The EU police mission to Afghanistan is a tiny slice of European order and comfort amid the lawlessness of Kabul. Here police cars are clean and shiny. Officers in crisp uniforms sip coffee in the spring sunshine in front of a carefully manicured lawn. The chaos on the streets outside is kept out by a high wall, armed guards and steel gates. Tellingly, there is not an Afghan in uniform to be seen.

If the rest of Afghanistan's police were like this many of the country's problems would already be solved. Unfortunately, the rabble that passes for the Afghan National Police is a long way from becoming a police force that we would recognise.

Six and a half years after the fall of the Taleban, what should be the mainstay of security in Afghanistan is corrupt and incompetent. Many officers are illiterate, lack uniforms, firearms, vehicles and radios. As many as 60 per cent of policemen working in Helmand province, the area under British control, are suspected of being drug users. The anti-narcotics police, supposedly tackling the country's biggest criminal problem, are believed to be heavily implicated in the opium trade. Those who are honest often end up dead. Bribe-taking by police manning checkpoints is widespread. By all accounts, the corrupt practices extend to the highest levels of government.

The EU is supposed to have taken a lead to remedy the problem but so far the response is woeful. It has deployed 230 police officers and justice experts from 20 countries to retrain a force of more than 70,000 policemen. Less than a year into the operation, there are already doubts about the effectiveness of Eupol, as the European mission is known. Much of the real training is left to American and other Nato troops, who have little experience of police work but at least are prepared to try.

When Lord Ashdown was picked as the new UN envoy to Afghanistan earlier this year his main objective was to co-ordinate the international effort, to root out failing projects and stop duplication. Lord Ashdown was blocked from taking up his post by President Hamid Karzai, who may have feared that the “super-envoy” would challenge his authority.

Today that job is now filled by Kay Eide, a Norwegian diplomat who served as Ambassador to Nato. He claims to have a mandate to change the way the international community does its business in Afghanistan and the personal backing of President Bush and European leaders.

Here is his biggest challenge: stop the duplication in the two police training missions; find more officers to do the job; equip the Afghan police properly; and get those European policemen out of their comfortable bubble and into the real world.

Richard Beeston is foreign editor

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