• Thanks for stopping by. Logging in to a registered account will remove all generic ads. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

Canadians pay Afghan police to bolster security

  • Thread starter Thread starter GAP
  • Start date Start date

GAP

Army.ca Legend
Subscriber
Donor
Mentor
Reaction score
24
Points
380
Canadians pay Afghan police to bolster security
GRAEME SMITH  From Tuesday's Globe and Mail October 9, 2007 at 1:41 AM EDT
Article Link

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Canada has decided to sidestep the corrupt Afghan government and ensure the safety of Canadian soldiers by paying Afghan police directly, in cash.

It's an attempt to buy stability in the dangerous districts west of Kandahar city, where Canadian soldiers stake their lives on the reliability of their Afghan allies.

“This is brand new,” said Brigadier-General Guy Laroche, Canada's top commander in Afghanistan, during an interview Monday. “We're going to make sure our people eat.”

The lack of salaries made it especially difficult to keep Afghan officers serving in Zhari and Panjwai, where the insurgency has inflicted heavy losses on local police and provided an ongoing challenge to Canadian Forces.

“The money did not get to these guys,” Gen. Laroche said. “Somebody is taking 10 per cent here, 10 per cent there, and at the end the poor guy is left with nothing. Would you stay in a place like that without being paid? I mean, c'mon.”

Starting last week, police officers in Zhari and Panjwai districts no longer received their monthly salaries through their regular chain of command in the Ministry of Interior, Gen. Laroche said.

Instead, payments were distributed by Canadian and U.S. soldiers who serve as mentors for Afghan law-enforcement, in the first such experiment in southern Afghanistan. The mentorship programs are themselves a new initiative, as NATO struggles to rein in Afghan forces widely accused of thievery and corruption.

Police were forced to steal for a living when their pay didn't arrive from Kabul, which hurt morale and fostered resentment among local Afghans, the commander said.

“They had to take bribes from the people, because they have to live,” Gen. Laroche said.
More on link
 
Well

IT'S ABOUT F%?&ING TIME.

It will be interesting to see how police services develop in the south from now on.
For the local police to receive their full salary without "administrative / graft deductions" will be a new concept to all.
You can only hope that this will result in recruiting a better calibre of policeman, retaining same said policeman AND making the territory a little bit safer.

Then again, considering the millions of dollars the drug lords & AQ & TB have at their fingertips, will this be enough?
 
I hate to be the face of reality - but its not brand new.  It was done in Kabul by the CF, and the US Department of State does it as well.

No doubt the BGen beleives its new, since his TF did what all the others seem to do and immediatly burn or shred the previous TF's SOP's...
 
I could envision that the police "leadership" would be inclined to have the payroll centralized - so that they can look after the distribution - with a minimum service charge.

Have not consulted the SOPs of current & past Rotos - but have personaly worked with this BGen and I do not see him to be the kind of fella who tosses out "lessons learnt".

For all I know, this could be a statement of funding from the Bernier/Oda visit to Kandahar.
 
Maybe he just figured he wanted to get a check in the box on his PER for leading change  ::)
  Fact of the matter its been done before - and he's acting like its a new concept.  So either someone tossed out the previous SOP's - or someone's being dishonest.  I'd prefer to beleive that its the tried and true regimental flavour of not built here (said to the tune of a shreader or in this case burn barrel, in the background) 
 
What is being left unsaid here is the forward impact. Once you start getting a full paycheque you are going to want to continue getting a "full" paycheque. There are going to be some very unhappy, vocal and possibly physical retribution when the system reverts back into Afghan control and the paycheque becomes dramatically smaller.
 
GAP,
I brought up that subject in my last post (no 3)

One of the other things is (sceptical me): it will probably raise the level of bribes expected by the police to turn a blind eye.  However, the warlords, the druglords, the TB & AQ have loads of money & an ability to pay.

Oh well, let's see how things develop, shall we?
 
GAP said:
What is being left unsaid here is the forward impact. Once you start getting a full paycheque you are going to want to continue getting a "full" paycheque. There are going to be some very unhappy, vocal and possibly physical retribution when the system reverts back into Afghan control and the paycheque becomes dramatically smaller.

Not to mention the effect of bosses who, because of the "eliminate the middleman" pay system, will see an immediate reduction in THEIR revenue streams.

geo said:
One of the other things is (sceptical me): it will probably raise the level of bribes expected by the police to turn a blind eye.  However, the warlords, the druglords, the TB & AQ have loads of money & an ability to pay.

Same for the police bosses now cut out of the skim?

It WILL be interesting to see how things unfold!
 
I am sorry to sound like a Johnny-one-note but it is a note that I have been sounding for many years now, long before Ferguson rediscovered/made fashionable Empire.  The Brits succeeded for as long as they did because they did more things right than wrong

One of the things they did right was figure out how to govern/control-reward millions of people with thousands of "overlords".
 
"Between 1858 and 1947 there were seldom more than 1,000 members of the covenanted (qualified, authorized and British) Civil Service, compared with a total population which, by the end of British rule, exceeded 400 million."
Ferguson, Empire p.184

"....much larger tier of bureaucracy below them. This was the uncovenanted civil service, composed of Indians, and it was they who took responsibility for the day-to-day administration of each District's local talukas and tahsils (chiefs?).  There were 4,000 Indians in the uncovenanted service by 1868, and below them was a veritable army of lesser public employees: the telegraph clerks and ticket collectors......In 1867 there were around 13,000 public sector jobs paying 75 or more rupees a month, of which around half were held by Indians.?
Ferguson, Empire p.189

"(In) 1881 the Indian Army numbered 69,647 British Troops and 125,000 Native..."
Ferguson, Empire p.174

Leaving aside the discussion about a public sector of 13,000 in a nation of 400,000,000  :o  I wish to make the point about how Canada can best utilize its resources to achieve the desired level of stability in Afghanistan.

Those "Coppers" in Afghanistan today are no different than the Indians of the Raj.  And the Brits managed to secure the Raj with 1,000 British Civil Servants, 13-17,000 Indian Civil Servants, 69,647 British soldiers and 125,000 Indian soldiers - and the soldiers were the police.  

Assuming a direct correlation of forces and a population of 32,000,000 Afghans then the current staffing levels for Afghanistan would be (in the ratio or 32:400 or 2:25):

80 "International" Civil Servants;
1,040-1,360 Afghan Civil Servants;
5,572 British soldiers and:
10,000 Afghan soldiers.

Total Governance:  Approximately 17,000!!!!!

Allowing for things being different now and the fact that there is an active war going on (Strength in India went up during the Indian Mutiny/First War of Independence) at that rate Canada could fund the entire exercise herself.

Commitment:
80 Civil Servant administrators
5,572 soldiers/police

One thing that they did was raise regiments as Private Security Contractors.  Initially the Colonels were contracted by the East India Company to provide security.  This was done by having the Colonels (with or without military experience) hire a few experienced ex-soldiers from the British and other armies and then hire locals to fill out the ranks.  The Colonel got paid if the East India Company was happy with his performance and his performance was predicated on the performance of his troops.  His troops wouldn't perform well if they were grumbling.  

Even after the regiments and the Colonels became direct hires of the East India Company, and then the British Crown, like all other British regiments that sense of "ownership" existed well into the 20th century (maybe the 21st in Britain via the senates).  The troops were the Colonel's troops.  He fed them, clothed them, equipped them and led them.  And he paid them.

So one solution to the problem is, perhaps, to put a bit of the entrepreneurial spirit into the system and figure out how to resurrect the "Guides" and the "Scouts" and the "Legions" and the "Field Forces" that policed the British Empire for so long - and whose successors are still well represented in the Indian and Pakistani armies and organizations like Jordan's Arab Legion.  You need to find Canadian versions of Glubb Pasha.

The second thing they did was partner/mentor Indian officers.

In addition to the cadre of European officers the "native" regiments had a full complement of Indian subalterns and junior field grade officers up to the rank of Major with independent command of Company/Squadron sub-units, as well as an entirely native corps or NCOs.

I include the Wiki article on these for the rank structure but disagree with the note that Viceroy Commissioned Officers were Warrant Officers.  They weren't.  They were commissioned officers as much as I was in that my commission was granted by the local Viceroy here in Canada - the Governor-General.  They weren't treated the same socially (another matter and irrelevant here) but they were treated the same as any other officer on the parade square.

So what is my point?

