NATO Best Positioned For Police Training In Afghanistan

Sally McNamara / January 29, 2010

Both British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have criticized the European Union’s police training mission in Afghanistan this past week, and it is not hard to see why. With just over 200 staff (many of whom are bureaucrats and not trainers), the NATO Parliamentary Assembly has described the EU Police Mission as too small, underfunded, slow to deploy, inflexible, and largely restricted to the safety of the capital.

It is more than two years since the European Union undertook to train Afghanistan’s police force and the mission is scheduled to end this June. Before the EU thinks about reapproving the mission, someone should suggest diverting these resources to the NATO Training Mission instead. (more…)