Afghan Interior Minister Massoud Andarabi gives an interview at the Ministry of the Interior office in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2019. Andarabi said Sunday that police make up 70% of the casualties among security forces in relentless attacks by Taliban and Islamic State insurgents. He said a slow, steady overhaul is underway. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Police in Afghanistan are one of the country’s most-criticized security forces, denigrated as corrupt and inept. Yet Interior Minister Massoud Andarabi says police are also the hardest hit, taking 70% of all casualties among government forces, dozens of whom die each day in relentless attacks by Taliban and Islamic State insurgents.

Still, President Donald Trump is impatient with Afghanistan’s police, saying American soldiers have taken on their job and that it’s time for Afghans to step up. He says that’ll allow Washington to end its longest war, now into its 18th year.

Even as Trump abruptly called off a deal with the Taliban earlier this month that seemed imminent, he expressed his frustration with the state of Afghanistan’s security forces, taking particular aim at the policing.

Leading the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, is Andarabi. He’s young, Western-educated and part of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s new generation of leaders. He spoke about what he called a slow, steady overhaul of the police during an interview with The Associated Press inside the heavily fortified ministry in the capital, Kabul.

The upshot: Andarabi is setting up systems that he hopes will result in a professional force, one owned and operated by Afghans. That’s a daunting task, especially in light of the high casualty figures and the mountain of complaints.

In some parts of Kabul resident say they cannot leave their homes after dark because of criminal gangs that roam the streets, many with the help of police, they say.

In the outposts and checkpoints around the country police have struggled for days without reinforcements, food supplies running out and often while under attack by insurgents. Police often posts their dire circumstances on social media.

“I don’t say it is easy or doable in a day, or a month or a year, but it is doable,” he said, attributing his optimism to a concerted effort to recruit a new generation into the police and government ministries in the past year.

Andarabi said he’s instituted a new recruitment and promotion system that’s based on what you know, instead of who you know. It’s an attempt to take the “middle men” out of appointments and promotions to try to tackle corruption that is rife in the selection and promotion of police in Afghanistan.

After the Taliban were ousted, Andarabi said many of the initial police recruits were former militia members loyal to a variety of warlords, who came to power with the ouster of the Taliban.

Today, many senior officers in Afghanistan’s security institutions were only in high school when the Taliban were ousted, he said. They spent the intervening years studying and gaining experience.