DEH YAK, Afghanistan – Seven U.S. Army soldiers gather around a wood stove for a few hands of Texas Hold 'Em. In another barracks 50 yards away, about a dozen Afghan police are dozing.

It's 3 degrees below zero, and the snow is a foot deep – an unlikely night for a Taliban attack. Still, Capt. Robert Bailey of Plano has a GPS device in his pocket if he needs to send up a desperation signal indicating American soldiers are about to be overrun.

More than six years after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, the 27,000 U.S. troops here are fighting a resurgent Taliban and trying to work through a maze of problems related to building a nation out of a badly broken country. Last year was the most violent since the U.S. invasion in 2001. And corruption, from the top levels of President Hamid Karzai's government to the police on the street, has undermined faith in the government.

Tonight, the enemy might be the Taliban, or it might be the cops, who have clashed with U.S. troops before.

This is a front in the war where a handful of American soldiers embedded with the police are trying to root out corruption and save the Afghan government from its own avarice. It's a big job. And how well they succeed will help determine when American soldiers can come home.

Afghanistan's police are notorious for extorting money from civilians, protecting drug dealers and otherwise acting like "terrorists with badges," as one U.S. officer put it. The police sometimes go unpaid and must fend for themselves.

Until November, the police general in charge of this province had a roster that included more than 1,600 "ghost" policemen – someone was collecting their salaries, even though no one ever saw them. Half the fuel and food allotted to the police force was sold on the black market, according to Maj. Mike Basart, who commands the police training teams at Forward Operating Base Vulcan.

When police ran low on firewood or clothes, they went to the bazaar and took what they needed without paying. Cops would set up roadblocks and demand payments before anyone could pass.

"If police officers don't appear to the people as legitimate or professional, how can the government be regarded as professional or honest?" asked Maj. Gabe Barton, operations officer for the 2nd battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division, which has responsibility for security in Deh Yak and the rest of Ghazni Province.

To train together, the Afghan police and the U.S. Army have to overcome mutual distrust. That boiled over in a gunfight last month. Eight Ghazni police officers, including a substation police chief, were killed in a shootout with U.S. Special Forces who swooped in on helicopters to arrest a suspected Taliban leader.

Gen. Khan Mohammed Khan, who heads the Ghazni Provincial Police, said none of his men knew in advance about the raid. They thought they were responding to an armed robbery at a private home, he said.

Maj. Barton said that the U.S. team arrived in helicopters, which should have announced who they were. He said the Afghan police were the first to start shooting. Other Army officers here say they suspect the police were trying to keep the Taliban leader from being arrested.

Earlier attempts to train the Afghan police, led by Germany's police, did little to root out corruption, at least in the eyes of the Afghan people. Now it's up to the U.S. military to do the job.

Training the Afghan police is the top priority this year for Mr. Karzai, said Afghan Ambassador to the U.S. Said Tayeb Jawad. If the government has a legitimacy problem because of corrupt cops, the international community – and the U.S. focus on the war in Iraq – shares some responsibility, he said.

"Had we invested more in the Afghan army and police before now, we could send your soldiers back to their homes with deep gratitude," Mr. Jawad said. "Training the police is the major challenge right now. We need 3,000 more trainers from the U.S. and NATO."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates tried last fall to get NATO allies to send those police trainers, along with another 4,000 troops to enhance security in southern Afghanistan. That failed, and last month, President Bush ordered 3,200 more Marines to Afghanistan – 2,200 for security and 1,000 to train police.

The U.S. Army is training hundreds of soldiers at Fort Riley, Kan., to become embedded mentors for the Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army. They work as teams of three trained mentors and up to five other U.S. soldiers who provide security.

Capt. Bailey and his eight-man team are among the first to set up house in a remote police station. Other military teams work during the day at the Ghazni provincial headquarters, and still others work with the Ministry of the Interior in Kabul.

"The police are about four or five years behind the ANA," or Afghan National Army, Capt. Bailey said. "The effort to work with the ANA took off like a shooting star. With the ANP [Afghan National Police], we just half-assed it."

Embedding mentors with foreign military is a mission usually handled by U.S. Special Forces. But those elite units don't have the numbers to live and train at all the Afghan police stations and army barracks and still hunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders along the border with Pakistan.

The Deh Yak embedded soldiers spend three to five nights a week at a police station about nine miles west of the city of Ghazni.

Sgt. 1st Class Charles Robinson of Lincolnton, N.C., volunteered for the job. The 37-year-old paratrooper, called "Silver Bush" because of his short grey hair, said he measures the mission's success through the children.

