By Ben Armbruster

Last year, top U.S. commander in Afghanistan Gen. David Petraeus persuaded Afghan President Hamid Karzai to authorize a new program to establish local defense forces there — seemingly modeled after the “Sons of Iraq” — that U.S. officials thought would help with security and thwarting the Taliban in remote parts of the country. Karzai had initially resisted, fearing that the “forces could harden into militias that his weak government could not control.”

This is exactly what appears to be happening. According to a new report to be released tomorrow from Refugees International (RI), the Afghan Local Police (ALP) units are “a major threat to civilians and stability” because they are “poorly vetted, ill-trained and unsupervised.” “These armed groups,” the report says, “have allegedly committed abuses including murder, theft, extortion, bribery and intimidation.”

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