Police test Afghanistan’s fragile ethnic balance

MARJAH, Afghanistan — Patrolling in all-terrain vehicles that whip up clouds of dust, members of Afghanistan’s elite Civil Order Police might be viewed as outsiders here in southern Helmand province, an ethnic Pashtun heartland where residents talk wistfully of the Taliban’s rule, call NATO troops invaders and refer to Afghan government officials as thieves.

Col. Khalil Rahman and the 441 police under his command in the 3rd Battalion are almost all from northern Afghanistan and belong to minority ethnic groups. Many don’t even speak Pashto, the language of most southerners.

Yet Rahman said he asked for each of his three deployments to Helmand and is planning to settle his bride of two months in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah.

“This is my country, all of it. I asked to come here,” said Rahman, 30, whose clean-shaven face and tightly cropped hair contrasts with most local men, who wear unkempt bushy beards and the traditional turban. Still, when they met in the villages, he embraced them in the traditional hug and Pashtu greeting of “May you not get weary.”

As the U.S. and NATO close their mission in Afghanistan preparing for the final withdrawal of combat troops by the end of 2014, the worry looms large that ethnically motivated fighting could send the country into a spiral of chaos and violence that could give al-Qaida a toehold.

But an Associated Press reporter and photographer who accompanied the 3rd Battalion for a week did not observe any hostility.