Professionalism Key To Population's Trust Of Afghani Police, Says NATO Official

By Eric Rice

Konrad Shourie, a Superintendent in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and chief civilian police advisor to LTG. William Caldwell of the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan, told Talk Radio News Service today that the increasing level of professionalism occuring within the Afghan police force could lead to a trust capable of bridging the ethnic and tribal divides that are so deep rooted in Afghani society. 

“Once the profession of policing is understood and respected, then the ethnicity thing won’t be an issue,” Shourie said. 

In working towards that time, he says that the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan is spending a lot of resources on increasing the focus of police work on community based problems, rather than it being centered entirely on national security issues. 

He added that, “we are working very closely with the [Afghan] Minister of the Interior to insure that there is proper ethnic representation throughout the country,” so that the police are not seen as the military arm of any particular group. 

Furthermore, said Shourie, NATO officials are paying particular attention to “making sure the Pashtuns from the south, who are the group the Taliban are primarily able to draw from, that they’re represented well at every level in the organization.” Creating a balanced police force will ideally make the police the ally of every ethnic group, he explained. 

So far so good it seems, as Shourie said he is very pleased with the results so far, claiming that even at home in Canada they would be happy with the poll numbers being produced in Afghanistan on civilian trust of the police force. The improvement has been most marked over the last nine months he said, as the newly minted police are stationed in areas that have never before played host to any sort of government presence.

Going forward, said Shourie, the integration of police forces with the rest of the Afghan government on a national level as a key part of the development of rule of law as a whole, and continued professionalization will be the keys to the lasting trust without which the police forces will never be able to secure the country.