Introduction: getting to community policing in Afghanistan

The issue of how to train police in a place like Afghanistan is fraught:  should we be equipping and training them for a counter-insurgency fight, or encouraging them to establish strong relationships with a community they are expected to serve and protect?

David Bayley and Robert Perito argue in The Police In War that community policing is precisely what is needed during counter-insurgency operations, but implementing programs to improve police/community relations in a place like Afghanistan is not an easy sell, as US Army Captain A. Heather Coyne (no pun intended), with the NATO Training Mission–Afghanistan, explains in this initial “from the field” account (click here for her text). We have met the enemy, she suggests, and they are us:  our concepts, processes and programs are serious obstacles, which in this case have been happily surmounted.

Others with field perspective:  please contact me (daniel@peacefare.net) if you would like to publish here.