Minister faces task of cleaning up corrupt police

GARDEZ, Afghanistan -- Charged with reforming a bankrupt police force rife with corruption, Afghanistan's new interior minister promised Friday to resign after seven months if he fails in his task.

"This is my promise," Taj Mohammed Wardak, 81, told The Associated Press in Kabul. He said that if the Afghan police force is not a professional one by then, "I will leave."

But in the provinces, where law is still decided by men with guns, Wardak -- a naturalized American chosen because he is an ethnic Pashtun -- faces a nearly impossible task.

"We have no food, no uniforms, no money," policeman Ghulam Sakhi said at the police station, a newly whitewashed fortress on a hilltop overlooking Gardez.

"We're drowning in debt," said fellow officer Farhat Gul. "We are paying for the painting ourselves. We and our families are doing the work."

Paying at checkpoints

Conditions in Gardez, where Wardak served as governor until he was appointed to the interior ministry post this week by the grand council, or loya jirga, are little different from those elsewhere in this shattered land.

In Afghanistan's Pashtun-dominated areas, people complain that the ethnic Tajik-dominated police force discriminates against them. Trucker Mohammed Khan, who hauls tires from one end of the country to the other, says he is often forced to hand over money at police checkpoints.

"If I don't pay, they say I am Taliban or al-Qaida," he said.

Things aren't much better in the capital, Kabul. A policeman who served during the 1980s communist regime said his house was robbed by new officers who came with the Tajik-dominated northern alliance, which took over the city in November when the Taliban fled.

The policeman, who asked not to be identified, said he was also stopped twice at a checkpoint where police took his money even after he told them he was a fellow officer.

In Gardez, evidence of the daunting task facing the new administration can be seen everywhere.

Rockets have blasted holes in homes and dozens of people have been killed in factional fighting in the last three months. Morale among the police and the security services is low. Guns are everywhere.

"I'm a policemen," Abdul Samad chuckled as he sat barefoot in a restaurant, his Kalashnikov protectively by his side. "All the men in this town are policemen now."

No uniforms, training

Here, as in most parts of Afghanistan, the police have no uniforms and no training. Most of them were fighters who once battled each other and later fought the Taliban. Wardak calls them "jihadis," or holy warriors, and gave assurance that all they need is one month's training.

The appointment of Wardak, whom some delegates called too weak for such a stressful position, was seen as an attempt to bring an ethnic balance to the government.

His predecessor was Yunus Qanooni, a Tajik from the northern alliance. Wardak, like President Hamid Karzai, is a Pashtun but unlike many of them is untainted by previous association with the Taliban since he was living in California's San Fernando Valley when the hardline militia ran the country. He returned home last year.

The selection of a Pashtun is already causing discontent in Kabul, where police walked off the job Friday to demand Qanooni's return. Qanooni was popular among the Kabul police, most of whom were also northern alliance fighters.