(CNN) -- On a recent night at The Fort restaurant in Denver, John King ordered American fare for his Afghan friend. Bison filet and elk chop.
Munir Mohammad Mangal, Afghanistan's deputy interior minister, had eaten enough lamb to last a lifetime. Game, however, was a daring gastronomic leap of faith. But if Mangal has learned anything from his American military adviser, it was this: You have to take chances to forge friendships.
A good meal and a broad smile have long been standard ammo for King, the police chief of Doraville, Georgia, and a colonel in the Army National Guard. He believes that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won solely through the barrel of a gun, but by building relationships.
And King's way of breaking down cultural barriers is by breaking bread.
"It helps people listen, while you are chewing," he said about the countless meals he has shared with friends, foes and those whose allegiances were indiscernible.
King, 45, spent a year in Iraq helping democratize local governments and train a fledgling Iraqi army. Three years on, he's in Afghanistan, advising Mangal on how best to enlighten his security forces, a key issue as the Obama administration reviews its Afghanistan policy.
King's soldiers in Georgia's 48th Infantry Brigade have been teaching Afghans how to patrol the streets, enforce the law and defend themselves against an unconventional enemy.
"We're making steady progress. You can't train them in eight weeks and say you're done," said King, who accompanied Mangal to an international police chiefs convention in Denver this month.
Later, they traveled to Washington before heading back to Kabul, the Afghan capital. They urged U.S. officials to help beef up Afghanistan's security forces -- more men, more equipment and better support for special units focusing on corruption and crime.
But the biggest challenge, Mangal said, will be overhauling the mindset of Afghan police and soldiers, many of whom are dirt poor and illiterate. Policemen have a hard time rejecting bribes and Afghans have an even harder time accepting their authority.
Everyone agrees that effective policing is critical for a counterinsurgency campaign to succeed. To that end, Mangal could not have asked for anyone better at his side than King, who has seen his share of policing problems.
In 1986, as a rookie cop, King found himself patrolling on foot in Atlanta neighborhoods so tough they had names like "Little Vietnam." King called it his first war zone. In 2002, he took over as chief of a police force mired in corruption scandals in a city battered by gang violence. King likened that situation to Afghanistan today.
As the first Latino police chief in the Atlanta area -- King was born in Mexico City to a Mexican mother and American father -- he quickly built a reputation for reaching out to people.
In Doraville, a suburban Atlanta town peppered with Vietnamese pho shops, Korean barbecue joints and Mexican taquerias, King pushed his police officers to mingle with the public. Hang out in their shops, he told them. Eat at their restaurants.
The gangs eventually retreated because they knew the police had won over the locals.
King used the same tactic in Iraq.
His armored battalion was based in a restive region south of Baghdad, where allegiances of Sunni and Shia sheiks were, at best, shady. Instead of staying in the safety of the forward operating base, King walked the streets of Mahmudiyah, visited the homes of tribal leaders, greeting them in Arabic and feasting on communal plates of lamb and rice.
He even helped an enterprising Iraqi open a restaurant at a dusty U.S. outpost called Scania. King dined on kebabs, lentils and flat bread at Qasim's. The idea was to foster trust and, subsequently, a better relationship with the Iraqi villagers nearby.
"I had to walk out of my base, out of my comfort zone," King said.
He does the same in Afghanistan, traversing tough terrain with Mangal. In southern Ghazni province, where few Westerners have recently tread, the locals mistook him for a Russian leftover from the Soviet occupation.
King said so far 96,000 policemen have stood up in Afghanistan. Ideally, that number will grow to 160,000. And all of them will have to be trained.
"It took me five years to get Doraville police back in shape," King said. "I only have 50 policemen there. Imagine trying to do that for a country with 96,000 policemen."
Not just anywhere, but in Afghanistan, where the line between a soldier and a policeman is thin.
The army swoops in for a military operation, King said. But afterward, it's the young, untrained policemen carrying just handcuffs and an AK-47 who are left to face a menacing enemy armed with rockets and car bombs.
King said insurgents are targeting the police, just as drug dealers did in America when they were able to sell openly on the streets.
"The Afghan police have higher casualty rates than anybody," he said. "The only way the insurgents can be successful is if they can hide in plain sight. Once we take the community away from the insurgents, they stick out like sore thumbs." Like the Asian gangs in Doraville.
Some experts who have studied Afghanistan's security problems have been critical of U.S. soldiers being placed in mentoring roles for Afghan police. But National Guard members with law enforcement backgrounds like King are a valuable asset, said Candace Rondeaux, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group in Kabul.
"He has a much more valuable role to play than a sergeant first class who has been a career Army guy," she said.
King draws on more than two decades of police experience to advise Mangal on how to conduct a narcotics investigation or probe a homicide. He even shows him how he does the paperwork.
"It's all about how do we do business in the United States," he said.
Mangal is thrilled to have King by his side.
"I have learned many things from police chief of Doraville," Mangal said. "I am using his good experiences that he has gotten from Iraq and the United States."
As for the buffalo meat he tasted in Colorado? Mangal described it as delicious.
But in Afghanistan, he'll have to settle for lamb.
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