KABUL, Afghanistan — The few hundred people of Kala Khel, a village in southern Afghanistan, on Thursday got some of the best news they had heard all year: the entire Afghan Local Police unit posted to the hamlet had disappeared the night before, apparently betrayed by two of their own and abducted by the Taliban.

The police, villagers said, had been beating people and stealing from them nearly every day since they arrived five months ago, and few in Kala Khel seemed sorry to see them gone. “People are happy they have been kidnapped,” said Mahmadullah, a villager who uses a single name.

The abduction, and the villagers’ apparent indifference to the fate of the men, is another stormy chapter for the Afghan Local Police. The militia force has found itself the target of frequent Taliban attacks, as well as criticism from human rights advocates and ordinary Afghans, who say some of the militias are made up of nothing more than common criminals, village toughs and sometimes even Taliban sympathizers.

The American-led military coalition began raising the militias three years ago to protect remote villages and, it was hoped, give Afghans a stake in fighting the Taliban. In some areas, the militias have indeed given the fight a local imprimatur, persuading villagers to stop aiding the insurgents and start helping Afghan and coalition forces.