Security

<it>Law & Order</it> in Afghanistan's Parwan Province

What happens when an RPG gunner takes a shot at your convoy, wounding three of your buddies? In Afghanistan’s Parwan Province, you call for backup from the Afghan National Police, and hope that Afghanistan’s criminal justice system takes care of the rest. Danger Room pal David Wood has an excellent story in Politics Daily on […]

090804-M-7825S-054What happens when an RPG gunner takes a shot at your convoy, wounding three of your buddies? In Afghanistan's Parwan Province, you call for backup from the Afghan National Police, and hope that Afghanistan's criminal justice system takes care of the rest.

Danger Room pal David Wood has an excellent story in Politics Daily on the difficult aftermath of an ambush that injured three paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division Special Troops Battalion. The attack, Wood writes, was "a horrifying and tragic story that is not uncommon here. But it was what happened afterwards that holds immense hope for this tortured country and for the American enterprise here. No air strikes were called in retaliation on the nearby villages. No punitive U.S. force arrived at dawn to rip down doors and rifle through peoples' belongings or to cuff suspects and march them off at rifle-point."

Instead, troopers waited for the Afghan National Police -- Afghanistan's broke, under-equipped cops -- to show up. The ANP immediately went out to question villagers, who quickly identified two suspects, who were then hauled off to jail.

It's not a move that sits easily with some soldiers. Pfc. Randall Bone tells Wood: "I get the fact that we are supposed to turn things over to the ANP ... But you see people who are practically family get hurt, part of you wants blood, an eye for an eye. I guarantee that somebody paid those guys to shoot at us, somebody will pay to have them bailed out. I don't trust the ANP."

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and coalition commander in Afghanistan, made it clear in his recent tactical directive that International Security Assistance Force troops will only search houses if accompanied by Afghan security forces. It's just one part of a delicate balancing act to win the trust of the local population.

But as Ben Arnoldy of the Christian Science Monitor observed in his report on the aftermath of a suicide bombing last week in Kabul, not everyone has gotten the message:

About an hour after the blast, the police chief charged with securing the elections in Kabul arrived on scene. Gen. Sayed Abdul Ghafar Sayed Zada, whose regular job is as chief of the criminal investigation department with the Kabul police, stepped under a security cordon tape stretched across the scene. An investigator at heart, he first bent down to pick up a small scrap of paper he saw lying on the street and looked it over.

When he rose, he was intercepted by representatives of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). He explained who he was, but got the response: 'We don’t care who you are; now it’s under control of ISAF.'

Once again, Tim Lynch of Free Range International cuts to the chase: "The ANP general in charge of conducting criminal investigations is denied access to the scene and run off by ISAF nitwits who would not know an Afghan general from the Easter Bunny," he writes. "What kind of an investigation do you think we will have now?"

[PHOTO: U.S. Department of Defense]

See Also: