Apr 29, 2011
IBD

War On Terror: More and more Afghans and Iraqis are turning on their coalition partners. Last week’s deadly attack on American soldiers by an Afghan military officer should be a wake-up call.

During a meeting at the Kabul airport, a 48-year-old Afghan air corps pilot took out a weapon and fired at his American training partners, killing eight U.S. soldiers and a U.S. contractor.

It was the deadliest attack on coalition forces, but hardly the first. It marked the seventh time this year that members of the Afghan security forces, or insurgents impersonating them, have killed coalition soldiers. In some cases, they’ve used U.S.-supplied weapons and ammo.

Our troops are extremely vulnerable to these “rogue” attacks, as the Pentagon terms them, as they try to stand up armies and police forces as part of “nation building” in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But they aren’t so rogue if viewed all together. A clear pattern is emerging in which the enemy’s using security training exercises and joint operations to get close enough to U.S. soldiers to kill them. It’s become a common tactic of the terrorists, and they’re using it more frequently — and successfully.

Instead of doing more to guard against such treachery, such as demanding tighter vetting of recruits, the Pentagon is glossing over the attacks. It attributes many of them to “combat stress” or “unknown reasons,” even though the Muslims attackers target American and NATO soldiers.

Before the airport slaughter, the coalition had recorded at least 20 incidents since March 2009 where a member of the Afghan security forces or someone wearing a uniform used by them attacked coalition forces, killing a total of 36. Among recent attacks:

• On April 16, an Afghan soldier walked into a meeting of NATO trainers and Afghan troops at Forward Operating Base Gamberi in eastern Afghanistan and detonated a vest of explosives hidden underneath his uniform. The blast killed six American troops.

• On April 4, a man wearing an Afghan border police uniform shot and killed two U.S. soldiers in northwest Afghanistan while they were training him. The gunman reportedly was upset over the recent burning of the Quran at a Florida church.

• In February, an Afghan soldier shot and killed three German soldiers and wounded six others in the northern province of Baghlan.

• In January, an Afghan solider used an M-16 rifle to kill an Italian soldier and wound another in Badghis province.

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