GHAZNI, Afghanistan — As part of his new strategy for Afghanistan, President Obama has announced plans to send 4,000 more American troops this spring to train the Afghan National Police and Army.

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Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images, for The New York Times

Graft has left the Afghan police ineffective and undersupplied. An officer in Ghazni Province, above, was issued only one magazine of ammunition for his rifle.

But a shortage of American trainers is only one factor hampering the Afghan police. If the experience of the American troops already training police officers in Ghazni Province is any indication, better policing may be impossible for Afghanistan unless government officials at all levels stop cannibalizing their civil administration and police force for a quick profit.

In two weeks of interviews in this mountainous region of poor farmers and shepherds, exasperated American soldiers said it was hard to determine which was their more daunting opponent — the few thousand Taliban who ruled villages through a shadow government of mullahs, or corruption so rife that it had deeply undercut efforts to improve the police and had destroyed many Afghans’ faith in government.

That lack of trust, coupled with the absence of security forces in almost all villages, further strengthens the hand of the Taliban as the only real power here. Ghazni’s experience shows the challenge that corruption presents to efforts to establish better policing throughout the country.

The list of schemes that undermine law enforcement is long and bewildering, according to American and Afghan officers who cite some examples: police officials who steal truckloads of gasoline; judges and prosecutors who make decisions based on bribes; high-ranking government officials who reap payoffs from hashish and chromite smuggling; and midlevel security and political jobs that are sold, sometimes for more than $50,000, money the buyers then recoup through still more bribes and theft.

In some cases the American officers requested that their names not be used when discussing specific allegations or that the titles of certain Afghan government and police leaders be withheld, since it would otherwise make it impossible to work with these officials, an important part of their mission.

But the frustration was palpable as they described the enormous corruption running the length of the civilian administration in this province of 1.3 million people, whose capital, Ghazni, lies 80 miles southwest of Kabul.

Referring to one corrupt and high-ranking government official he sees routinely, Maj. Randy Schmeling, a 43-year-old Army National Guardsman who commands the American police mentoring teams in Ghazni, said, “I’d like to break down his door, stomp on his chest, point my 9-millimeter at his head and say, ‘Stop what you are doing!’ ”

Some of the troops’ Afghan colleagues recognize the problem, too. “In every office there is corruption,” said Col. Mohammed Zaman, the departing provincial police chief. “It’s not only prosecutors and judges.”

“This is the reason no one accepts the rule of law,” he said, “because the government is not going by the rule of law.”

The result is an ineffective and woefully undersupplied Afghan police force and a frustrating lack of justice for Afghans. Worse still, by comparison with the government’s exercise of authority, the law imposed by the Taliban is far more certain — quick and clear, if ruthless.

“The appointed officials and elected officials, the people don’t trust them, and they don’t trust them with good reason,” Major Schmeling said. “They take from them and they give nothing back.”

He added: “Right now, there is no meritocracy here. It’s, ‘Hey, your sister has a pretty mouth — do you want to be a general?’ ”