RT America | August 6, 2015
Two Albuquerque police officers are on trial for killing a homeless man who was camping in the foothills, as body camera footage shows the cops escalating the confrontation. Simone Del Rosario speaks with Albuquerque civil rights attorney Shannon Kennedy about the case.
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A member of the Afghan local police meets with soldiers from the U.S. Army in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, January 20, 2013. (photo: Andrew Burton/Reuters)
Graeme Smith | Reuters | Readers Supported News | June 10, 2015
ne band of Afghan gunmen tied up a captive in an open field, picked up rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and used the victim for target practice. Another group rounded up men and boys and confined them in a mosque, before going house-to-house to steal valuables and rape women. Elsewhere, a bunch of gunmen took the most respected elder of a village — a white-bearded gentleman who dared to complain about their behavior — and dragged him behind their pickup truck until he was dead.
Fighters like these collect salaries from the United States as part of a $120 million program to support the Afghan Local Police (ALP). They are called “police” but could be more accurately described as pro-government militias, often serving in the most dangerous rural parts of Afghanistan with only a modicum of control from their masters in the central government.
The anecdotes provided in this article were gathered from interviews in eight provinces of Afghanistan, from 2013 to 2015. We agreed to protect the anonymity of those quoted here because of the very real threat of reprisals. The full International Crisis Group report is available here.
Jennifer Norris | Foreign Policy in Focus | Reader Supported News | April 21, 2013
mericans who left Zero Dark Thirty thinking that the dark stain of torture is behind us should be cautioned by the U.S. exit strategy in Afghanistan.
As the 2014 deadline for ending the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan approaches, U.S. forces have been working with the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan National Police (ANP) to build their capacity to fight the Taliban and other insurgent elements on their own. Yet even as the ANA and ANP cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars a year, there are still swaths of the country that the national army and police cannot control.
Faced with an impending withdrawal deadline and tightening budgets, U.S. planners created another security entity, the Afghan Local Police (ALP), which they have pitched as an affordable short-term fix to fill this security vacuum. However, the name is a misnomer, since members do not have police powers and are essentially village militias armed with AK-47s. Highlighting its prominence as a key feature of the U.S. exit strategy, General David Petraus described the ALP program in 2011 as “arguably the most critical element in our effort to help Afghanistan develop the capacity to secure itself.”
Despite some success in achieving security gains, the ALP program has been plagued by such problems as Taliban infiltration and insider attacks. But most controversially, ALP units have been accused of committing serious human rights abuses against local populations with apparent impunity. Afghan President Ahmed Karzai recently expelled U.S. Special Forces from Wardak province due to allegations that American forces and the ALP members they trained had tortured and killed Afghan civilians. Many commentators in the United States attacked Karzai’s decision, but allegations of human rights abuses must be taken seriously.
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