* Police reputation blighted by corruption, inability
* Afghans readying to take on security role from NATO
* Taliban has 40 pct popularity in violent south
By Matt Robinson
KABUL, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Afghanistan's police force is only slightly more popular than the Taliban in the insurgent heartlands of the south, according to a survey published on Thursday, underscoring doubts over a planned NATO handover.
The results of the U.N.-commissioned survey portrayed a police force widely viewed by Afghans as corrupt and biased. Around half of the 5,052 Afghans surveyed across all 34 provinces said they would report crime elsewhere.
The findings represent a blow to Western efforts to extend the reach of the central government and its security forces to areas under the sway of a parallel Taliban authority, particularly in the south which has borne the brunt of NATO and U.S. military operations to drive back Taliban insurgents.
Building up the police force and entrenching it in rural areas is crucial to a planned security transition to the Afghan army and police starting this year, and the gradual withdrawal of 150,000 U.S. and NATO troops by the end of 2014.
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Nationwide, 79 percent of Afghans said they had a favourable opinion of the police, unchanged from 2009, and most Afghans said their personal security was improving.
But in the south, police popularity dropped over the past year from 67 to 48 percent, according to the survey conducted in November 2010 and funded by the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP).
There, the police fared only slightly better than the Taliban. While only 13 percent of Afghans have a favourable opinion of the Taliban, the figure rose to 40 percent in the south.
"Sharp regional differences in views of the police mark the fractured nature of the security situation in Afghanistan," the Afghan Centre for Socio-Economic and Opinion Research (ACSOR) said in its findings.
Violence across the country is at its worst since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, with the insurgency spreading from its southern and eastern strongholds to previously peaceful areas in the north and west.
Nationwide, six in 10 Afghans reported a significant level of corruption among police officers, and a quarter reported police favouritism on the basis of personal connections in the investigating of crimes.
The results suggested "a reluctance to engage" with the police, ACSOR said. Fewer than a third of Afghans see the police as "very" well trained, equipped and prepared to take over security responsibility from NATO-led forces.
(Editing by Paul Tait and Miral Fahmy) (If you have a query or comment about this story, send an e-mail to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com)
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