Germany has trouble manning police training mission

BERLIN, Sept. 24 (UPI) -- Germany on Wednesday promised to double its police-training force in Afghanistan as part of a European effort to boost a mission that so far has been "disastrous," according to a range of experts and politicians.

Germany's Cabinet decided to send some 120 police to Afghanistan to support the European Union's EUPOL police training mission, up from a previous maximum of 60, government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said Wednesday in Berlin. Germany also will help staff a northern Afghan police-training center.

The German staff boost is part of an EU-wide effort to double the size of trainers to 400. The move is aimed at silencing critics who have said the EU mission is too small, poorly planned and underfunded.

The overall pledge sounds great, but Germany's ability to follow up on its promises has been insufficient recently.

Germany has promised to send 60 police trainers into Afghanistan for more than a year, but most experts, including military sources on the ground, complain they haven't arrived in full force yet. German Bundeswehr troops have had to fill in the gaps -- not only do they lack the proper qualification to train Afghan police, they are also needed elsewhere to provide security.

The track record of police training in Afghanistan is an "absolute scandal," said Werner Hoyer, the opposition Free Democrat Party's foreign policy expert. Hoyer, who has repeatedly traveled to Afghanistan, made the comment Tuesday evening at an Afghanistan panel discussion at the German Council on Foreign Relations, a Berlin-based think tank.

Even officials linked to the government stated their concern regarding Germany's contribution to the mission.

Thomas Kossendey, an undersecretary at the Defense Ministry, and Erich Stather, an undersecretary at the Development Ministry, admitted that the mission was not going according to plan. "I'm not happy at all," Kossendey said, with opposition lawmakers Hoyer and Juergen Trittin, the chair of the Green Party's parliamentary faction, claiming Germany's government broke its promise by not delivering an adequate number of police trainers.

Observers say fear is the main problem. Germany's states are asked to help man the police training mission, yet they can't force their officers to take part. These days, with death tolls on the rise in northern Afghanistan, German police don't feel like taking up an overseas mission.

"We have the same problem when it comes to development projects," Stather said at the same panel discussion.

After a series of terrorist attacks on aid workers, "we are increasingly having trouble convincing people" to lead development projects in Afghanistan, he said.

Officials are now calling for a reform of the police mandate to staff the mission with federal police agents only -- because those can be forced to go.

The current dispute is the latest in a series of blunders with police training in Afghanistan. The EUPOL mission, since 2007 under the leadership of the European Union, builds on previous, unsuccessful efforts by Germany, which trained police in Afghanistan from 2002 on -- with only 40 instructors. Experts now hope Berlin can live up to its latest promises.

Germany's Cabinet also recently agreed to increase the maximum number of German troops in Afghanistan by 1,000 to 4,500 soldiers. Berlin also boosted reconstruction aid by $40 million to $200 million to counter a food shortage. And of course it's not all bad news in Afghanistan.

"We are making great progress" equipping northern Afghanistan with energy and water infrastructure, Stather said, adding that two food processing plants have been built recently.

Kossendey, who is sponsoring an elementary school near Mazar-i-Sharif, said the support for extremism in the northern provinces continues to fall.

"(German Bundeswehr troops) have uncovered several dozen arms depots in the area," he said. "We would have never found them without the help of the local people."