A Colombian model for Afghanistan?

By Luis Fajardo
BBC Spanish American Service

Sergeant Sayed Naqib Sadat, a 27-year-old Afghan police sergeant from the province of Kunar, has spent the past 17 weeks learning commando tactics from Colombia's counter-narcotics police.

Sergeant Sadat was the only Afghan to complete the course

Speaking of the gruelling training course, which included time spent in the Colombian jungle, he says it was "tough but satisfying".

He is the only Afghan to have graduated from the US-sponsored training programme run by special forces within the Colombian National Police.

Four of his colleagues from Afghanistan's National Interdiction Unit (NIU) dropped out during the training.

Colombia and Afghanistan have several problems in common, including a booming drug trafficking industry and a raging insurgency. Both countries also receive substantial political and military support from the US.

The US hopes that some of the lessons learned in Colombia can be applied to Afghanistan - sponsoring such training is part of the strategy.

"We had good training here and good teachers," Sergeant Sadat told BBC News.

"The best experience for me was helicopter training. In Afghanistan we need helicopters", he added.

His final test was to take part in a simulated early morning raid against drug dealers hiding in a campsite, 2,650m (6,562ft) high in the mountains .

Drugs and violence

Colombia, the largest producer of cocaine in the world, has faced a four-decade guerrilla war, with government troops fighting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and other armed rebel groups. Like Afghanistan, profits from the drugs trade fuel political violence.

The UN says poppy production is high in Afghanistan's lawless south

Since 2000, the US has implemented Plan Colombia, a military and economic assistance programme that has made Bogota the largest recipient of US aid in the western hemisphere. Around $600m a year goes to funding military operations and development projects in drug-growing regions.

The US believes a similar approach could help solve the problems of Afghanistan. To help cement this, US ambassador to Colombia William Wood was moved in April to Kabul, where he took up the post as US envoy.

Contacts between Afghan and Colombian police forces started in 2005. In July that year, the Afghan counter narcotics minister Habibullah Qaderi visited the Colombian capital, Bogota.

A spokesperson from the US embassy there told the BBC that the "educational exchanges had fostered greater co-operation and understanding in countering global drug-trafficking."

Controversy

The Bush administration often portrays Plan Colombia as a major foreign policy success.

In a congressional hearing last April, Charles S Shapiro, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, praised the "remarkable gains that Colombia, with US and other international support, has made".

These included, according to the official, reversing the rate of growth in illicit crops, reducing kidnappings and murders, and improving the state of the economy.

Sending in a few eradicators who come in and then leave, will not solve the problem in either country Adam Isaacson, Colombia expert

However, sceptics argue that it is wrong to try to replicate in Afghanistan strategies that have not been conclusively proven to be effective in Colombia.

In particular, they claim that after nearly $4.7bn and seven years of Washington's assistance to Bogota, there is still no significant reduction in the availability of cocaine on the streets of the US.

Adam Isaacson, a Colombia expert at the Center for International Policy, a Washington think-tank, told the BBC that Plan Colombia had been a "perfect failure" in its fight against drugs.

He predicted a similar failure if the same tactics were applied to Afghanistan.

According to Mr Isaacson, while Colombia's counter-narcotics police forces are well-trained, they are operating in territory in which there is very little state presence. He said the same is true in Afghanistan.

"Sending in a few eradicators who come in and then leave, will not solve the problem in either country," he says.