Smash hit

Most serious is the level to which the police, particularly in Helmand, have been infiltrated and maintain links with the Taleban. In April local people in Lashkar Gar told The Times that this process was reaching endemic levels.

“More and more local police are making relationships with the Taleban,” one local man in Lashkar Gar claimed. “If they are not linked with the militants they can’t live. If 100 men are in one police station – at least 80 are in touch with the militants.”

A local journalist claimed that police with links to the Taleban were now working on the insurgents’ behalf inside the provincial capital.

“I can tell you for sure that if Taleban want a person, he is not safe even in the governor’s house. They can’t reach themselves there but they use police. The police are facilitating it. People working with the government must cooperate because they are afraid. In the market I can see the Taleban moving around. They don’t have weapons but you can see them one by one. They control the situation and they know it.”

Profit is another motive for collaboration. A Taleban commander in Lashkar Gar told The Times last year that he was refitting and resupplying his unit with ammunition purchased for 10 Pakistani rupees a bullet from the local Afghan police. Such stories are routine.

There have now been several episodes in which Afghan policemen have suddenly turned their weapons on Western mentors or their fellow policemen.

In September a policeman opened fire on an American soldier in the capital, Kabul, seriously wounding him, because the American was drinking water during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims traditionally fast during the day. Two Americans died in an unexpected attack in Warden province on October 2. Two weeks later an Afghan policeman hurled a grenade and opened fire on American mentors in eastern Afghanistan, killing one.

While some past attacks appeared to result from cultural misunderstanding and personal disputes, yesterday’s is the third attack in just over a month, suggesting that the incidents may be more than coincidence and the Taleban has begun to plan such episodes.

Captain Beattie believes that an ambush of his unit in Garmsir in Helmand Province in 2006 was set up between the Taleban and the AMP.

He also alleged that a former chief of police in Helmand was caught talking directly to the Taleban on his personal phone on several occasions.

“It is absolutely right to say that the Afghan police are infiltrated by the Taleban at every level, from the very lowest to the very highest,” he said.

Peter Galbraith, former deputy head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, said that the "rushed" bid to train extra Afghan officers in time to police the presidential elections meant that violent incidents were increasingly to be expected.

"The process of police training and recruiting has been very rushed, and there isn’t a lot of vetting of police before they are hired," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

"In recent months, they shortened the training programme from eight weeks to five weeks because they wanted to get more police boots on the ground in advance of the elections. So there was a real rush to recruit an additional 10,000, particularly in the South, particularly in Kandahar and Helmand provinces."

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