There again, police training is an issue that is coming up regularly at international meetings, one that is really critical. We all understand that the Afghans also understand the importance of training a competent and professional police force.
It's progressing. It's not progressing as fast as we would wish and it's not progressing as well as we would wish. It is an issue we're working very hard on, together with partners: the RCMP and Correctional Service Canada. We trained last year more than 600 National Police officials at the PRT in Kandahar.
The problem we have right now is that essentially training police really means training them for basic survival skills. The police are seen by the Taliban as being the weak link in the security system, and therefore they're targeted more than the ANA, for instance; therefore, their rate of casualty is much higher. So you have to start from far away.
Many of the recruits are illiterate, so that is an impediment to their training, and you have to address it. Many of them are also people who come from very poor families, so corruption is an issue too. We've been working very hard to try to provide funding to pay salaries, to equip them, to recruit good people, to screen them, and to train them.
We've worked together with other partners. EUPOL, for instance, is about to launch a big mission in Afghanistan to support our training efforts; the United States is engaged in that effort, as General Hillier explained; and we're pressing forward. It will take some time before we actually reach the level we want to see.