"Most of them have been members of hostile groups in the past."
Goshta, Afghanistan (ANTARA News/AFP) - The Afghan Local Police, branded by some critics as an incompetent Taliban-linked militia, is one of the many security challenges facing the country as international troops withdraw.

Only founded in 2010, the ALP is tasked with community-level policing to suppress violence in some of Afghanistan`s most dangerous and remote areas.

Its members, selected by local elders, were sent for just three weeks` training by US special forces and then further instruction under the Afghan national police.

The ALP is often accused of thuggery and operating outside the law, and its reputation was further damaged by an attack on December 24 when an officer shot dead five of his colleagues.

But US supervisors of the ALP say its 18,000 men nationwide provide practical, low-cost protection from the insurgents, and they dismiss suggestions that its ranks are half-hearted, criminals or Taliban sympathisers.

"The enemy has declared the ALP their number-one threat," Colonel Don Bolduc, who is in charge of the training project for the US military, told AFP.

"They are relevant, resilient, accountable and cost-effective. Those things weigh heavily on how the Afghan government will see the local police 10-15 years from now."

A truer sign of the ALP`s commitment to Afghanistan`s future, he suggested, was that 353 men had died in action since 2010.

"We can see a 60 percent decrease in security problems after the establishment of the ALP," Ali Shah Ahmadzai, the Afghan general in charge of the ALP, told AFP in Kabul.

But others are less convinced.

"A number of individuals who have been recruited in the ALP have had membership records in illegal armed groups and the Taliban," the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) said in a recent report.

"Most of them have been members of hostile groups in the past. Some of them are notorious for having committed criminal acts... There are individuals within the ALP who have bad war records and who are even serial killers."

The report concluded that the ALP could turn "into the armed opposition resisting government authority" -- adding to the volatile mix of factions that many fear could trigger civil war after international troops depart in 2014.

"Reducing insecurity in the short-term has positive aspects but it is laying the ground for problems in the future," said Fabrizio Foschini from the Afghanistan Analysts Network.

"The ALP means an increased number of armed men who respond to local agendas and are not in close cooperation with Afghan institutions.

"These ALP could start fighting each other for prominence. In my view, it is not worth it."
(U.G005/M016)

Editor: Priyambodo RH
Copyright © ANTARA 2012