KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Afghanistan will drastically overhaul the way it polices the police in a once-and-for-all effort to cleanse a national force so rotten with corruption it elicits comparisons to the Mafia's deep roots in Italy.

Burnishing the tarnished image many Afghans have of their boys in blue is part of a new policing strategy expected to be approved in the next week or so, The Canadian Press has learned.

"Corruption in the police force directly affects our poor people and never goes unheeded by the public," says a final draft of the text, obtained by The Canadian Press, that awaits the signature of Interior Minister Hanif Atmar.

"This unfortunate phenomenon erodes the trust and confidence of our people which the police must earn in order to be a valued institution."

Law enforcement experts who fought Mafia corruption in Italy have warned it could take decades before Afghanistan's cops are clean.

"Colleagues of mine ... who have fought Mafias in Italy have said it'll take you forty or fifty years to bring this to heel," Maj.-Gen. Michael Ward, deputy commander of NATO forces training the Afghan police, said this week.

Corruption pervades nearly every Afghan institution, not the least of which its police force. Afghan National Police man illegal checkpoints across the country. Many an Afghan has been shaken down by corrupt cops looking to fatten their wallets.

It works both ways. A typical officer sees about a third of his salary skimmed off by his superiors. And promotions tend to go to those who put the most grease on the right palms.

A Canadian Press investigation last year found that virtually every position in the Afghan government is for sale.

That includes the police chief's job. Accounts vary, but the going rate seems to be anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000, depending where the position is located. The most costly jobs are those in places where the police chief can make a small fortune extorting others.

Under the new policing strategy, the attorney general's office will oversee all corruption investigations.

Afghanistan's inspector general and attorney general will probe all allegations of corruption within the Interior Ministry, which includes the police. A major crimes unit will investigate corruption in other government departments.

Ward, Canada's highest-ranking soldier in Afghanistan, says several Afghan officers are already under investigation, including a member of the top brass.

"We know that in the police force right now there are several people who are being investigated," he said.

"We have one general that's being prosecuted. And that's a start. And I think what we want to do is to make sure that this continues on."

But it's slow going. Ward said a wave of corruption prosecutions could go a long way to tipping public sentiment in favour of the Afghan government.

Special training and public awareness campaigns are also planned to cut down on corruption.

The policing strategy also calls for a swelling of the ranks as Afghan police assume greater responsibility for the country's security.

Afghan police are often at the front lines of the battle against Taliban fighters. New figures show fewer cops are dying on the job, but more are getting wounded.

Between March and December of last year, 1,103 Afghan officers died in the line of duty and 1,869 were wounded. That's down from 1,330 deaths and 1,714 wounded in 2008.

The policing plan says more officers are dying of their wounds because local police units lack the medical expertise to treat them.

The document says the militants are increasingly going after the police, rather than coalition forces or the Afghan army, because the police patrol in small groups and have predictable patterns.

Police patrol 34 provinces in Afghanistan. Of those, 18 are deemed low threat, six are a medium threat and 10 are high-threat areas where police fight the Taliban daily.

And because police don't rotate in and out of hot spots, some cops are always under fire while others have relatively safe jobs.

So more cops are needed to take on the Taliban.

Under the new plan, the force would grow to 160,000 officers by 2014. That's up from the 97,000 Afghan cops now in service.

The strategy says 5,000 more women to be hired over the next five years. It also says the force should be more diverse, with recruits from all parts and tribal affiliations of Afghanistan.