New beginning for national police force

As Afghanistan faces growing instability, the government has launched a vast training programme to create a 50,000-strong national police force. The new programme, launched on Sunday, is supported by the US and will train thousands of policemen and women each year. "The initiative is aimed to strengthen central government’s national capacity and a significant step towards the creation of a 50,000 trained national police force and 12,000 border police within next five years," Ali Ahmad Jalali, the Afghan interior minister, told IRIN on Sunday at the inaugural ceremony of the National Police Training Centre (NPTC) in the capital, Kabul. "The first participants of the centre are 40 police officers, who will be trained in police-instructor development," Nazar Mohammad Nikzad, the interior ministry's deputy director of education, told IRIN, adding that after three weeks these officers would become the first members of the constable-level police-training instructors. "The trainers will also provide basic eight-week police-training courses for constable-level officers who have heretofore not been exposed to any professional police instruction," Nikzad said, noting that the centre would pass out 7,000 trained constable-level police within one year. He said the centre would recruit volunteers from all over Afghanistan and that the applicants would have to be literate, or at least able to read and write. According to interior ministry figures, there are currently between 70,000 and 80,000 people calling themselves police country-wide, most of them having previously been mujahidin, or combatants. "We will create a 50,000 trained police force comprised of old and new recruits within next four years," Nikzad said, stressing that in order to join the National Police Service, all former police employees would first have to undergo courses at the NPTC within that (four-year) period. US sources in Kabul said the police training programme would include modules on human rights and democratic principles. "Our US-led international police training team comprises seven members: two officers from the United Kingdom, one officer from Slovenia, one from Sweden, and three from the United States," Robert P. Finn, the US ambassador in Kabul, told IRIN, noting that the team was closely working with the government of Germany, which has been the leading country concerning itself with law enforcement and police training in Afghanistan. There is already a police academy in Kabul, which has been renovated and reactivated by Germany, and is currently training 1,500 police officers for BA and higher level degrees. The NPTC was initiated and is being supported by the US; it is in the east of Kabul, and is mainly mandated to train constable-level police and upgrade old police recruits' capacity within an specific time scale.