Fahima had just arrived home from school when members of the Afghan Local Police (ALP), a U.S.-trained militia charged with making Afghans in Taliban strongholds feel more secure, started hammering on the front door searching for her father.
They elbowed it open and, frustrated at not finding him, started beating her younger brother, prompting 17-year-old Fahima to intervene. One of the men turned and shot her dead.
"She was in her first days as an eleventh grade student," said Fahima's father, Khuja, who believes the killing was score settling over an old land dispute.
"Offenders are still serving as local policemen and they are free. Police say the killer has escaped but he's walking in public with his gun and no one is able to catch him."
The ALP was set up in 2010 in villages where the national force is weak, a flagship project of U.S. General David Petraeus, who stepped down as commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan in 2011.
The government began recruiting everyone from farmers to shopkeepers for the militia, hoping to take the edge away from the Taliban in their rural bastions.
American officials have hailed the ALP as an effective homegrown force which has restricted the ability of the Taliban to move in the countryside.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/30/us-afghanistan-police-idUSBRE87T02920120830
No comments:
Post a Comment