Afghanistan attacks prompt safety fears for EU personnel

A spate of attacks on Afghan police officers in recent weeks has heightened concerns about the safety of EU security personnel who will be deployed to the country in less than a month.

The EU will begin a three-year mission to reform Afghanistan’s judiciary and police forces on 15 June, when 160 police trainers and legal experts arrive in the country.

They will be led by Brigadier-General Friedrich Eichele of the German border police.

"The security of EU personnel will be the most important question," said one senior diplomatic source.

Up to 50 of the personnel will be drawn from an already existing German police mission in Afghanistan, which will now become part of EUpol Afghanistan - as the EU mission is known.

In total, 16 EU member states will contribute personnel. Additional contributions could come from Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Australia, Ukraine, Turkey, Croatia, Japan and Switzerland.

According to Francesc Vendrell, the EU’s special representative in Afghanistan, the mission could be increased in size, but he said no concrete plans were in place.

"Obviously I would have liked the mission to have been the same size as Kosovo [where the EU is deploying 1600 police] but that is not realistic," he said.

The US’s police mission in Afghanistan has 500 trainers.

The European Commission - which will focus on reforming the supreme court, the ministry of the interior and the attorney-general’s office - has contracted a development consultancy firm, Adam Smith International, to handle some of the logistics of the mission.

According to Commission officials, their work will focus on the institutions of the central government, keeping them within the relative safety of the capital.

Commenting on the possibility of extending that part of the mission to cover other provinces, one official said: "We don’t exclude that in due course, but now our focus is on the central institutions."

Diplomats said that EU personnel working outside the capital, Kabul, will co-ordinate closely with NATO’s provincial reconstruction teams and will depend on NATO, rather than Afghan forces, for protection.

"NATO is the only force present," said one EU official.

The security situation in the east and south of the country has deteriorated sharply in recent weeks. Much of the violence has been blamed on a long-expected Taliban spring offensive.

On 24 May, an Afghan district police chief and ten policemen were killed close to the border with Pakistan when a roadside bomb exploded.

Afghanistan’s ministry of the interior estimates that the country needs 20,000 more police officers if it is to tackle the combined problems of terrorism, drug production and corruption.

According to Nooruddin Hashemi, of the Afghan mission to the EU, the EU can play a vital role in tackling that 20,000-person shortfall.

"A lot of countries have supported the Afghan police, if they can all come together under the umbrella of the EU to create a comprehensive programme for training that would be important," said Hashemi.

"There needs to be better co-ordination between donors to the police in Afghanistan. The most important thing is to increase its peace-building capacity."

Germany is currently leading efforts to train Afghan police, providing 40 police trainers, while Italy has focused on judicial reform and UK on developing a counter-narcotics strategy.

The Commission estimates that 90% of heroin in western Europe comes from Afghanistan.

A spate of attacks on Afghan police officers in recent weeks has heightened concerns about the safety of EU security personnel who will be deployed to the country in less than a month.