Everything I know about Kapisa in Afghanistan I learned from Josh Foust, and Foust reports that things are on the decline: the PRT is FOB-bound; the French military unit in the area has a poor working relationship with its Afghan counterpart; they’ve both ceded the Alasay Valley to the Taliban. Now, according to an ISAF press release emailed to reporters, add to that another problem:

Afghan Interior Ministry and coalition forces on February 5, in the morning, [sic] Col. Attaullah deputy chief police of Kapisa  was arrested for illegal activity and corruption in Bagram district, Parwan and Kapisa provinces.

The release called Attaullah a “known IED facilitator” who had been involved in “storage, distribution and installation of IEDs on the roads surrounding Mahmud-Raqi,” not to mention bribery and kickbacks around a road refurbishment project. (And not that I know anything first-hand about this case, but the wide boy in charge of road refurbishment is exactly who you’d want as your IED placer.) Then ISAF buries the lede:

He has been clearly linked to criminal activities including a murder during the summer of 2009.

He’s an accused murderer! That’s rather worse than being a corrupt public official!

As I said, I don’t know nearly enough about Kapisa to contextualize or interpret this development, nor to make any informed assessment about either the validity of the charges or the backstory behind them. This was one jarring press release to see in the inbox early on a Sunday.

Update: More background on Kapisa from Foust, who’s just about as confused as I am about Attatullah’s arrest.