through July, so things should shake out in time.

 'Americans are only now in the process of trying to create a database that will positively identify and track recruits. Without such data, it's more than difficult to catch "ghost" troops who exist only as names on the payroll, not to mention possible Taliban infiltrators.'