Five Australian soldiers have been killed by Afghan trainees in two separate incidents on Wednesday and Thursday, in the latest of such “insider attacks” leaving a bad taste in the mouth of US officials seeking to finish out a lost war for another two years.
The number of such incidents, termed “green-on-blue” attacks have been increasing steadily as of late, with 35 of them so far this year, ending with 47 NATO members killed, mostly Americans.
The fact that all those killed in the last two incidents were Australian strains an already tense US relationship with Australia over the war in Afghanistan. In April, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced an early withdrawal to be completed a year before the Obama administration’s so-called withdrawal date at the end of 2014.
Gillard said the loss of the five military personnel the single worst day for her country in war since the Vietnam conflict.
The failure of the US mission in Afghanistan – to build up and train a centralized state and security apparatus – is illustrated clearly in the constant killing of US soldiers by their Afghan counterparts. Much of the security force has been infiltrated by the Taliban or Pakistani agents.
Earlier this month it was reported that the Taliban’s supreme leader Mullah Omar issued a statement bragging about extensive insurgent infiltration in America’s trained security personnel in Afghanistan.
“They are able to (safely) enter bases, offices and intelligence centers of the enemy,” he said. “Then, they easily carry out decisive and coordinated attacks, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy.”
As a former US official told Dexter Filkins of the New Yorker, “several hundred soldiers in the Afghan Army are thought to be agents for the Taliban or for Pakistan.” He said that many insurgents who have infiltrated the Afghan forces and killed US troops “had been planted in the Army by the Taliban or by Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s main intelligence branch.”
The US mission in Afghanistan has failed miserably. President Obama’s supposed justification for building up Afghan security forces is so they serve as a bulwark against a return to Taliban rule. But the Taliban have seeped deep into those forces the US is spending billions of dollars on training, and the insurgency is as strong as ever.
So in order not to look like a wuss during the 2012 election and going against the wishes of the American people to end the Afghan folly ASAP, the soldiers who have been killed in the last couple of years were politically expendable. But don't tell their families and loved ones this. Obama needs the votes.
Reports are 3 dead in a green-on-blue shooting incident, 2 dead in a helo crash.
Unless that crash, which thus far is described as a landing accident unrelated to enemy action, was actually caused my a member of the Afghan AF – which doesn't appear to be the case, some fact chaecking might be in order.
What they were doing in Afganistant? Obeing orders? Supporting US wars of aggression and US gowernment sponsored terrorism without borders is risky….According Geneva Conven. occupaid people can and should resist and fight occupairs… peter czech
"The failure of the US mission in Afghanistan – to build up and train a centralized state and security apparatus…."
The Talaban would say that the US mission is a total success – they build up and train people who then use their new skills against their occupiers. When will we learn, that we are "persona non grata" in Afghanistan?
Afghanistan should have been left alone to begin with; then, there would not have been such a loss in lives and treasure. Fact: Afghanistan has NEVER been conquered in its entire history. Alexander the Great checked it out; found that the terrain and the disparate, local tribes were impossible to control, and left. Ghengis Khan and his Mongols simply bypassed the territory; and the British – they tried to conquer Afghanistan twice; but failed – the second failure having been extremely bloody. The former USSR invaded a century later and stayed ten years; but, they, too, failed miserably, driven out with their tails between their legs. Shortly after that debacle, the then bankrupt USSR dissolved.
Therefore, what part of "get the hell out and leave us alone" don't the US and NATO understand? Afghanistan NEVER attacked anyone; it never had that capacity, because it has ALWAYS BEEN an ancient tribal society. These tribes have a right to live the way they choose; no outsider(s) has any right to impose its values on them.
Afghanistan has been conquered many times, in fact, over and over again. Conquering Afghanistan is no problem. Hanging on to Afghanistan after conquering it, however, is impossible, because the Afghans don't like foreigners very much and never stop resisting.
ragheadthefiendlyterrorist ……… Afghans like foreigners when they come in peace to trade or enjoy Afghanistan….. BUT like ALL people, they DON'T like foreigners with GUNS telling them what to do or how THEY should live THEIR lives….. Also they don't want the foreigners touching their woman.
Would you want Afghan men touching (searching) yours…??? Forget everything you hear in the fog of war we now have… They are very much like US… I have been there twice and had NO problems with them…. They are friendly and kind… hard working and wise…
I can see why the US…I mean NATO wants another surge. They need to provide more meat for the slaughter.
