Word is out that Germans will “most likely” provide military training to Kurdish groups in northern Iraq.

That’s cool, I guess. But we can only hope that these trainers won’t be as ineffective as those who just spent ten years training Afghan police forces and failed miserably at it.

German officials have been training police in Afghanistan for a decade, but a visit to their training center in Mazar-e-Sharif creates major doubts about the effectiveness of the mission. Afghan police remain poorly prepared to tackle the mighty challenges they will face as Western forces withdraw.

Ineffective and Unsustainable: Failure Threatens Afghan Police Training Mission