VZCZCXRO4380
RR RUEHBW RUEHIK RUEHPOD RUEHPW RUEHYG
DE RUEHBUL #0980/01 1131055
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 221055Z APR 08
FM AMEMBASSY KABUL
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 3655
INFO RUCNAFG/AFGHANISTAN COLLECTIVE
RUEHZG/NATO EU COLLECTIVE
RUEKJCS/OSD WASHINGTON DC
RUEKJCS/JOINT STAFF WASHINGTON DC
RHMFIUU/HQ USCENTCOM MACDILL AFB FL
RHEHAAA/NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHINGTON DC
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON DC

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 KABUL 000980 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR SCA/FO SCA/A, S/CRS, EUR/RPM 
NSC FOR WOOD 
OSD FOR SHIVERS 
CENTCOM FOR CG CSTC-A, CG CJTF-82 POLAD 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL PGOV AF
SUBJECT: PRT ASADABAD: KUNAR POLICE FRUSTRATED AS FIGHTING SEASON 
LOOMS 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary: Frustration among provincial police chiefs boiled 
over at an eastern region governors' conference in late March, as 
Kunar Brigadier Abdul Jalal declared that he was under-staffed and 
under-resourced.  Jalal also asserted that the Ministry of Interior 
(MoI) has yet to release a now overdue staffing plan for the year, 
leaving the police confused about which year's employment schedule 
to follow.  (Note:  The staffing plan was finally approved April 
14.)  Auxiliary police, who make up over half the force in Kunar, 
continue to train to qualify for regular police positions, which 
they must do by October 1, when the auxiliary program ends.  To 
date, however, no such graduates have moved over to regular police 
positions, and many auxiliary contracts will expire within one 
month.  Jalal also claims that the police are too lightly equipped 
to fight heavy-weapon-toting insurgents who attack roadside 
checkpoints. 
 
Lack of Personnel 
----------------- 
¶2. (SBU) Three police checkpoints along the Pech Valley road were 
blown up in February.  Residents credited two of the incidents to 
insurgents, and the third to a land dispute.  In the aftermath, 
Governor Wahidi accused Jalal's district police chiefs of failing to 
man the checkpoints.  At least one of the sites was reportedly empty 
when destroyed.  (The PRT suspects that insurgents told police to 
vacate the premises "or die," or that police had information of an 
imminent attack.)  After performing random spot-checks and finding 
more unmanned stations, Wahidi increased pressure on Jalal. 
However, the Governor's weekly denouncements of police ineptitude at 
security meetings have only served to shame Jalal in a public forum 
and evoked little response. 
 
¶3. (SBU) Jalal, scrambling to save face amid accusations of 
ineffectiveness, called in district chiefs to criticize their 
performance.  He stated that every time a police checkpoint is 
intimidated, overrun, or blown up, it sends a message to the local 
population that the police are weak or unwilling, a theme that 
insurgent propaganda exploits.  Jalal emphasized, however, that the 
police force's biggest problem is personnel numbers, not resolve. 
 
 
¶4. (SBU) Jalal pointed to Watapur district in the Pech River valley, 
which has been allocated 180 police positions, of which only 71 are 
currently filled.  Jalal asserts that with these numbers and limited 
force protection features it is unreasonable to expect that police 
will stay overnight in regularly-attacked positions. 
 
Training Status 
--------------- 
¶5. (SBU) None of Kunar's 14 districts (five of which form a 260-km 
border with Pakistan's Chitral settled area and Bajaur and Mohmand 
tribal areas) has been publicly designated for Focused District 
Development in 2008 or 2009.  As a result, a U.S. Military Police 
unit, DynCorp police mentors contracted to DOS/INL, and the Police 
Mentoring and Training team are partnering to provide "immersion 
training" in each district.  These mixed civil-military teams go to 
one district for 30 consecutive days to retrain police as a unit. 
The plan was somewhat successful in Chowkay, a southern district on 
the west side of the Kunar River.  But in that district, the 
Provincial Reconstruction Team's contractor responsible for the 
32-km Chowkay valley road project reported that police refused to 
venture more than two kilometers into the valley from the 
Jalalabad-Asmar paved road.  Immersion training is now ongoing in 
Narang district, also south of Asadabad. 
 
¶6. (SBU) Kunar is authorized 800 auxiliary police, of which 771 are 
currently on the books.  Mentors estimate that actual numbers are as 
low as 670.  Auxiliary training is 22 percent complete, but 
rollovers to the regular police have not begun, and Brigadier Jalal 
does not yet know how many of the 800 auxiliary positions will 
become regular police slots in next year's staffing allocation. 
Many of Kunar's auxiliaries signed on at the beginning of the last 
Afghan year (1386) and their contracts are about to expire.  If 
their contracts end before they finish training, Kunar could face a 
drastic reduction in available police personnel. 
 
¶7. (SBU) Two Afghan National Army battalions reinforced both the 
Pech River valley and the area east of the Kunar River in February. 
This, combined with a border police recruitment campaign, has 
 
KABUL 00000980  002 OF 002 
 
 
alleviated some of the pressure on regular police to man remote 
positions, particularly in the eastern districts of Sarkani and Khas 
Kunar.  With up to 700 Afghan Border Police trainees scheduled to 
deploy from the district of Kamdesh, Nuristan Province, south to 
Khas Kunar in the next two months, Governor Wahidi has asked Jalal 
to have police fall back to main roadways and create 100 
percent-check traffic control points.  While supportive of the idea, 
Jalal has been noncommittal, saying his staff is already spread too 
thin. 
 
¶8. (SBU) There is a perception among provincial leadership that the 
Ministry of Interior staffing plan fails to account for threat and 
allocates positions and equipment based only on population.  (Note: 
Planners for the new police staffing patterns utilized a formula 
that included both population and threat assessments to allocate 
police positions by district.)  Jalal does not appear to be dodging 
responsibility for manning of police posts in the province, but is 
voicing legitimate frustration over his ability to recruit, retain, 
and rollover patrolmen into the force.  The PRT expects the 
increased army and border police presence to mitigate the usual 
uptick in insurgent activity due to warming weather, but regular 
police are neither confident nor optimistic about their ability to 
interdict insurgent traffic on main roads. 
 
WOOD