Only Five?
Come on Afghans, you can do better.
Defend your country!
This is pay back time for our support for the Taliban against the Soviets. Had we not intervened the Soviets would have prevailed and women would have equal rights with men and the country would have come out of it's Islamic stupor. With the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union it would today be similar to the other stans and much more advanced socially.
US GET OUT NOW
Not that it makes much difference, but Australia is not a part of NATO.
You know when your occupation is screwed? When you tell your soldiers to take guns with them at all times, even into the bathrooms, because their alleged allies will blow them away otherwise…and their alleged allies STILL blow them away. Then you know your occupation is screwed.
The Vietnam parallels come to mind as the wars seem to expand out and out… Remember Laos and Cambodia [ Somalia… Yemen…??? ] and the secret bombing of those places……….. Remember “Vietnamization”…??
“Vietnamization” [It was] A plan to encourage the South Vietnamese to take more responsibility for fighting the war. It was hoped that this policy would eventually enable the United States to withdraw gradually all their soldiers from Vietnam. It sought increase the size of the ARVN, A mobilisation law was passed that called up into the army all men in South Vietnam aged between seventeen and forty-three"]
Trying to run a puppet lead (occupation) army of conscripted natives may look good on paper, but there are peer dynamics which make such policies unwerkable and even dangerous….
It is a telling decision, that our leaders turn to the same solution they attempted unsuccessfully to rescue their ultimate failure and loss in their Vietnam debacle-cum-rout. Mr. Lind points out the [operational?] liabilities of “Afghanization” but just think what sort of intellectual fecklessness it illustrates… to even contemplate the exact same policy that cost so us so dearly in our last big military disaster.. Is it that America can’t learn from the past..??
As our government enacts ever expanding utilization of the military to any and all aspects of life at home and throughout the entire world…. we need the expertise and especially historical insight of the results such policies have rendered for us here in America and abroad… We need william S Lind!!
SEE: Unfriendly Fire http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/u….
How the Taliban mastered the operational art of modern war
By William S. Lind • June 27, 2012
Here are a few excerps:
"What passes for NATO’s strategy is to train sufficient Afghan forces to hold off the Taliban once we pull out. The Taliban’s response has been to have men in Afghan uniform— many of whom actually are Afghan government soldiers or police—turn their guns on their NATO advisers. That is a fatal blow against our strategy because it makes the training mission impossible. Behold operational art in Fourth Generation war."
"The Taliban know this technique is operational, not just tactical. They can be expected to put all their effort into it. What counter do we have? Just order our troops to pretend it is not happening—to keep trusting their Afghan counterparts. That order, if enforced, will put our soldiers in such an untenable position that morale will collapse."
"The greatest intellectual challenge in Fourth Generation war—war against opponents that are not states—is how to fight it at the operational level. NATO in Afghanistan, like the Soviets three decades ago, has been unable to solve that riddle. But the Taliban appears to have done so."
"So powerful is this taste of Taliban operational art that Washington may fear the example it sets. During a recent visit by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to Afghanistan, no American soldiers were allowed to get near him with loaded weapons. Might the Pentagon be worried that our own troops could learn from the Taliban? Were I an American soldier who had been told to hand over or unload his weapon before approaching Secretary Panetta, I would certainly have read it that way."
Afghanistan is and always was a money pit……….. but more and more it's also a death trap…!!!
Deep within the bowels of the Pentagram the "heavy" thinkers believe that if the POLITICIANS had not screwed the pooch and capitulated to the whims of the civilian hordes wanting an end to the war effort "Vietnamization" would have succeeded and the war would have been won…really. So the belief that "Afghanistanization" will work is logical. Silly, but it is what it is.
Aussie troops are not NATO troops, we are fighting under the ISAF. Nit picking, I know 🙂 We shouldn't be there at all.
I’ve had several Afghan friends, and I’m a South Asian. I meant Afghans don’t like foreigners in their country telling them what to do at gunpoint.
That's not a condition unique to the Afghans. Apparently, the US is the only nation on the face of the Earth that allows and likes foreigners telling them what to do at gunpoint…inasmuch as those foreigners have dual citizenship with Isreal, of course.
Australia has military forces dying in Afghanistan because the ruling filth of Australia are slaves of the US war criminal regime.