Institutional Problems within the Afghan Police
BY Herschel Smith
15 years, 10 months ago
Eventually the goal is to turn over the security of the Afghan population to the Afghan National Army and Afghan Police. This lofty goal is a long way off, according to the intitutional problems known to exist within the Afghan police. Drug addiction is the first hurdle.
Sixty per cent of the Afghan police in the country’s southern province of Helmand use drugs, it is claimed.
The estimate, made by a UK official working in the province, was contained in emails obtained by the BBC.
International forces are fighting a fierce counter-insurgency campaign against Taleban militants and other insurgents in Helmand.
But British officials are clearly worried about the reliability of the Afghan police.
“We are very concerned by the levels of drug abuse among the police,” the British Foreign Office said in a statement.
On patrol with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division we get the raw reaction to the Afghan police and their lack of honor and integrity.
“The police are just worthless,” fumed Fulat Khan, 20, when Haight said his troops were backing up the local cops. “Anytime there is a fight in the community, the police just laugh and watch it. We need an organization or a number we can call so somebody can come here and help us.”
This report is profoundly troubling, especially given the previous reports of drug problems in the Afghan National Army. There is much work to do within the government and institutions themselves in order even to begin to turn over security to Afghanistan.
On February 24, 2009 at 11:33 am, Warbucks said:
One of the developing protocols for dealing with drug addiction and alcoholism on Native American Reservations is to penetrate the blood-brain barrier with DMT using ancient Shamanic arts (religious arts) using entheogen which acts upon the non-addictive receptors of brain synapses. The substance is made naturally by the human brain and is found in very small quantities of the human brain, called DMT (aka, Dimethyltryptamine or N,N-dimethyltryptamine).
The application of the substance is being again formally studied by John Hopkins Medical Researchers on terminally ill cancer patient volunteers in efforts to lower death apprehensions. The treatment is a one time treatment that lasts several hours of one day whether administered by John Hopkins doctors in a clinical setting or by Shaman or Medicine-People in a religious based ceremony on the reservation.
The results for a significantly large portion of the participants is a spiritual awakening and life altering change which is reported to end addictions with group support.
The treatment produces results that are similar to spiritual awakenings of the meditative abilities of Mystic-Sufi, Hindu, Taoist, Zen, Buddhist, Christian-Mystic, world wide Shaman, and other world adepts in meditation. However, without group social support, there is a higher level of recidivism for the entheogenic experience after the initial break from addiction.
They mystics are the smallest groups within all western religions: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, a trend which seems to be changing through scientific study by physicists such as Dr. Thomas Campbell, PhD researching advanced consciousness, as science and religion seem to be merging.
The practical aspect of all this for the Afghan Police Force may well be that to win this war, provide stability in the region, we may have to think outside the box and apply methodologies that help break addictions and maintain follow-up group support. The science is available and ready. The social, political, networks are not.
Society still recovering from Dr. Timothy Leary – Harvard studies as the only clinical example. Dr. Leary’s work still can not be objectively evaluated as a result of his cult-like political following (which he clearly encouraged – “Turn on, tune in, and drop out”) as addictive drugs then became common place in the 60’s and all that followed. DMT is not addictive. He and his colleagues were working on important research and lost credibility by Dr. Leary’s entering politics as a matter of his personal conscious. He and all his work and that of his colleagues immediately became demonized setting back useful public research of social value at least a generation, possibly longer, from which 50-years later, science is just beginning to recover.