Whitefish chief returns from Afghanistan

Whitefish Police Chief Bill Dial went halfway around the world - and came back with a greater understanding of community policing.

After taking a leave of absence from the Whitefish Police Department, Dial left for Afghanistan in January 2007 as an employee of DynCorp International, a company that contracted with the U.S. State Department to train Afghan police forces.

He returned home about two weeks ago

"It was a great experience," Dial said. "It was a life-changing experience."

The company, whose stated mission is to restructure, monitor and advise local police units while Afghanistan makes the transition to democratic policing, is directly involved in the training and development of local police forces.

For the first three months, Dial acted as a mentor to the city police chief in Kabul.

He then was promoted to supervisor of the country's entire eastern region, which required he move to Gardez, about 80 miles southeast of Kabul. His base camp there was at 8,500 feet. Dial remained in Gardez for about two months until he was promoted again to deputy contingent commander, which he likened to being an assistant police chief in a large U.S. department.

In that position for the last seven months of his tour in Afghanistan, Dial had operational control over 650 training and advisory officers and a nearly $200 million budget, he said.

"And it was fun because we had people working in the company from around the country," he said.

Dial said he and other training officers taught their Afghan counterparts how to organize a police department, conduct staff meetings, patrol their jurisdictions and handle logistics. They also taught about the values of community policing.

But the obstacles for Afghanistan's nascent police forces were large, he said.

In some of the country's 356 police districts, it wouldn't be out of place to see 10 officers sharing one vehicle - a vehicle that didn't even work most of the time.

In resource-poor rural areas, tribal elders often would serve as the de facto police force. The elders, sometimes in a partnership with the local police chief, would capture a suspect, hire a taxi, and send the driver to the local authorities.

In some places, there isn't even a remote police presence, Dial said.

The Afghan population is deeply divided along tribal lines, which sometimes made collaboration troublesome, said Dial.

For example, the police chief in Kabul was ethnically Hazara. But the Hazara are considered inferior by ethnic Pashtuns and Tajiks.

Dial often would observe the surprised or negative reactions of Pashtun or Tajik subordinates when they came into the Kabul police chief's office.

"At times, that was very difficult," said Dial.

Because of Afghanistan's tribal society, the application of western models was sometimes counterproductive, Dial said.

But advisers also learned to work within the framework of the culture's tribal ties. To encourage cooperation with law enforcement, it became policy to send recently trained Afghan police officers back to the community they came from.

"Then getting the police to interact with the elders was something we worked a lot on," he said.

The rank-and-file Afghan police officer - called "soldiers" by the citizens - is trained at one of seven regional training centers. Each center graduates 300 to 400 new officers every eight weeks.

While Dial was there, the first class of female police officers graduated from one of the training centers. Women in Afghanistan are largely seen as second-class citizens, and spousal abuse is rampant, according to Dial.

He recalled reading one report of a man who came home, found the rice wasn't cooked to his satisfaction, so he doused his wife with kerosene and set her on fire.

During his year in Afghanistan, Dial said he saw great improvement in the Afghan police forces. And he believes in the U.S. mission there.

"But I think we have to examine what we're doing there, why we're there," he added. "If we weren't there, I think the government would collapse. The government right now is very fragile."

In his experience, the vast majority of Afghans were peace-loving people whose number one concern is crime - crime fueled by the country's opium trade.

"But If we're not there, it's going to be a training Mecca for terrorists," said Dial. "There's that 5 to 10 percent of religious fanatics. I think we need to continue to foster a relationship with Muslim countries."

A larger buy-in from other coalition countries would help pacify Afghanistan, Dial said.

"I really think there's a disproportionate amount of our money going into Afghanistan," he said, estimating that 90 percent of the money spent there is from the United States.

Dial also was struck by the number of children, especially orphans, in the towns and cities. And Afghanistan is the most land-mined country in the world.

"I never saw so many amputees in my life," Dial said. "We would see kids coming down from the mountains with a herd of goats, but the kids were 6 or 7 years old. There were no adults."

Dial remembered giving some of the children something as simple as a bottle of water or a soccer ball and watching their eyes light up.

"It's just the little things that people take for granted," Dial said. "That was probably the most memorable thing."

Is the whole thing worth it?

"It's very well worth it," he replied.

Reporter Nicholas Ledden can be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at nledden@dailyinterlake.com