Seven international soldiers have been killed by their local colleagues in a bloody four days of violence in Afghanistan, further eroding trust between foreign troops and the Afghans they work with.
Six died on Friday alone — three US soldiers were shot by an Afghan policeman who invited them to a meal and three other troops were killed by an Afghan civilian employed on a NATO base, military and Afghan officials said.
NATO has about 130,000 soldiers helping the Afghan government fight an insurgency by Taliban Islamists, but they are due to pull out in 2014 and are increasingly working with Afghans they are training to take over.
“Clearly as far as the future partnering and training and mentoring of Afghan forces by NATO and the US is concerned, it is going to have a very negative effect and the lack of trust between the two sides is going to grow,” author and analyst Ahmed Rashid said.
“NATO will have to impose new security measures for its own troops when they are dealing with Afghans or training Afghans, which will put even more distance between the two sides,” Rashid said.
Some of the attacks are claimed by the Taliban, who say they have infiltrated the ranks of Afghan security forces, but many are attributed to cultural differences and antagonism between local and US-led allied forces.
“What we identified was that most of them were caused by personal grievances and stress situations,” said Brigadier General Gunter Katz, the chief spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
“Those isolated incidents don’t reflect the overall security situation in Afghanistan. As we speak 500,000 soldiers and policemen are working together to contribute to a more secure and stable Afghanistan,” he said.
“We are confident that the morale [among international troops] is still good and those incidents will not affect our transition process.”
Katz agreed, however, that there had been an increase in so-called green-on-blue attacks this year in which Afghans turn their weapons against their NATO allies.
NATO had recorded 26 incidents, in which 34 international soldiers were killed, he said.
“Insurgents understand that this type of action is the most effective one, so they tend to use it as much as they can,” a Western security source said. “But apart from that, there is a general feeling of Afghans being fed up with the foreign troops, cultural issues.”
On Tuesday, a US soldier died in the east when two men in Afghan army uniform opened fire, and on Thursday an Afghan soldier was killed after turning his weapon on NATO troops, also in the east.
Then, on Friday, an Afghan police officer opened fire on four US soldiers he had invited for a meal, killing three of them, Afghan officials said.
The US military in Afghanistan confirmed that three US soldiers had been killed by “an individual in an Afghan uniform” in Sangin district of southern Helmand Province, but gave no further details.
Two Afghan officials said that the soldiers were shot dead by an Afghan police officer who had invited them for a meal at his checkpost in the restive southern province.
“Asadullah, the police checkpost commander, invited four foreign special forces soldiers to a [Ramadan] breakfast at 2:30am in Sangin district,” a senior security officer in the province said, requesting anonymity. “He later opened fire on the special forces soldiers, killing three and wounding another, and he managed to run away.”
Sangin district chief Mohammad Sharif also told reporters that four foreign soldiers had been killed by the checkpost commander after he invited them to a meal.
Breakfast is eaten before sunrise during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from then until the evening meal at dusk.
Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the attack, saying seven US special forces soldiers had been killed.
Also on Friday, an Afghan civilian employed on a NATO base shot dead three international coalition soldiers, ISAF said.
A total of 17 foreign soldiers have been killed in the past week.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese