Killings of 2 U.S. trainers prompt NATO review

— The killings of two U.S. trainers by an Afghan soldier was declared an isolated event Wednesday by NATO, which promised a review of training as it pushes to speedily expand Afghanistan’s army and police forces in the next few years.

On Tuesday an Afghan army sergeant opened fire at an army base in northern Afghanistan, killing the two American civilians before being shot dead. That followed an attack in the south July 13, when a soldier killed three British troopers, including the company commander, with gunfire and a rocketpropelled grenade.

Military commanders have described the two attacks as isolated events, and it is indeed rare for an Afghan soldier to turn on NATO personnel. Still, they feed on larger doubts about the ongoing recruiting among a largely illiterate population, many of whom are used to holding a gun but not to rigid military discipline.

The concerns include possible infiltration by the Taliban and the professionalism of the forces at a time when NATO hopes to expand the Afghan army from 85,000 troops in 2009 to 134,000 byOctober 2011. The eventual goal is to turn over the responsibility for nationwide security to Afghan forces by 2014 so that foreign troops can go home.

NATO has six large training sites across the country, and there are about 20,000 soldiers and about 6,500 police undergoing training at any one time, said Col. Stuart Cowen, a spokesman for the NATO training mission.

“We regard what happened yesterday as a tragic and isolated incident, and we are looking at the training, and taking prudent precautions to make sure that doesn’t happen again on ourfiring ranges,” Cowen said Wednesday.

He said that there is a strict program for vetting recruits before enlistment, including drug tests, physical exams and a check against a database of known insurgents. Potential recruits also have to get their community elders to vouch for them in a written letter.

“People do fail selection,” he said, specifying that about 7 percent of applicants do not make the cut.

Even so, there are Afghan soldiers who light up hashish or marijuana during patrols and Afghan police officers who use checkpoints mainly to shake down motorists forbribes. NATO is trying to get troops and police through regular retraining programs, but this process moves slowly.

Maj. Gen. Richard Mills, the commander of NATO forces in southwestern Afghanistan, said that while Afghan security forces have greatly improved, they’ve had trouble finding infantry soldiers with the skills to promote up to officer level.

“They need to work on their junior leadership,” Mills said.

The attacker Tuesday was a “group leader,” an Afghan soldier selected to train other soldiers on the base, Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said. U.S. Brig. Gen. Gary Patton, deputy commander of the training mission, said the attacker was a sergeant.

The shooting started with an argument during a weapons-training exercise at a firing range on an Afghan army base outside Mazar-e-Sharif. The Afghan soldier turned his weapon on the American civilian trainers and shot two of them before being gunned down, the Afghan Defense Ministry said. Another Afghan soldier was killed in the crossfire.

NATO suspended training throughout the country afterthe shooting but resumed full operations Wednesday, Patton said. It was unclear what the argument was about, and the Afghan government and NATO have launched a joint investigation.

Meanwhile, the Taliban denounced this week’s international conference on Afghanistan’s future, saying the “vague and terrible agenda” shows that the U.S. and its allies intend to abandon the country and blame their ultimate defeat on the Afghan government.

Representatives of the United States and 60 other countries met Tuesday to endorse President Hamid Karzai’s plan for Afghan police and soldiers to take charge of security nationwide by 2014. Karzai also urged his international backers to distribute more of their development aid through his government.

In a statement posted in English on their website, the Taliban said the conference showed that the U.S. “has lost the initiatives and is unable to resolve Afghanistan issue.” The statement was distributed to news organizations by the SITE Intelligence Group that monitors extremist communications.

Information for this article was contributed by Rahim Faiez of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 8 on 07/22/2010

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