Chuck Lonero took his policing expertise to Kabul to combat drug trafficking

After 30 years on the Tufts University police force, Chuck Lonero was ready to retire last year, but he wouldn’t be hitting the golf course or moving to Florida. Lonero, who had been a detective lieutenant, says he “wanted to do something of substance.” So he headed to Kabul, Afghanistan. For nine months he lived in the heart of a war zone, training new police recruits for a seemingly impossible task: fighting the drug business in the opium-growing capital of the world.

The daunting nature of the work quickly set in.

Lonero and his Afghan recruits

“The Afghans are a wonderful people, a very courageous people,” says Lonero, who returned to the U.S. in late September. “But it’s the year 1066, and they’re fighting the Battle of Hastings. Policing is a whole new concept, and the corruption in the police department is extensive.”

In Kabul, Lonero worked as part of a team hired to teach at the Counter Narcotics Training Academy. Each month, the team instructed 70 recruits from the Afghan National Police in how to conduct anti-drug operations, including drug raids, interview and interrogation techniques, weapons use, field medicine and defensive tactics such as hand-to-hand combat.

Lonero faced a formidable challenge: imposing Western standards of policing in a country that is still governed along tribal lines. Justice in Afghanistan is meted out by regional mullahs and warlords in much the same way as it has been for centuries.

“The officers used to ask me why they couldn’t torture people,” says Lonero. “I told them you’re in a new world; you’re not going to be doing that anymore. It makes it difficult to gather intelligence, but it’s the more civilized and humane way.”Yet Lonero also found the Afghans to be “a kind people, who have a sense of humor. They know how to make light of themselves when they’ve done something foolish, but they have a sense of pride at the same time. And they all have great haircuts,” he says. “I’ve never seen so many barbershops in such a poor country.”

”Lonero’s qualifications for the job included 17 years as detective on the Tufts force. He also received extensive training, such as courses on drug interdiction with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and classes in diplomatic security with the State Department. The latter prepared him to conduct security operations for visiting officials and dignitaries at Tufts, including Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu and Margaret Thatcher.Prior to becoming a detective, Lonero held many different positions on the Tufts force, including police dispatcher and nine years as a beat cop on the Boston campus, a stint that involved working the overnight shift in what was then the city’s “Combat Zone.”

He credits Tufts for his rise from the housing projects and gangs of Somerville, where he grew up, into a world where he could talk about string theory with physics professors and policy with visiting dignitaries.At age 59, Afghanistan was Lonero’s first overseas assignment.

“I was overwhelmed at first,” says Lonero. “But your acuity grows quickly.”

Beyond the sheer physical ruin of Kabul, there were the earthquakes (Lonero survived two), the daily ambushes in the city, the land mines, the dysentery (he lost 40 pounds while there), the 80 percent illiteracy rate and the thin air at 6,200 feet. Not to mention, Lonero says, “everyone has guns.

”What kept him going?“I fell in love,” Lonero says. “I fell in love with the people.”

Amid the ruin, the abject poverty and the corruption, “you see real tenderness between people—between father and child, between husband and wife,” he says. “I saw many, many happy children,” he adds. “And there are a number of kite runners.”

A Long Haul

The poverty in Afghanistan was overwhelming and complicated his assignment, Lonero says. “A lot of our officers sold their guns and uniforms as soon as we trained them.”Bribes were also common, among coalition forces as well as Afghans.

“The bribe of choice in Afghanistan is Viagra. It only stands to reason,” Lonero says. “A lot of the men are old, and they all have three wives.”

Afghanistan’s lucrative drug trade is responsible for some 80 percent of opium on the world market, and profits are used to fund the Taliban, which is one reason why the U.S. and other governments want to stop it. The Counter Narcotics Training Academy was set up by a private company under a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense and employs a team of seven Americans and three French.Frustrations run high in a war in which, as Lonero says, “we are not dismantling but dispersing al-Qaida and the Taliban.”

Helmand Province, for example, the country’s biggest opium producer, has been cleared three times but never captured. The Taliban has returned each time, and they still retain control of the area.

“The Taliban have a saying,” says Lonero. “The Americans have the watch, but we have the time.”In the end, Lonero says he thinks he “got through to maybe 3 or 4 percent” of each class at the academy and expects he will lose 10 percent of that small group to casualties. Yet he does not sound like a man who was fighting a losing battle.

“It comes back to my career in campus law enforcement: education is the key—and that’s what the Taliban doesn’t want. I saw little girls going off to school, dressed in their little burkas, and it gave me hope,” Lonero says. “And I told my colleagues, you’re not going to see a change, but your grandchildren will see a change.”

photos: courtesy of Chuck Lonero. Photos in video courtesy of Chuck Lonero and freemilitaryphotos.com; song “Woh Hata Rahe Hain Pardah” by Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan.

This story appeared in Tufts Journal, Dec. 2, 2009.