SARATOGA SPRINGS — After seeing the conditions in which police officers work in Afghanistan, Capt. Michael Biss no longer disparages the cramped quarters of the city police department.

Biss, 53, returned April 22 after almost a year training police in the war-torn country.

Afghan officers deal with the same type of criminal complaints as patrolmen here, with the added danger of insurgents and Taliban fighters who regularly try to kill the officers or confiscate their vehicles.

It makes dealing with rowdy revelers on Caroline Street seem like a vacation day.

“The police fight a lot of the battles that the army doesn’t fight,” said Biss, a 32-year veteran with the city police department. “They quite often take more casualties than the army.”

Several officers with whom Biss worked were killed while he was there. “I lost a lot of good friends who were Afghans,” he said.

He was near some explosions himself.

“In Kabul, every three or four days there would be an [improvised explosive device] explosion. I witnessed them. I was very close to several,” he said.

Even so, he said he wouldn’t trade the experience.

An Afghan colonel gave Biss his uniform, which Biss now hangs in his office in Saratoga Springs.

“He’s a very smart individual,” Biss said of the colonel, who was a surgeon before he gave up on that profession with its $60-a-month salary in favor of the $300 a month he makes as a police officer.

The median income in Afghanistan is $30 a month, Biss said.

But not everyone on the Afghan police force is noble, Biss admitted.

The force has a history of corruption and bribery, and people like Biss were trying to change that, as well as get police commanders in Afghanistan to hire members of ethnic minorities.

Biss, a major who was retired from the Army National Guard, was recalled by the active Army for the deployment last year. He worked with members of the other branches of the armed forces in the Combined Security Transition Command, a division of Central Command.

Based in the capital, Kabul, Biss and his team members traveled throughout the country to train and mentor regional police commanders and go on patrol with officers.

His command even trained some female officers. Because of the male-oriented Afghan culture, the female officers will be limited in what they can do at work, but it’s a start, Biss said.

Domestic violence still is not seen as a crime, and beaten wives don’t report the abuse.

Girls are going back to school in Afghanistan, although the Taliban destroys schools and modern devices like cellphone towers when it can.

“They want to pound people back into the Stone Age again,” Biss said.

Seeing children with no winter clothes and frostbite on their bare feet in the winter was as heart-wrenching as the violence.

“It’s a stark, stark contrast,” he said.

The year was a difficult one for the Wilton native personally as well. During that time, his father, brother, aunt and uncle all died, and Biss couldn’t make it back for the funerals.

“My family was totally behind me. They supported me 100 percent,” he said.

He and his wife have two grown children and three grandchildren.