Wednesday, August 06, 2014

Afghan troops’ rocky past offers clues into killing --- KABUL — Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, the highest-ranking U.S. military officer killed in a war zone in four decades, died not at the hand of a sworn enemy but from a burst of gunfire by a soldier in an allied army who had been largely paid, trained and equipped with American and NATO support. -- It will probably never be known what led the shooter, identified as a man in his 20s, to hide in a bathroom at a military training base near the capital Tuesday, then emerge and open fire on a delegation of visiting American and European military officers, before being shot dead himself. -- It was also unclear what provoked two other “insider attacks” this week: a firefight Tuesday between an Afghan police guard and NATO troops near the governor’s office in southern Paktia province, and an incident Wednesday in Uruzgan province in which an Afghan policeman poisoned his colleagues’ food, then shot at least seven of them before fleeing in a police truck, officials said. -- But the troubled 11-year history of the Afghan security forces, including the Afghan army, offers an ample range of possible explanations for such deeply disturbing incidents, whether aimed at Afghan cohorts or foreign military dignitaries. -- The army, the most professional and popular of the new defense forces, has drawn recruits from across the country who have been expected to replace local and ethnic loyalties with adherence to a national government and its defense. The aim has been to forge an army of about 80,000 men and officers who could be weaned from foreign tutelage by now and prepared to take on the Taliban alone, then gradually grow to as many as 120,000 troops. -- From the beginning, however, the project has been plagued with problems. Soldiers have gone AWOL and deserted in high numbers. Ethnic imbalances between officers and troops have been sources of envy and friction. Equipment has been old and expensive to replace. -- Perhaps most problematic, the American mentors who have “embedded” with Afghan units were slow to arrive, and Afghan fighting traditions – honed over decades of anti-Soviet guerrilla combat and civil war -- have been both more brutal and egalitarian than the orderly American ethos of haircuts, salutes and pre-dawn drills. -- In a 2009 report on the state of the Afghan army, the Rand Corp. and the Royal Danish Defense College found that while steady improvements were being made in professional skills and combat readiness, the army was still very much a “work in progress” and would need continued international support for the foreseeable future. Despite significant gains in some areas, the report said, “operational effectiveness remains very much in the balance.” - More, Pamela Constable, Washingtonpost

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