Few things are more essential to the success of America’s efforts in Afghanistan than the creation of a national police force. And nothing is more essential to the creation of that force as finding experienced people to train the recruits.

But a top training commander at NATO said Thursday that a deep shortage of police trainers troubles the mission.

The NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan was envisioned this year to train thousands of more recruits with hundreds of new instructors contributed by NATO allies. So far, NATO countries have supplied 400 trainers—200 short of their goal of  600.

A shortage of trainers already prompted changes in field training, as reported earlier by the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. Instead of eight weeks of instruction, as of last month, Afghan recruits were given a compressed schedule of training in six weeks.

“We are still short…That is causing us some concern,” Canadian Maj. Gen. Mike Ward, deputy commander of the NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM-A), said Thursday during a phone call with bloggers who cover the Defense beat. Ward was upbeat about progress in some areas of Afghanistan but emphasized that “everyone is aware of how fragile the Afghan National Police are.”

Ward said the shortfall in NATO trainers has meant that the military is relying on trainers provided by DynCorp International, which was awarded a contract to train police in both Iraq and Afghanistan. That police contract has also caused some problems for the training mission.

DynCorp’s contract in Afghanistan was to end in January as part of a plan by the U.S. Defense Department to change the training course to add more counterinsurgency skills. But that contract has now been extended until August because of a dispute over the bidding process for a new contract.

The Defense Department was aiming to find a contractor to develop a paramilitary training program—more heavily aimed at creating a force that could fight the Taliban. The Government Accountability Office recently ordered Defense to re-bid the contract to ensure an open and fair competition – essentially adding months to the process of finding a company to help bolster police training.

As yet, no one knows when or how that contract, worth about $1.6 billion, will be put out for bid.