Adding to the number of incidents of Afghan police killing one another, a group of three Afghan police opened fire and killed six others in the Uruzgan Province over the weekend, looting their weapons from the police checkpoint and defecting to the Taliban.
Incidents of police and Afghan soldiers killing one another aren’t always the result of Taliban infiltration, but the growing number of recent cases appear largely to be, with many examples of planned attacks and lootings of remote police posts.
The Taliban insisted in a new statement over the weekend that they have “thousands” of defectors from the Afghan security forces, and offered a “general amnesty” to any other Afghans who had been helping NATO but wish to change sides.
The Taliban often exaggerates figures on defections and the like, but the Afghan military has struggled mightily with desertions, and with a large number of Afghan “ghost troops” who don’t exist to begin with, it’s hard to tell how many they are actually losing, let alone where they are going.