Nato will extend the length of its police training course across Afghanistan from October as it takes aim at staggeringly low literacy rates and corruption among the force before all security is handed over to the Afghans by the end of 2014.
The Nato-led alliance has been training members of the 126,000-strong Afghan National Police since 2009. Afghan police had long been viewed as inept and lagging behind the training of the army, which was the focus of foreign instruction efforts since US-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001.
The task has become even more important as Western forces prepare to begin handing over security, a transition US President Barack Obama says will start from July, when he plans to begin a gradual drawdown of US troops. The Nato-run, six-week training course for police will gain an extra two weeks in some parts of the country from July, before the eight-week course is rolled out across Afghanistan from October 1, answering a request from the Afghan government.
Trainers had complained the course, aimed at forging a more professional officer class through teaching elementary combat and patrolling, was too short.
Security analysts have warned that efforts by Nato to produce quick results in training Afghan forces increase the risk of choosing "quantity over quality".
"No matter how good your police are, there is a minimum quantity that must be provided," said Canadian Navy Captain Angus Topshee, director of Nato's police training operations in Afghanistan. "Six weeks was deemed to be the bare minimum. We always wanted to increase it. If we sustain the security gains we have made, then we will increase it again," he told Reuters in an interview.
Police are often the only face of the government in many remote areas and a chronic lack of equipment makes them vulnerable to attack - police have suffered much higher rates of casualties than the army.
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