Illiteracy, corruption hamper Afghan police: NATO

reuters.com
An 80 percent illiteracy rate, corruption and a lack of trained personnel are hampering Afghan police, the NATO commander overseeing the training of Afghan security forces said on Wednesday.
NATO has stepped up training of Afghan police in an effort to reform a force that inspires little confidence among locals, struggles with high dropout rates and is frequently accused of incompetence and drug use.
But only 45 percent of Afghan police have had any formal preparation, said U.S. Lieutenant-General William Caldwell, who heads the training mission as the alliance prepares to boost the size of the Afghan army and police to over 300,000 by 2011.
The training is also central to NATO's strategy to eventually transfer control of security to Afghan forces so that Western troops can start withdrawing next year.
Professionalizing the police force will not happen overnight, Caldwell said.
"That is a real challenge, you've got a lot of policemen out there who're trying to do their job that have never had any kind of professional training," Caldwell told reporters in Rome.
"They've haven't been taught human rights, they haven't been instilled with this idea that they serve the people."
Taking on a literacy rate of 20 percent among police recruits, NATO has introduced mandatory reading and writing courses for the army and police, Caldwell said.
NATO's ambitions are modest on the literacy front -- with the focus on giving cadets third-grade level reading and writing skills rather than a high school education, Caldwell said.
"We saw that very early on as a problem," he said.
"If you're a policeman you need to be able to take some notes, write down the license plate number, take a statement from a person or something like that, and if they can't read or write they're going to be very challenged in performing their duties as a police officer or patrolman."
He also acknowledged that corruption remained a significant problem within the police force, something NATO hopes to counter through higher pay and improving transparency.
"Corruption is a challenge, there's no question. And I think everybody recognizes that. So we need to help set conditions that don't lead them to corrupt practices."