The war within a war
As Afghan Forces Kill, Trust Is Also a Casualty
By ALISSA J. RUBIN, NYT
SISAY OUTPOST, Afghanistan — There is an Afghan version of this story and a very different American one, but the moral is the same: insider killings of Western troops and civilians by Afghan forces, which have taken 51 coalition lives this year, have broken trust between the two military forces and laid bare the anger and fear each harbors toward the other.
The details of an insider shooting that happened Sept. 29 near this small Afghan Army outpost in eastern Afghanistan underscore the escalating distrust that surrounds interactions between American and Afghan troops. The attack devolved into a rare melee that led American soldiers to shoot at some Afghan soldiers who insisted they were not involved in any insider killing. After 35 minutes of gunfire and grenade explosions, two Americans and, ultimately, four Afghans died; three Americans and two Afghans were wounded; and the coalition had experienced one of the most corrosive insider attacks of the war.
“Something like this is fairly traumatic, and we want to stop it from affecting future operations,” said one senior official with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, commonly referred to as ISAF. “But there’s also the recognition that talk can’t fix everything.”
Afghan soldiers caught up in the fighting say that the relationship between the two forces now seems more starkly distant.
(More here.)
SISAY OUTPOST, Afghanistan — There is an Afghan version of this story and a very different American one, but the moral is the same: insider killings of Western troops and civilians by Afghan forces, which have taken 51 coalition lives this year, have broken trust between the two military forces and laid bare the anger and fear each harbors toward the other.
The details of an insider shooting that happened Sept. 29 near this small Afghan Army outpost in eastern Afghanistan underscore the escalating distrust that surrounds interactions between American and Afghan troops. The attack devolved into a rare melee that led American soldiers to shoot at some Afghan soldiers who insisted they were not involved in any insider killing. After 35 minutes of gunfire and grenade explosions, two Americans and, ultimately, four Afghans died; three Americans and two Afghans were wounded; and the coalition had experienced one of the most corrosive insider attacks of the war.
“Something like this is fairly traumatic, and we want to stop it from affecting future operations,” said one senior official with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, commonly referred to as ISAF. “But there’s also the recognition that talk can’t fix everything.”
Afghan soldiers caught up in the fighting say that the relationship between the two forces now seems more starkly distant.
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home