Afghan Police Officer Kills 5 British Soldiers

2009-11-04

The deaths of five British soldiers on Tuesday at the hands of an Afghan policeman with whom they were working unleashed an outcry in Britain and highlighted the vulnerability of Western troops as they carry out a key part of the counter-insurgency strategy to train more Afghan army and police.

The attack occurred at midday Tuesday in Helmand Province as the soldiers relaxed in the still warm autumn sun on the roof of the joint checkpoint over looking the shared British-Afghan compound. They were so at ease that they had shed their body armor and helmets, never thinking that they would be attacked by one of the men they lived and worked with, said a local provincial official. The attacker then fled, setting off a manhunt.

For Britain, where public support for the war has grown shaky, the event resulted in one of the highest number of fatalities in a single attack since the Afghanistan invasion eight years ago, bringing to 92 the number of British troops killed in a single year.

It came just one month after an Afghan policeman fired on American soldiers during a joint patrol in Wardak Province, killing two, and immediately intensified concerns about Taliban infiltration of the Afghan security forces, which are supposed to be preparing to take a broader role in combating the Taliban insurgency.

An Afghan official in Helmand said the gunman was sympathetic to the Taliban insurgents who have been fighting an increasingly bold campaign against Afghan and NATO forces. Six British soldiers were also wounded.

Lt. Col. David Wakefield, a British spokesman in Helmand, described the Afghan policeman as an “individual rogue.” Helmand officials said regardless of whether the policeman was a rogue actor, he killed the British soldiers in a climate of insurgency, which has tainted the way all Afghans think of foreigners on their soil, and warned that the incident could be repeated.

“This is not the first incident and will not be the last one; it will continue in the future as well,” said Haji Muhammed Anwar Khan, a local elder and a representative of Helmand in Parliament. “As much as we are losing the territories, we will face this kind of trouble, and also as much as there is distance between the government and ISAF and the local people, we will have face this kind of event.” He was referring to the International Security Assistance Forces, the NATO-led force of some 71,000 troops from 43 nations.

An important part of the counterinsurgency strategy embraced by the United States is to train more Afghan troops and police to protect people, in hopes of reducing the tensions created by foreign forces and allowing them eventually to leave.

Col. Wayne Shanks, a public affairs officer for the NATO force, acknowledged that the plan entails risks, he but called the Tuesday attack a “very isolated incident” and said the training was already making a positive difference.

“Partnering and mentoring is more and more the way we are training the Afghan units,” he said. “You have to be there: work with them, live with them and it makes you safer in the long run. It’s a fundamental tenet of counterinsurgency strategy.”

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the American military commander in Afghanistan, issued a statement saying: “We will not let this event deter our resolve to building a partnership with the Afghan National Security Forces to provide for Afghanistan’s future.”

But there are clear indications that the public resolve among many American allies is waning. The incident Tuesday came at a time when public support for Britain’s military commitment in Afghanistan - second largest, in numbers of troops, after the United States - has been falling sharply.

A number of recent opinion polls have shown that less than half those surveyed supported the British role in the war, and about half of those urge the early withdrawal of British troops. There are now about 9,000 British troops operating in Afghanistan.

Both the Labor party government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the opposition Conservatives led by David Cameron, who are strong favorites to win a general election next spring, have stood firmly by the British commitment.

Both leaders have said that Britain’s role in the 41-nation coalition in Afghanistan is essential to safeguarding Britain’s security against Islamic extremist attacks of the kind that the United States endured on Sept. 11, 2001, and Britain on July 7, 2005, when 56 people, including four suicide bombers, were killed in attacks on London’s transit system.

After the killing of the five British soldiers, that message was reaffirmed by British Defense Minister Bob Ainsworth. Speaking in a BBC interview during a visit to Saudi Arabia, he rejected the arguments of those in Britain who have said that the country should abandon its military role in Afghanistan and concentrate on guarding against attacks by Islamic militants at home.

British intelligence chiefs have said that three-quarters of all terrorist plots uncovered in Britain in recent years have had links to Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is the ancestral homeland of the majority of Britain’s 1.5-million Muslims. “If Afghanistan is not secure, then Pakistan is not secure, and if Pakistan is not secure then Britain is not secure,” said Ainsworth.

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, sharply condemned the attack and extended his condolences to the families of the soldiers.

The incident occurred around noon on Tuesday when the British soldiers were visiting a jointly run Afghan and British checkpoint near a health clinic in a village in Helmand, which has become an epicenter of attacks on the British in southern Afghanistan.

The British soldiers were on the checkpoint’s roof with some of the Afghan police officers responsible for protecting the clinic, according to a provincial spokesman and a local official who visited the scene of the attack.

The atmosphere was relaxed and the British were not wearing body armor, according to the spokesman for the provincial government, Dawoud Ahmadi. Without warning, at least one of the Afghan troops began firing an automatic weapon in quick bursts at the British soldiers, according to Haji Barakzai, a local official.

The British retaliated, and three Afghans were killed. It was unclear if there was more than one gunman, the British said, but at least one, identified as Gulbaddin, got away.

Barakzai said that the local police commander said the gunman was known to be sympathetic to the Taliban.

However, Taliban commanders in southern Afghanistan said they were unaware of the attack and were making calls to their local commanders in the area to see if they had any knowledge, but they did not think any of their foot soldiers were involved.
The attack mirrored at least two similar incidents in Iraq in which Iraqi Security Forces turned on American soldiers they were working with. The most recent instance was on Nov. 12, 2008, in Mosul when an Iraqi Army private opened fire on a group of American soldiers visiting an Iraqi base near an American base. One American soldier died and seven were wounded. In that case, it did not appear that the attacker had a connection to the insurgency.

Source: Free Internet Press.
Link: http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=23462.