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Subscribe to RSSIn the wake of attacks on NATO soldiers, the U.S. has stopped training local Afghan police for a month. Retired Col. Jack Jacobs reports that the mission to train local police may take longer than the political will. NBC's Lester Holt has more.
KABUL, Afghanistan -- United States military officials have suspended the training of Afghan Local Police (ALP) in the wake of a deadly series of so-called ‘green on blue’ attacks by Afghan soldiers and police on their international allies.
In a statement late Saturday, Col. Thomas Collins, US Forces Afghanistan spokesperson, said the training has been put on hold in order to carry out intensified vetting procedures on new recruits, and 16,000 existing ALP recruits will be re-vetted.
The shooting deaths of two American soldiers in Kabul by an Afghan colleague are under investigation, with Afghan officials are saying it was an accident. NBC's Atia Abawi reports.
“While we have full trust and confidence in our Afghan partners, we believe this is a necessary step to validate our vetting process and ensure the quality indicative of Afghan Local Police," he said in the statement.
What's leading Afghan troops to turn on coalition forces?
Many of the 'insider' incidents might have been prevented if existing security measures had been applied correctly, according to the Washington Post which first reported the training suspension.
The newspaper said already-trained recruits would also be re-vetted.
"Current partnered operations have and will continue, even as we temporarily suspend training of about 1,000 new ALP recruits while re-vetting current members," said the statement. “Despite the recent rise in insider attacks, they are relatively rare."
Hoshang Hashimi / AP
More than ten years after the beginning of the war, Afghanistan faces external pressure to reform as well as ongoing internal conflicts.
Forty-five allied troops have been killed in 34 ‘insider’ attacks this year alone. The Afghan army is implicated in 19 of those attacks, but their training will not be halted.
Last week, an Afghan soldier shot and killed two American soldiers on Monday during a dispute in Laghman province in Afghanistan.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Aug 19 to express concern over the issue, urging him to work with U.S. commanders to ensure more rigorous vetting of Afghan recruits. Panetta’s intervention followed the 10th death of a U.S. service member at the hands of Afghan recruit in the space of just two weeks.
A U.S. military official says three American service members were killed and one was wounded after a gunman opened fire on them. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
ALP training is a U.S. mission, carried out by Special Forces. Training of uniformed police and army personnel is done under the banner of the NATO operation.
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And this time... when we leave... make sure we take all our sh*t with us... k?
How can our military be so f--king stupid? Instead of buying more guns maybe we need to start paying for some smarts.
Or how about simply using the ones we already have for something other than a very heavy piece of over sized jewelry.
Well, the military is substantially better-educated than the civilian populace of the United States, so not quite sure where you're coming from, James.
Also, what exactly is stupid: training the Afghan forces or being in country in the first place? War is an inherently political animal.
“While we have full trust and confidence".............horse hockey pucks!
I am sure this will bring solace to the families of those murdered by "friendly" Afghans.
Face it, our military leaders, from Obama down, are clueless.
Who will be the last person killed!
Well Fred, you don't have to worry as you are one of the arm chair warriors.
Neither do you, SallyAnn, as you appear to be both an arm chair warrior and one of those rude keyboard commentators.............
Sure wish that the powers that be would listen to us.
Get the hell out of that sh*t hole country.
If there is targets that need taken out do it from the air.
Ground war over. Stop funding these jackass countries that hate the USA.
Just leave and let them pick the loyal ones on their own
The people of the US need to stand up and DEMAND that we get out of Afganistan immediately. This country is living in about the 6th Century, they are only interested in killing each other and we are getting in the way!
You know from a combat point of view these green on blue attacks do not really matter, after all America has been trying to convince it’s people that you can measure military success by body counts since Vietnam and thus using that model it’s easy to see that one man’s death here, two there doesn’t’ mean anything (sorry if people find this part dis-respectful but that’s the way the higher ups look at it)what makes these attack so dangerous is from a psychological point of view, after all the effect it has on the troops is that it keeps them on edge 24/7 (constantly look out for threats all the time) which is extremely stressful and exhausting, and would ultimately lead to the solider either making a mistake that’ll get him or his friends killed or doing something that will further alienate the Afghan people (and alienating a civilian population from a rival military is way up there on the goals of insurgents) whereas the other effect is to demoralise the American people back home and thus increase their demands for a complete withdrawal regardless of consequences. As for the consequences well for America they’d be minor really, but for the Taliban and the Afghan people they would be major, after all an immediate departure would leave the Afghan people without a fully trained military or police force, which would give the Taliban a much easier time at regaining control. Now some of you may think this is deserved but have you considered what would happen if the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan? Well first up since one stated US goal was to insure they never returned to power they could (and would) gain prestige by saying how they beat the “great Satan” next they would almost defiantly re-open the terror training camps too (as they were good money makers) which would mean that 13+ years or work by our armed forces would have been a waste of time.
Exactly! Our idiot 'leaders' have no clue what they are doing . Bush was a total moron for getting involved there BUT by accident he took the battle field from America to the middle east where it belongs.
when I hear people brag about how powerful the USA is it makes me laugh. Any tiny 3rd world country knows we operate on past reputation, have not won a war since WW2 and when we are engaged in a war, which is peretty much ALWAYS, we are basically not allowed to fight and kill the enemy because unlike the enemy, we must follow the assinine 'rules of engagement' that greatly favor American soldiers dying over killing the enemy or winning the war.
e could not beat poverty stricken Korea, Tiny Cuba punked us down and North Vietnam threw us out in disgrace. e tripped all over ourrselves in 'Desert Storm' and accomplished nothing and now in 2 wars that we never had a chance at winning, we are defeated and in huge debt for rebuilding both of them, in the once again failed attempt to buy our 'friends'
The way wars should be fought - go in fast and hard kill as many enemy as possible, bomb their cities and airports, go in and destroy any and all war and military equipment, then leave.
You may recognize that method as how successful ways are won through out history.
Pulling out now with no success does EXACTLY what you said. It strengthens terrorism and adds to the numerous 3rd world countries who punked the USA down.
Of course when we leave we WILL continue to send foreign aid to them that they WILL buy weapons with so they can attack us again and again
chopperJohn69
"The way wars should be fought - go in fast and hard kill as many enemy as possible, bomb their cities and airports, go in and destroy any and all war and military equipment, then leave."
Personally I don't think there is or should be a blanket rule on how wars are fought, after all each war is unique and a one-size-fits-all approach would be very counter-productive, furthermore there are multiple types of war that can be fought to and since "war is just politics by other means" (1) to try and limit oneself to one method would be to restrict the options you have available
1 Carl von Clausewitz
bla ba bla bla bla bla bla
Only in America, land of the blind dumb and retarded government can anyone ever come up with such great ideas as bombing the enemy with food and medical supplies, rebuilding their countries while in the middle of a war and while our infrastructure is failing and then top it off by giving the enemy modern weapons and then training them how to kill and expecting they would not kill our troops .
A big giant DUH! to Bush and Obama along with our dumba zz military leaders who have once again proved the term MILITARY INTELLIGENCE is an oxymoron
it's about freakin time!! your not going to change them!! let's just get the hell out,and keep about 10 nuke's pointed at them!!!
What nukes? Obama wants to get rid of all of them, do you seriously think he wants to aim them anywhere?
"Screw all the "Stans!" Paka, Kazakaa & Afghana etc.
Should have pulled out right after bin Laden was killed. Now that would be a real and true "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED." moment. But the MIC wouldn't make their money then.
Killing Bin Laden wasn't the mission in Afghanistan. Never was. Bin Laden was the symptom, not the root of the problem. AQ in Afghanistan had already been marginalized and devastated before Bin Laden was killed.
The mission is to establish a stable and secure Afghanistan so that the conditions are not conducive to AQ reestablishing substantial presence there. You can argue about whether that's feasible, or whether it's a good idea, or whether it's worth the cost in blood & treasure. But this operation was never a matter of a simple retributive strike.
Osama bin Laden is dead. The time to send some serious troops to Afghanistan was back in 2001. It was a missed opportunity. It's too late now. That country operates on "might makes right", and it's not ready to stop the blood letting. We need to just leave.
Aside from being the "Drug Capitol Of The World" I can't understand why any nation would have, a (so called) interest there.
We trained them before when they were the Mujahadeen, and they ended up calling themselves the Taliban. Somebody must've gotten a brain surge and figured out we already been there; done that and made that mistake already. Making the same mistake twice is rare, but, we manage. When we leave, 75% of these well-trained people will join the Taliban.
How many of our soldiers need to die before we pull out of this @!$%# hole. They can't be trusted. there is no bond with their American soldier brothers, they just lay in wait for the first opportunity to attack us. Chalk this one up and move on. The Russians who are pretty fierce soldiers did not pack it in after 10 years for no reason. We will never succeed here.
Afghan freedom-fighters are slowly but surely winning their long struggle against foreign imperialist invaders.
When is enough...enough?
Why not admit that there is NO HOPE for those people and leave?? They always have fought and killed each other but now have a new target, the U.S. hand that feeds them. Theiir usual mentality. They will be killing each other in another 1000 years. Let them.
I am certainly not surprised when four years ago we announced to the world we would be leaving by a certain date no matter if they were ready or not.
These people see a Dr. go to prison for 33 years because he helped the US get UBL and then his name was leaked.
They have to face the enemy once we're gone and they sure as hell aren't going to cozy up to the US at this point.
Since we can no longer finish the job it's time to get them all out. And 20 years from now our kids will be going back. Mark my words.
Only one way to vet them, use hollywood magic. Give them guns with blanks, tell them to shoot the targets as part of their "training". Have the targets look like they are being shot, using special FX. From a decent distance of course. Do this training several times. Have someone important walk by during these "trainings". If any recruits turn the gun on their trainers, or on the vip, you have a bad guy to beat-on for information.
We don't hafta leave. All we hafta do is start dropping napalm on all the poppy fields and Karzai Drug Cartel will throw us out by the end of that week. Then, we could blame it on Afghanistan heirarchy.
We need to put in the white house a Veteran and keep the Non Veterans out of the white house. Maybe then we can have peace, Most all of the advisors nw are non vets and they are really running the country and the behind the president are running the country they are making to much money to stop the war with people who don't care for the United States.
What more evidence so we need for us to get out of this region? Bring our troops home and let them solve their own problems.
The mentality of Afganistans isn't one that has a 21st Century switch. Forget about that country. Give them guns and ammo and let them make some decisions for themselves and go after the Taliban or join the Taliban. Their choice. But get out of that backward country and take everything with us. If they want to live in the 5th Century, let them.
"We are winning their hearts and minds", " there is light at the end of the tunnel" Guess Obama was boning Moochelle and missed his modern history class in college covering the Vietnam war and what happened when the russians were in Afganistan. Get the troops out of this rat hole and let the rag heads fight it out in the sandbox.