by Staff Sgt. Terri Barriere
NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A combined Afghan and Coalition team conducted a staff assistance visit of three Regional Command-South Afghan National Police department’s personnel assets inventory teams, Jan. 17-19.

During the visit, the inspection team, led by Ministry of Interior Chief of Tashkils, Col. Mohammad Naseem, and U.S. Air Force Maj. John Ball, Assistant Command Group-Police Training Group, met with the PAI teams and advisors from the local police zones, inspected portions of their accountability process and then provided mentorship and guidance.

With the Afghans having taken over their PAI only eight months ago, Ball said the visit was necessary to ensure proper execution of the critical annual process.

“The PAI is a physical counting of all personnel to determine who and how many are currently on the books,” said Ball of the PAI practice. “It also helps ensure the security and safety of friendly forces from internal threats and provides assurance to senior leaders regarding the personnel and accountability of force. As we help our Afghan partners establish a functional security force it is necessary to understand who is working and who no longer works for the ANP – this is done, in part, by conducting PAI’s.”

However, conducting a PAI in Afghanistan does come with one unique challenge. Afghan names and family structures are not a viable option for tracking personnel by first and last name as it’s done in some of the coalition forces. Ball said to overcome the shortfall, personnel are tracked instead by their Afghan National Police identification number – a process which must be handled with extreme care.

“This one piece of information is the central point that all three systems [personnel, finance and biometrics] use to identify each record, therefore proper data entry of this number is paramount,” he said.

During the site visits, the team also conducted function checks of the biometric equipment, to ensure it was operational, and that the personnel were using it properly.

“I found the biometric kits themselves were in good shape, although some units were still lacking kits and others the training to use them properly,” said U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Brian McLelland, personnel security advisor. “While we were here doing the SAV, I was able to identify which machines the units were using and stress the importance of the equipment and PAI’s to them.”

McLelland said biometrics is a very important administrative tool because it links personnel and finance info to biometric data and helps verify who each person is through fingerprinting, facial recognition software or iris scans.

To help ensure proper care is taken with each portion of the PAI process, teams consisting of a leader, personnel clerk, finance clerk and two biometrics clerks are chosen and trained at the Kabul Police Academy, then returned to their zones. While the PAI is underway, the team members focus only on the inventory, and travel throughout their zone of responsibility to ensure all assigned personnel are accounted for.

The SAV locations are chosen based on the percentage of their PAI complete, the accessibility of the location and the availability of an MOI representative.

“When we did the SAV in Kandahar, we were able to identify what equipment ANP had that needed to be repaired, replaced or ordered, what training needs they had and tailor plans for specific challenges they were having on the ground,” Ball said.

Ball said they were able to identify and overcome a disconnect in the flow of information and guidance from NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan mentors to the advisors in the field.

“The meetings we had with the advisors during this SAV were crucial,” said Ball. “We were able to communicate NTM-A objectives directly to the zone advisors, which is one of the most important parts of this process because they are instrumental to its success and we need them to be involved.”

Ball said this particular visit was unique in nature because it provided an opportunity for on the ground MOI level advising, as well as a chance to work out issues with MOI level solutions due to Colonel Naseem’s presence.

 “We show up sometimes and things that have been decided at the MOI level have not been filtered down to the field, so this was also an opportunity for us to ensure everything has been passed down to the field level and everyone is on the same page and using the same guidance for their PAI’s,” Ball said.

Naseem said though some of the units were not handling the PAI process correctly, the overall visit went well from a leadership standpoint.

“Things went pretty good on this trip,” he said. “We didn’t come here to blame anyone and the unit’s recognized the mistakes they were making and know what they need to work on in the future. We found out the leadership here didn’t necessarily know about the PAI process and we had a chance to explain the process and now they know how important it is.”

Naseem said SAV’s like the one they conducted are just as important as the PAI process because the future of ANP accountability depends on it.