Meltdown of
Afghanistan’s security forces
By: Khalid Iqbal
On the eve of Eid, shrapnel from two rockets fired at the Bagram
Airbase hit the parked aircraft of the most powerful military commander of the
world, the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; forcing him to await a
replacement plane. Such attacks occur nearly every two weeks at this most
stringently guarded airbase. Before leaving Afghanistan, General Martin E.
Dempsey telephoned President Hamid Karzai urging him to ‘do more’ to prevent such
attacks.
It is, however, unusual for the Chairman Joint Chiefs to call a head of
state. It indicates how desperately the US officials view the current spate of
insider attacks by Afghan recruits and soldiers, which they are attempting to
train. A spokesman for General Dempsey said: “Mr Karzai committed to working
with the US to examine potential causes for the attacks, including whether they
might be the work of outside spy agencies.” He further said: “We certainly
don’t see this as the one reason.......we don’t know what’s causing them, and
we’re looking at everything.”
America’s concern over the growing number of insider attacks is not
new. Infiltration of the Afghan National Army by the Taliban has been known for
quite some time. But now the worry focuses on how coalition troops could
protect themselves, while training members of the Afghan army and the police.
In a startling incident in the western Farah province, during a graduation
ceremony of the Afghan police, as soon as one policeman was handed over his
official weapon, he quickly turned around and pumped bullets into two of his
American trainers, who died on the spot. There have been 40 US/Nato deaths due
to insider attacks during this year; 10 Isaf servicemen have been killed in the
last week, including seven Americans.
A recent account by Richard A. Oppel Jr and Graham shows that the
number of Afghan on Afghan attacks is even higher than those against the Nato
forces. So far, the Afghan soldiers or police have killed 53 of their comrades
and wounded at least 22 others in 35 separate incidents during this year.
Another article, In Toll of 2,000, New Portrait of Afghan War, written
by James Dao and Andrew W. Lehren and published in The New York Times, presents
an interesting analysis of American casualties during the Afghan war: “Nearly
nine years passed before the American forces reached their first 1,000 dead in
the war.......The second 1,000 came just 27 months later.......three out of
four were white, nine out of 10 were enlisted service members, and one out of
two died in either Kandahar province or Helmand province.......Their average
age was 26.......single highest period for American deaths being July, August
and September 2010, when at least 143 troops died.......improvised explosive
devices, known as IED’s, remained a leading cause of death and injury, along
with small-arms fire.” Ironically, 278 foreign soldiers killed themselves last
year in Afghanistan, as compared to 247 combat-related deaths.
This year, a new threat has emerged: attacks by Afghans dressed in the
uniforms of Afghan security forces. During the previous two weeks, at least
nine Americans have been killed in such attacks. For the year to date, at least
40 non-Afghan troops, mostly Americans, have been killed by militants dressed
like Afghan security forces. Clearly, it is a situation endemic to a typical
asymmetrical war. The point, however, is that these insider attacks are not
entirely carried out by the Taliban infiltrated into the security forces.
Anti-Americanism is also on display involving the Afghans, who may not be
Taliban sympathisers, but resent the US occupation for various reasons.
Even as the Afghan government says that “it would take new measures to
counter a wave of deadly insider killings of Western troops by the Afghan
security forces, President Karzai’s office asserted for the first time that
foreign spy agencies were behind most of the attacks, putting it directly at
odds with the Nato’s assessment of the crisis.” His Spokesman, Aimal Faizi,
said that the Afghan authorities were studying every known insider attack. He
said that based on interrogations of attackers who had been detained and other
evidence, like letters and records of phone calls, the government had concluded
that the main culprits in the killings had been put in place by intelligence
services from neighbouring countries. “The investigation done so far shows
there is infiltration by foreign spy agencies,” Mr Faizi said.
The American officials at Pentagon were surprised by the Spokesperson’s
assertion. “We don’t have indications that foreign entities are the locus of
sponsorship for insider attack threats,” said a senior Pentagon official. A
senior Pakistani security official called the accusations as “hogwash”.
However, the Afghan government conceded that some of the attacks were also
motivated by outrage over actions by the US troops, including the burning of
the Holy Quran at an American base and the video images of marines urinating on
dead bodies in Afghanistan.
Despite their presence in Afghanistan for nearly 11 years, the
Americans have not learnt the honour code of ‘Pashtunwali’. According to this
code, the blood spilled by anyone has to be avenged by sons, grandsons, even a
man from the clan if there is no male left in family and so on. Time is on the
sides of Afghans. All Afghans are imbued by the same honour code. Though
unfortunate, but, in all probability, the Americans would continue to suffer
from ‘green-on-blue’ attacks, as well as bear with the high suicide rate of
American soldiers whose conscience does not let them live due to the cruelties
committed by their country in this purposeless war.
President Barack Obama spoke at length on the issue during a White
House press conference, admitting that he is “deeply concerned” by the growing
war casualties. However, he had no viable solution to offer. He talked about
dated measures like “better counterintelligence, making sure that the vetting
process for Afghan troops is stronger.“
The insider attacks have increased concerns about the viability of a
sustainable transition by the occupation forces, while they face the dilemma of
who’s who! Concerns have all along been expressed by a number of security
analysts about the credibility and viability of the Afghan army and police
services. These services do not represent the demographic profile of
Afghanistan. Ethnic Pashtuns, who are the single largest ethnic group, are
grossly underrepresented in them. These services are a conglomeration of ethnic
minority groups and are viewed by the Pashtuns as an extension of foreign
occupation forces. Moreover, poor professional skills, high rate of desertions
and lax discipline are some of the major weaknesses that point towards their
post-2014 non-viability. In all probability, these entities would turn into
gangs of thugs. For now, the monster seems to have turned against its own
creator.
The occupation forces are now in a state of siege in Afghanistan. It
appears that there is substantial tacit unity among the public, insurgents and
government officials. All Afghans, irrespective of their ethnic lineage or
sectarian belief, are unanimous on at least one point: to get rid of the
foreign troops.
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