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EUC Report: EU Afghan Police Mission

Indeed. I should remark, incidentally, that when we first engaged in this provision in the western Balkans, a very high proportion of the UK police who were seconded were from the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which was a different sort of force used to serving in a slightly different capacity. Certainly it is a question that we have to continue to work with, but again I remark that it would be easier for the French or Italians to second larger numbers of personnel to the NATO police training mission, which is much more concerned with training a gendarmerie, so to speak, than it has been for all of us to find local civilian police, who come from a different culture and background. The emphasis has been much more difficult—that of building the concept of a local and civilian police force. A number of criticisms have been made of the enterprise so far, and I shall try to answer a few of them. As the noble Lord, Lord Selkirk, and others have pointed out, we know that we have real problems in striking a balance between quantity and quality. The aim is to build an Afghan national police force of 130,000. We are not there yet, and the question of how much time you spend on training and how much on providing basic literacy skills is very much part of the trade-off. As noble Lords will know from the report, the NATO mission has done much more for basic literacy and training of that sort, while EUPOL has become much more specialised in providing leadership training for senior police officers and the intermediate ranks. Part of the improving informal relationship between NATO operations in Afghanistan and EUPOL has been a recognition that there are useful differences between the functions of each mission. That also answers some of the questions that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, asked about whether the police are actually playing a paramilitary role. The answer unavoidably has to be that to some extent the gendarmerie forces are playing such a role, but EUPOL is trying to provide the local police who will work with the local judiciary, as we also helped to develop that. That will provide the community policing which it has taken us a long time to develop in this country and which, I remember from the many stories that my father told me, was not entirely free of local corruption and patronage even 50 years ago. It will of course take a long time to build up to what we here regard as modern standards, and it will take a great deal of time to build a literate police force. As I read the report, I wondered how high a proportion of the Pakistani police force was literate. There are some severe problems that are not just especial to Afghanistan. On the question of attrition, noble Lords know that matters have improved a great deal. They were appalling but they are now better. I note this honest comment in the government response to the committee: "““The reality is that many parts of Afghanistan are not yet ready for civilian policing””." We have to do our best to help to make it ready for civilian policing, but there is always this problem.