KUNDUZ, Afghanistan – Afghan policemen raised their nation’s flag above Police Training Center Kunduz during a special ceremony marking the end of the German Police Project Team’s authority here in late August.
The basic training center for Afghan police is the 9th of an eventual 13 spread throughout the country that Afghan authorities will take full responsibility for by next summer. In 2009, the German team increased the training capacity at Kunduz facility by 400 percent, which now trains more than 2,000 police each year in both the eight-week Initial Police Training and Non-Commissioned Officer courses.
The ceremony was well attended by Afghan, German, and coalition officials, who descended on the northern Afghan city to witness the culmination of a year’s worth of transition preparation.
“We stepped back to mentor, correct and provide hints,” said 1st Lt. Danny Herzog, a policeman from Saxony, Germany, who served as the site’s training coordinator.
In late 2012, the German Police Project Team members responsible for Kunduz began the “advise-only” phase of their support mission. In June, they relinquished responsibility for the site’s generators, transferred control of the buildings and equipment in July, and in August finally handed over the keys.
“They came to us if they had any questions or needed support,” Herzog said, noting that Afghans had already proved themselves by running the facility with basically no assistance for more than six weeks before the official handover. “They are running on their own, and they have done very well. We are hands off,” he said.
Afghan Uniformed Police Capt. Zabardast Safi, the training center commander, has almost three years of experience at the site and said he is highly confident in its future success.
“We’ll continue our work; we know what to do,” Safi said. He has a staff of 250 ready to support nearly 500 student trainees at once. “After the handover, we are relying on the same established processes as before. We will set a good example for the other police training centers around the country.
“We provide disciplined, high-quality training, and we can get supplies without problems or shortages – we do very well.”
U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Sonny Hurtado, deputy commanding general – Police, NATO Training Mission Afghanistan, who has overall responsibility for the coalition’s police training efforts in the country, attended the ceremony and said he wanted to encourage training site commanders to share and communicate their best practices with sites in other provinces.
Afghan National Police Maj. Gen. Mashoq Ahmad Sailab, Commander, Training General Command, attended the ceremony with Hurtado, and said that while Safi was the youngest of the training site commanders, he was also the most energetic. Sailab said he expected to see great things from the site and wants to grow relationships and improve communication between site commanders.
Honored guests at the ceremony included Dr. Ashaf Ghani, who served as the chief adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai after the fall of the Taliban and is considered one of the country’s most important strategists; Kunduz Provincial Gov. Muhammad Anwar Jigdaleg; state secretary of the Ministry of the Interior of the Federal Republic of Germany, Klaus-Dieter Fritsche; deputy commander, ISAF, Lt. Gen. John Lorimer; Afghan Deputy Minister of Interior Lt. Gen. Mirza Mohamad Yarmand, and the German Police Project Team’s Head of Mission, Brig. Gen. Wilhelm Schulz.