KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Canada and its international allies in Afghanistan must do a better job of developing local police officers and curbing corruption if their counter-insurgency strategy is to succeed, the senior Canadian police official in the country said Friday.

"We can and need to do better in the training of the Afghan National Police," said Graham Muir, the RCMP's assistant commissioner and the Canadian police commander in Afghanistan.

"If we are to be effective bringing security, that dividend must be delivered by the ANP."

The development of Afghanistan's security forces has come under intense scrutiny this week following the shooting deaths of five British soldiers in Helmand province by an ANP officer.

A series of American reports on the training of security forces in Afghanistan surfaced Friday, suggesting that endemic corruption and poor leadership were preventing the ANP and the Afghan National Army from shouldering a bigger share of the security burden.

Officials involved with the mentoring process point out the ANP is beset by both high-level and low-level corruption, which has a self-reinforcing effect.

Canadian funding aims to eliminate some of the incentives for low-level corruption by ensuring ANP officers are properly paid through direct bank transfers of their salaries, but even that strategy has run into problems.

"We need to finish that play as an example of what the international community would do if they were serious about tackling corruption," said Muir.

But in Kandahar most banks cannot open because of security concerns, which prompts those funds slated for salaries to be diverted to regional or provincial headquarters, where there is a greater risk the money can be misappropriated.

"High-level corruption is most worrisome to the international community," said Muir. Now that the elections have passed, the coalition will be concentrating on how to create the conditions for tackling corruption, he added.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the Afghan government a "byword for corruption" on Friday, an indication of the mounting international pressure on President Hamid Karzai to clean up shop.

Tuesday's attack on the British soldiers, for which the Taliban claimed credit, raised widespread concerns that insurgents were able to exploit the low pay and high corruption levels of ANP officers to infiltrate the force.

But both Muir and NATO's International Security Assistance Force are insisting what happened in Helmand was an isolated incident.

"From an intelligence perspective, there is certainly no conclusions that would lead us to think that there is a broader perspective to this in terms of the Taliban's ability to infiltrate the ranks of the Afghan National Army or the Afghan National Police," ISAF spokesperson Brig. Gen. Eric Tremblay told reporters in Kabul.

Canadian police officers who deal extensively with Afghan National Police say they don't feel their security has been compromised by corruption.

"I am not more in danger because of corruption," said Roch De Roy, who heads the civilian police contingent at the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar city.

A large part of the Canadian effort to professionalize the ANP is concentrated on developing the distinction between a police force and the army.

Both the Canadian and American approaches to fighting the insurgency in Kandahar involve using the ANP to accomplish the middle stage of their "clear, hold, build" strategy.

But Muir admits that too often the ANP finds itself confronting insurgents directly, a challenge for which it is ill-equipped.

"This far along there seems to be, at least at the field level, some confusion as to which security force does what."

One of the challenges associated with training the ANP has been traditionally high rates of attrition among Afghan security forces; a recent U.S. report estimates that one out of every four or five members leaves the ranks each year.

In order to deal with the problem, the basic training for ANP officers is being shortened from eight to six weeks, though officials stress the same amount of training will be offered. They also claim mentoring in the field is a more valuable learning tool.

Muir expects the recent influx of American soldiers will allow Canadian police to spend more time doing on-the-ground training with their Afghan counterparts.

"If we increase our movement and mobility in the field then have a much better opportunity to mobilize the Afghan National Police," he said.

"This is key, because institutional training is not a substitute for training in the field."

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