In Kandahar, coaxing Afghan police into training

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Lieutenant-Colonel Naeem of the Afghan police force had asked for his men to be trained, but had an abrupt change of heart when a U.S. military officer came back 10 days later with a new course lined up.

"If I send all my men to your training, who will stay here and work?" Naeem, the head of logistics at Kandahar's provincial police headquarters, pointedly asked in between picking up a ringing cellphone and signing papers in his office.

Bureaucratic resistance, missing teachers and recruits dropping out are among various frustrations U.S.-led NATO forces face as they rush to train Afghan policemen in an effort to remake a force widely considered corrupt and ineffective.

Nowhere is the training campaign more crucial or urgent than in the Taliban's birthplace of Kandahar, where NATO wants the Afghan National Police to be the face of a much-heralded summer offensive to root out insurgents.

"Professionalizing the police is an enormous challenge and it won't happen overnight," said a U.S. official in Kandahar. "But you need it because you can't govern a city with the army."

Under NATO's plan for the offensive, more than 6,000 Afghan police will be deployed across the city alongside U.S. troops. They will also be given a visible role in projects to improve basic services in a bid to improve their image, officials say.

It promises to be an uphill slog.

U.S. officials acknowledge the local police inspires little faith among residents and a military assessment shows local feeling toward the force ranges from "indifferent to negative."

"Instead of providing security, the police force is viewed as providing insecurity," said another U.S. official in Kandahar.

At a busy market road in the city center, 22-year old shopkeeper Haji Mohammad echoed the fears of many Kandaharis: "The police here come and beat up people for no reason."

IDENTIFY THE BAD GUYS

The U.S.-led NATO force is hoping basic training and an embed program where Western military police stay and mentor at local stations can usher in change -- a departure from past practice of just putting men in uniform and pushing them onto the streets.

With U.S. and Canadian troops and civilian police at their side during patrols, Afghan police are unlikely to ask for bribes or rough up locals, officials say. But making sure troops do not inadvertently act as allies to corrupt policemen can be tricky.

"We need to identify the bad guys quickly, so that we don't look like we're out there on the streets supporting them," a NATO military official visiting Kandahar told U.S. military police.

Police pay has been hiked to about 12,000 Afghanis ($240) -- just above the 10,000 Afghanis that U.S. commanders say the Taliban pays its fighters. Over the long-term, officials say training is the only way to make the force professional.

In Kandahar province, only 45 percent of the Afghan police has been through any training, said Staff Sergeant Brian Kenny, a trainer with the Canadian forces that operate in the area.

"What we're trying to do is get everybody through police fundamentals and we're giving them literacy training," he said. "In four and a half months, the difference is night and day."

At NATO's Camp Nathan Smith in Kandahar city, a refurbished training center for Afghan police boasts classrooms, a lunchroom with rows of benches and hand sanitizers, a gym and a mosque.

About 42 policemen -- most of them veterans rather than new recruits -- were enrolled in the first basic training course at the center. Problems began when six Afghan instructors from the interior ministry never showed up, some saying they were afraid to come to Kandahar, said a U.S. military police trainer.

After borrowing three instructors from a regional training center, the course got under way and 37 are expected to graduate -- three dropped out and two more were thrown out, including one who made copies of his identity card, the U.S. trainer said.

Otherwise, the course went off without problems, he said.

(Editing by Alex Richardson)