This notion of paying the locals directly makes excellent sense to me.
Couple that with the observation that the ANA seems to be making some strides towards competence and respectability.
Couple that with the observation that historically (and the bias of modern western soldiers notwithstanding) soldiers have been indistinguishable from police.
Couple that with a revision of the old hierarchy of the Raj and create local "Regiments" with a local "Colonel" with Canadian advisors working for him -  A modification of the OMLTs I guess, and a modification of the concept of Honourary Colonel.

We have the team of Advisors in place to the Government in Kabul (80 Civil Servants? Check)
We have the structure for forming "Regiments" out of the ANA/ANP (OMLTs - right idea, not enough of them)
We have the potential recruits (ANA seems to be more sound than not.  ANP exists.  The general populace can't be less amenable to military life than your average 19th century Indian.)
Perhaps this is the final link in putting the system together.

And none of this need undermine the Karzai government.  The ANA/ANP units still would operate under the authority of the Government in Kabul.

And the CF would be there to do what the "Europeans" did for the Raj: provide BOTH a Quick Reaction Force to deal with trouble spots AND to keep wayward units of the ANA/ANP in line.


Final point to Ferguson:

"....the unspoken truth about British India; and that was why, as Machonochie (a Devon born Magistrate of the Raj in the 1880s) himself put it, it did not really feel like 'a conquered country'.  Only the Indian rulers had been supplanted or subjugated by the British; most Indians carried on much as before - indeed, for an important class of them British rule was an opportunity for self-advancement."
Ferguson, Empire p.189

Relations with the local rulers and how they react to self-advancing juniors is another discussion.


Viceroy's Commissioned Officer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Viceroy's Commissioned Officer (VCO) was a senior Indian member of the British Indian Army. VCOs held appointments approximately equivalent to Warrant Officers in the British Army, but held a commission issued by the Viceroy. Also known as Indian Officers or Native Officers, they were treated in almost all respects as commissioned officers, but only had authority over Indian troops and were subordinate to all British King's (and Queen's) Commissioned Officers and King's Commissioned Indian Officers.

These ranks were created to facilitate effective liaison between the British officers and their native troops. The soldiers who were promoted to VCO rank had long service and good service records, spoke reasonably fluent English, and could act as a common liaison point between officers and men and as advisers to the British officers on Indian affairs.

VCOs were always treated and addressed with respect. Even a British officer would address a VCO as, for instance, "Subedar Sahib" or <name> "Sahib".

Ranks held by VCOs were:

Cavalry regiments
Jemadar
Risaldar (or Ressaidar)
Risaldar-Major (also called Ressaidar-Major or Wordi-Major)
Infantry regiments and other arms
Jemadar
Subedar
Subedar-Major
Similar ranks are retained in the Indian Army and Pakistan Army, where they are known as Junior Commissioned Officers (JCOs).

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viceroy%27s_Commissioned_Officer"
 
Police pay, resources lag far behind military's, Panjwai chief says
By OMAR EL AKKAD  Thursday, October 11, 2007 – Page A22
Article Link

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- Panjwai's chief of police arrived at the Canadian military base here yesterday for a joint planning session with Canadian soldiers, but also used the opportunity to publicly decry the discrepancy in pay, equipment and training between his officers and those of the Afghan National Army.

Colonel Ahmad Shah Audin, responsible for policing Panjwai district just southwest of Kandahar city, said officers in the national army have far better equipment than his own.

"We have only rifles, handcuffs," Col. Audin said through an interpreter. "We need to have the same [equipment as the national army]."

Col. Audin said his force doesn't have the same training or salary as their military counterparts, a discrepancy that even stretches in some cases to adequate uniforms.

The disconnect between Afghanistan's police and army, both vital to Canadian plans to eventually hand over responsibility for security in the volatile southern region, has become a serious problem, not just for the safety of Afghan police officers, but for Canadian troops. On several occasions, the Canadians have secured a portion of the region from insurgents, built a police substation and transferred control to Afghan officers, only to find themselves forced to secure the same location again after insurgents rout the police force.

There has been growing discontent in recent months about the state of the Afghan police, both from within the ranks and among those who have to deal with them.
More on link
 
Well, if we hope to build a strong professional police force that will be respected by / and respect the Afghan people, then this disconnect has to be resolved.  Crap pay & crap working conditions will attract the worst kind of rabble.  They will spend more time looking for graft & be susceptible to the smallest bribes.
 
Back
Top