Reading and Rifles in Kandahar

Cst Jeff Hirsch

One of the most important skills that Canadian Police teach the Afghan Police are survival skills. In the current counter-insurgency environment, the ability to aim a rifle, take cover, administer first aid and detect explosive devices rates high on the list of must have skills that the average Afghan National Police (ANP) officer needs if he or she expects to stay alive.

The Canadian Civilian Police Contingent (CIVPOL) has also discovered over the past three years that there is a dire need for literacy training for the largely illiterate force. For the police to be taken seriously, and trusted by the Afghan people, they need to be able to record complaints and follow up on investigations.

Literacy is also required for ANP commanders to read maps, plan patrols, report to provincial headquarters on daily operations and request everything from new recruits to winter uniforms. Some districts have only three or four literate police officers, usually sergeants and the commander. The entire administrative and logistical burden of running a police station falls directly on those few who can actually fill out the required forms and reports.

In March of 2008, Cst Jeff Hirsch, an RCMP member from Nova Scotia, evaluated a pilot literacy project being run in Kandahar. He noted several problems with the centralized training approach of this project, mainly that most students were unable to attend class and the teachers selected were not actually qualified. The pilot project was stopped as a new concept was developed to deliver this training.

Cst Hirsch spent the next eight months working with Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) program officers to obtain Global Peace and Security funding to develop a new literacy program for the ANP in Kandahar Province. Consultation was done with both the ANP at the district and provincial HQ level, and the Afghan Ministry of Education, which would provide qualified literacy trainers. The trainers would be paid to travel to police stations several times a week and provide literacy training to the police in their own stations. This decentralized approach would give the ANP more flexibility to provide policing services to their districts, increase attendance and reduce the logistical burden of trying to move police around the province each day for class.

The new Afghan Adult Literacy program is designed completely by the Ministry of Education and delivered in Pashto, the language spoken by the majority of police in Kandahar Province. It will take a year and a half for students to complete the course, delivered five to eight hours a week. Upon completion, the ANP students will have obtained a working literacy level equivalent to a Canadian grade four.

CIVPOL members will continue to monitor progress of the literacy training and help iron out any wrinkles that develop during implementation. The pilot class started in February of 2009 in District 9 of Kandahar City, arguably, the most volatile district in the city. After six weeks of assessment, CIVPOL will work with the Ministry of Education and the ANP to expand the training to cover the rest of Kandahar City and some outlying districts. This first phase will see a total of 16 teachers hired and should enable 220-300 ANP students to develop literacy skills.

Beside the obvious benefits of the police being able to read identity cards and complete basic reports, Cst Hirsch believes that literacy will have many other benefits. These include increased self esteem amongst the police and more respect from the communities in which they serve. It is also hoped that by offering education on the job, there will be more recruitment into the ANP and better retention among new recruits, who will stay for the year and a half it will take to graduate from the literacy program.

The key to bringing security to Afghanistan, Cst Hirsch believes, is having the public believe in the ability of the Afghan Government, and security forces such as the ANP. He hopes that this new outreach literacy program will complement other training efforts in professionalizing the ANP and will earn the public respect that ANP needs. In the end, this program is about Afghans teaching Afghans, and everyone wins with that kind of capacity building.