Armed Farces
By Tim McGirk / Kabul Monday, Jun. 14, 2010
Time
When a fuel tanker overturned on Highway 1 outside Kandahar earlier this year, the villagers saw it as a gift from Allah. They flocked to the leaking tanker with pots, pans, even plastic bags, to steal the leaking gasoline. Several Afghan army jeeps screeched up, and the soldiers jumped out, pushing away the villagers. But not to protect the fuel: the Afghan soldiers simply wanted it for themselves.
At a nearby base, American and Afghan officers were watching the scene from a guard tower. Outraged by the looting, an Afghan captain named Nasser grabbed his M-16 and charged out to confront the soldiers. When the soldiers argued back, the captain fired a few warning shots. A stray bullet sparked the gasoline, and the tanker exploded into a colossal fireball. The smoke clouds, U.S. Lieutenant Rajiv Srinivasan later blogged, "blackened the sky like a tornado moving from the ground up." (See pictures of Afghanistan's dangerous Korengal Valley.)
Exhausted after arranging the medevac by helicopter of eight dead soldiers and countless injured, Srinivasan then had the bad luck to be hit by an Afghan army truck speeding around the base. As Srinivasan wrote in his blog, all his pent-up frustrations spilled out. He yanked the Afghan out of the truck and slammed him to the ground, yelling, "We're out here busting our asses for you, and you repay us by setting your own soldiers on fire and running me over with your trucks!"
This tale is typical of the myriad frustrations the U.S. and its NATO allies face in trying to cobble together an Afghan national army out of nothing. Yet the success of the Obama Administration's full-throttle assault against the Taliban in its spiritual heartland of Kandahar hinges on getting the Afghan army on its feet and marching. And so does the likelihood of getting U.S. and NATO troops home anytime soon.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1993886,00.html
Time
When a fuel tanker overturned on Highway 1 outside Kandahar earlier this year, the villagers saw it as a gift from Allah. They flocked to the leaking tanker with pots, pans, even plastic bags, to steal the leaking gasoline. Several Afghan army jeeps screeched up, and the soldiers jumped out, pushing away the villagers. But not to protect the fuel: the Afghan soldiers simply wanted it for themselves.
At a nearby base, American and Afghan officers were watching the scene from a guard tower. Outraged by the looting, an Afghan captain named Nasser grabbed his M-16 and charged out to confront the soldiers. When the soldiers argued back, the captain fired a few warning shots. A stray bullet sparked the gasoline, and the tanker exploded into a colossal fireball. The smoke clouds, U.S. Lieutenant Rajiv Srinivasan later blogged, "blackened the sky like a tornado moving from the ground up." (See pictures of Afghanistan's dangerous Korengal Valley.)
Exhausted after arranging the medevac by helicopter of eight dead soldiers and countless injured, Srinivasan then had the bad luck to be hit by an Afghan army truck speeding around the base. As Srinivasan wrote in his blog, all his pent-up frustrations spilled out. He yanked the Afghan out of the truck and slammed him to the ground, yelling, "We're out here busting our asses for you, and you repay us by setting your own soldiers on fire and running me over with your trucks!"
This tale is typical of the myriad frustrations the U.S. and its NATO allies face in trying to cobble together an Afghan national army out of nothing. Yet the success of the Obama Administration's full-throttle assault against the Taliban in its spiritual heartland of Kandahar hinges on getting the Afghan army on its feet and marching. And so does the likelihood of getting U.S. and NATO troops home anytime soon.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1993886,00.html
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