Several members of the Afghan Local Police, trained and armed by the United States, drugged 17 of their fellow police officers before executing all of them, according to Afghan officials.
“The attackers poisoned the dinner food of the other officers, shot them at close range to ensure they were dead, stole their weapons and fled after setting a police vehicle on fire,” reports The New York Times.
Afghan officials said the perpetrators were members of the Taliban who had infiltrated the Afghan Local Police (ALP), waiting until after their training by the Americans to massacre their colleagues.
Indeed, the Taliban have taken responsibility for the attack, claiming it was retaliation for “atrocities and crimes” carried out by Afghan police forces against locals in the area.
“Locals in the area were tired of the atrocities and crimes of these [irregular militias] and their lives and property were not safe,” a Taliban spokesman said in a statement.
The ALP are basically armed militias, local gangs trained and supported by US Special Operations forces. These militias are the brainchild of Gen. David Petraeus who set them up to act as a bulwark against the Taliban.
But they can be just as brutal as the Taliban. “Many residents complain that the groups often operate outside the law, extort unofficial taxes from local residents and are prone to act on the basis of ethnic loyalties,” reports The New York Times.
These militias have been using US support to assert their authority and commit severe crimes against Afghan civilians. A Human Rights Watch report from last September “documents serious abuses, such as killings, rape, arbitrary detention, abductions, forcible land grabs, and illegal raids” conducted by the ALP.
The fact that Obama uses taxpayer money to fund, arm, and train militias widely accused of human rights abuses is bad enough. But the policy is also sowing the seeds of further chaos and potential civil war ahead of a drawdown of US forces this year.
So, these are the outcomes of Petraeus' COIN program, on which our Senators such as McCain and Feinstein lavished such praise as the panacea of our occupation. Yet, how could these outcomes have been different- they were part and parcel, and the basis of his plan to terrorize the population in order that they would switch their loyalty. One asks, was it ever rational to think it could succeed in Afghanistan or elsewhere. e.g. Iraq or Syria, especially where it is devoid of any positive purpose for winning the hearts and minds of the people? Petraeus was all about smoke and mirrors. The plan was that and worse.
What happened? The good Afghans who were willing to kill 'bad' Afghans in America's behalf won the first part of the war.
After that, they were 'sidelined' while US 'war fighters' turned it into a fifth generational study in assymetric war . Once that was lost the Petraeus Principle called for standing-up an Afghan Army and police to kill 'bad' Afghans. In the interim, having 'good' Afghan civilians who would tell you what the 'bad' Afghans were doing, was the first order of business. Naturally the only 'good' Afghan civilians available were the gunmen of drug lords and the type of guy responsible for the rise of the Taliban in the first place.
Atrocity is something they do naturally, they're pervs and madmen.
But hell, who would be expected to know about that.
Moral maturity — A heaven on earth
Until this world reaches the age of moral maturity, a time when
no one enriches themselves upon the misery of those less
intelligent, nothing new shall there ever be under the sun. For
when you have seen the rise and fall of one Empire, surely you
have seen them all.
For has not history stood still since 1945, the year that Empire USA
nuked Japan and began its reign of terror over all the earth? Empire
builders being such a god-ego bore, for brutal imperialism begets
vengeance terrorism which requires the invention of some new type
of drone assassinator to handle the blowback.
So, destiny, please do hurry up and put such an Empire out of its misery,
that we may enjoy the delight of new history and our goal of heaven on
earth born of moral maturity.
Infiltration is the new suicide bombing. Much more effective, and you live to fight another day, if you're lucky. More US soldiers have died this way in recent years than any other way. All it needs now is for this meme to spread to someone thinking about next nine-eleven and apply it creatively. Good luck, folks.