Word: khodaydad
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Dates: during 2008-2008
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...eight weeks of training may root out some corruption, but it is not enough to bring security to the insurgency-wracked villages of southern Afghanistan. Afghan police are only lightly armed. They carry AK-47s, and each truck is mounted with a Russian light machine gun. In Bala Beluk, Khodaydad's forces routinely face insurgents armed with an arsenal of mortars, rockets, rocket-propelled grenades, armor piercing rounds and increasingly sophisticated Improvised Explosive Devices. Between March 2007 and March 2008 police casualties hit 1119, according to the Ministry of the Interior. Afghan National Army deaths, by contrast, were...
...reason to have embedded mentors: preventing the newly trained police from backsliding into old practices, and protecting them from corrupt officials who are threatened by clean cops. They compare Bala Beluk to 1970s New York City, with its toxic mix of gang warfare, corruption, organized crime and drug commerce. Khodaydad, they say, is an Afghan Frank Serpico, the cop who exposed systematic and widespread corruption within the city's police ranks, and was shot by heroin dealers in what was thought to have been a hit organized by corrupt colleagues. Khodaydad is the only non-commissioned officer in Afghanistan...
...Still, Khodaydad is aware that his honesty has unintended consequences. For one thing, there's the $30,000 price on his head. He doesn't know exactly who set the hit, but he has been warned repeatedly. One suspect, he says, is Farah's provincial police chief Khalilullah Rahmani. "Because I am not paying Khalil [Rahmani], he is forced to take the money I would give him in other ways," says Khodaydad. One of those ways, say both Khodaydad and his U.S. mentors, is by withholding vital supplies such as fuel and ammunition to sell on the black market. Rahmani...
...coincidence that the most honest police district in the region is also the most targeted by Taliban insurgents. Most of the other district police chiefs try to stay out of the Taliban's way, or actively support them by donating weapons meant for cops on the beat. Khodaydad estimates that he gets into at least two engagements with militants a week, while surrounding districts are tranquil. "The government in Farah is working hand in hand with the Taliban," he says. "Khalil [Rahmani] asks me, 'Why do you fight? You are the only one. Why don't you relax like...
...most effective thing Cone's mentors can do for now is support the guys who are making an effort to reform themselves, like Khodaydad. "If the coalition left I would quit," he says. "There is no way to fight with this leadership. We would have no food and no ammunition. We would have to be like the other commanders, driven to stealing in order to sustain ourselves. It would be better to stay at home." And Afghanistan would be the more dangerous...