The police trainers often shower kids in the villages with Beanie Babies and other gifts.

"You want to see them get an education and have them remember Americans did good by them," Sgt. Robinson said. "You don't want to mess with their religion. You don't want to change their culture. But you do want to change their belief in the extremists."

Changing attitudes toward the Taliban has meant changing perceptions of the Afghan police.

Faiz Muhammad Salehy, the Deh Yak police chief, was a guerrilla fighter against the Soviets and then against the Taliban. The chief came to Deh Yak as part of a team spying on the Taliban in 2000. His cover was as a trader selling raisins, almonds, mushrooms and such. His talent for business was good enough that he became independently wealthy.

After U.S. forces teamed up with the Taliban's enemies and drove the Taliban and al-Qaeda to the Pakistan frontier, Mr. Salehy signed on in 2003 with the Deh Yak police and began a slow struggle to build a professional force.

Capt. Bailey and his team arrived a month ago to give him a hand.

"Before we had a weak economy, and the police were taking money from civilians," Chief Salehy said. "If anyone takes money now, we take their weapon and their uniform and fire them."

Some Deh Yak farmers were growing hashish, and some police officers were smoking it and providing security for drug dealers. That, too, has stopped, Chief Salehy said.

"The village elders signed a paper agreeing that if anyone is caught growing this, we will charge them, fine them, and they will have to move from this district," he said.

In October, U.S. Army trainers brought shoes, clothes and toys for the Deh Yak police to distribute to the people of the district. Soon after, townspeople started providing the police with information about Taliban activities. A report on the hide-out of the local Taliban chief led to a firefight that killed the Taliban leader.

During a bitterly cold winter, the police have spent more time helping Afghans stranded in mountain snowdrifts than fighting the Taliban. Ghazni province is about the size of West Virginia. The elevation of Ghazni city, 93 miles south-southeast of Kabul, is 7,280 feet, and Deh Yak is higher still.

Staff Sgt. Patrick Farrelly, a native Hawaiian who also volunteered to embed with the police, has tried to coax the Deh Yak officers to sort out guard duty, learn to handle their weapons and look out for one another.

"We have to do these things so we can all go home," he said. "If we don't, we'll never leave this place."

Salaries have been the biggest issue. Haphazard paydays led many cops to take their living from the public and to rarely show up for work. Chief Salehy said getting enough pay and getting it on time is his first priority for the 110 men under his command.

The Deh Yak police are paid about $100 a month – nearly twice what the police were paid two years ago, but half what they should be paid, Chief Salehy said. The chief draws a salary of $75 a month.

"He'd rather get his men's pay sorted out first and worry about his later," Capt. Bailey said.

Forging a cohesive police force out of untrained Afghans is a matter of "baby steps," Sgt. Farrelly said.

The U.S. embed team arrived at the Deh Yak station unannounced recently and found only 15 police officers on the job. Capt. Bailey mustered 12 of them to patrol down the village streets, only to turn back when Sgt. Farrelly reported that the Afghans had left the station unguarded.

In such cold weather, it's harder to persuade the police to stand guard all night in sentry towers. The U.S. team of embedded soldiers brought wood stoves and fuel for the towers but still had to roust guards out of their barracks beds to man the watch. They harangued police sergeants to keep blankets out of the guard towers because the police are prone to falling asleep.

An impromptu inspection of a remote observation outpost found a group of shivering Afghan police living in trenches and sandbagged huts in the grip of an ice fog that etched its white teeth in everything from eyebrows to engine blocks. Three of the police at this camp were fired recently for taking bribes but had yet to turn in their uniforms.

New York National Guard Pvt. Brendan Marino, a 32-year-old Brooklyn native working security for the team, said he guesses training the Afghan police will take many years to complete. But he's intrigued enough that he said he's considering coming back to Afghanistan as a civilian training contractor.

"You get the ones that want to do the job, and they're good fighters," he said.

By having soldiers live among the police, the U.S. Army hopes to train by example as well as exercise.

"Show them what right looks like, and they'll want to do that," Capt. Bailey said.

Current force size of the Afghan National Police

Build-up target for the force

Afghan National Police officers killed in action against the Taliban in 2007

Until last year, police training was a job divided among Germany, the State Department and private contractors. More than 57,000 police officers were pushed through a basic training program, but the effort was judged ineffective in wiping out corruption and equipping the police with the needed skills and tools. The training job then went to the military, led by U.S. forces.