Afghanistan steps up effort to keep tabs on police

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Afghanistan steps up effort to keep tabs on police
By Geoff Ziezulewicz, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Thursday, November 26, 2009

WARDAK PROVINCE, Afghanistan — In a step toward more accountability, the Afghan government is starting to collect vital information on the 95,000 members of the national police, a force that has become synonymous with unprofessionalism and corruption.

Fingerprints, facial recognition points, weapon serial numbers and other data on Afghan National Police began to be collected in October as part of a program called the Personnel Asset Inventory.

The Ministry of the Interior has registered 16,000 police officers so far in Kabul and 2,700 in Kandahar, about half that province’s force, according to Army Lt. Col. David Hylton, spokesman for NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan.

The second phase of the registration is just beginning in key districts throughout the south, and the program will expand to the rest of the country next month, Hylton said in an e-mail. He says the program is Afghan-led, with mentoring and other assistance from NATO. The Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan is funding the effort, which will cost about $95,000.

In addition to the biometric and weapon information, policemen are undergoing drug tests and some will receive retinal scans as they gather at their respective provincial capitals to be registered. The biometric information will be compared with similar registries such as those compiled by NATO forces on detainees and suspected insurgents. A similar inventory of the Afghan National Army is in the works as well, Hylton said.


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