Alam Gul, a prospective recruit for the Afghan Local Police, is questioned as part of the vetting process for entry into the force by a U.S. soldier.
There’s been a flurry of stories, largely out of Washington, about what the Pentagon is doing to try to cut down on the rash of insider attacks in Afghanistan. Here’s Time’s John Wendle reporting on them from Kabul, where vetting Afghan troops depends on getting questions answered – through a interpreter:
Seemingly simple questions often have no good answer in Afghanistan. When asked where he lived, [Afghan Local Police recruit Alam] Gul only said that “there are four or five houses between my home and the mosque.” Asked in what direction from the mosque, he, like many uneducated Afghans, did not know the meaning of north, south, east and west. He guessed his age as being “between 28 and 30.” His secondhand motorcycle was unregistered. He had no mobile number. It was even unclear at which mosque he worshipped…
Bottom line: vetting, obviously, ain’t quite as easy as one might think. Full thing here.