In Afghanistan, guns, police go missing

Afghan police men guard a Kabul checkpoint, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

by Frank James

The news from Afghanistan continues to be bad. Today, a House subcommittee heard reports that the U.S. military can't account for thousands of weapons it provided to Afghan security forces, raising the prospect that some are being used against NATO forces.

Meanwhile, the Afghan security forces which should be safeguarding those weapons is far from being up to the job, increasing the likelihood more weapons will go missing.

A Government Accountability Office expert, Charles Michael Johnson, told the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs that over 375,000 weapons purchased for about $223 million were provided to the Afghans but that the U.S. military lacked adequate records for more than 59 percent of the weapons. His testimony was drawn from this report.

And an expert with the International Crisis Group, Mark Schneider, painted a mostly discouraging picture of the security situation in Afghanistan, showing maps that indicated the areas of instability have spread like an oil slick from 2003 to 2009.

Part of the problem is there aren't nearly as many NATO police trainers as Afghanistan needs.

Schneider said:

Just this last month, the U.S. commander said that he lacks, with respect to the police, 2,300 trainers and mentors. That's at least more than a third of what he needs for the carry out the task of training the police. And I think it's important, as you've heard from my two colleagues.

If you don't have effective command and control over those police forces and you don't have systems in place, those weapons are simply not going to be able to be secured. And let me just note one other point here. This now is again in our last report. There are 80,000 police names on the roster. They are being paid mostly by the United States but by the international police fund.

And many of those police are little more than names on a roll, according to Schneider:

On any given day, 20 percent of those proposed 80,000 police officers are absent from duty. Another 17 percent listed, on the rolls, are actually the names of dead or wounded police officers, as a means of providing pensions and benefits to the family.

The question is, of those who are -- let's say the -- somewhere in the neighborhood of 20(,000) to 30,000 police who are not there -- the U.N. actually says there are actually about 55,000 police in the field. The question about where those weapons of those police went is a significant question.

There's one other question. This refers -- the reports that have been done refers to the Afghan security forces. What about the auxiliary police, the 11,000 that were started up two years ago, only 3,000 of whom currently are found, and I mean found? Were they given
weapons? If so, where are they?

And finally, there's a proposal now to start up a new community guard program outside of the structure of the police in the Pashtun areas. And without going to the question of the rationale for doing that as opposed to devoting your resources to, in fact, staff up, train and mentor and equip the Afghan National Police effectively, the question is, are those -- the weapons being given to those guards in those communities, are they being monitored and controlled? And I should also note they're actually getting paid more than the local Afghan police. We have serious questions about that program.

At this rate, Afghanistan may have the U.S. one day looking back at Iraq as the good old days,