U.S. trainers have key mission in Afghanistan
An Army officer from California heads a team working to train police in a country where the officers often are corrupt.
FARAH, AFGHANISTAN — There were two good reasons why Army Capt. Dave Panian made a perilous journey across the desert to this dusty provincial capital.
He wanted to check on his close friend, a district police chief whose family had been threatened by the Taliban. He also wanted to pry loose salaries for the chief's police officers, who were owed two months' pay.
Panian, a lanky officer from San Diego, heads a small U.S. Army team training local police officers near the village of Bala Buluk, 40 miles northeast of Farah in southwestern Afghanistan, where his friend Haji Khudaydad is the chief.
Marine officer: An article in Thursday's Section A about U.S. military officers who train local police in southern Afghanistan gave the wrong first name of Matthew for the Marine officer taking over the training program near the village of Bala Buluk. He is 2nd Lt. Andrew Bohn.
Training is the easy part. The hard part is cutting through threats, bureaucracy, cronyism and corruption.
The effectiveness of the police and other local officials is growing in importance as the Taliban moves to regain territory in southern Afghanistan this summer. Afghan and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops battled the Taliban on Wednesday for control of villages around the city of Kandahar, about 220 miles east of Farah.
Throughout the country, police officers often have been little more than hired guns who raise money for local warlords through illegal taxes, shakedowns and corruption. Many policemen and district officials sell weapons and opium. Some collude with the Taliban.
Trainers such as Panian from the U.S. military and its foreign partners have been working since 2003 to reform the police.
Some units have fought effectively alongside U.S. forces, but others remain mired in cronyism and organized crime enterprises. With new fighting in southern Afghanistan, the role of police chiefs such as Khudaydad and the loyalty of their officers are crucial.
So Panian got into a shouting match with police finance officers who refused to release last month's pay. He ended up storming over to the local bank and coming out with a plastic bag stuffed with the equivalent of $14,000 in afghanis, the local currency. But first he warned the officials that there would be "hell to pay" if they didn't cough up this month's pay the next day.
Then Panian found out that even though the Taliban had put a $30,000 bounty on Khudaydad, officials refused to help him move his wives and children out of the provincial capital and into the protection of relatives and tribesmen.
After a harrowing seven-hour nighttime drive across the desert in a convoy of policemen, U.S. soldiers and Marines, Khudaydad was delivered back to his Bala Buluk compound. He was relieved to be out of Farah.
