Tough words from general on Afghan insider attacks

ROBERT BURNS

AP National Secu­rity Writer

WASHINGTON — The per­sis­tent prob­lem of rogue Afghan sol­diers and police turn­ing their guns on U.S. and allied troops is a “very seri­ous threat” to the war effort, which is pred­i­cated on plac­ing secu­rity respon­si­bil­ity in Afghan hands, the U.S. military’s top offi­cer said Sunday.

In unusu­ally blunt remarks to the Pentagon’s own news ser­vice, the Amer­i­can Forces Press Ser­vice, Army Gen. Mar­tin Dempsey said the Afghan gov­ern­ment needs to take the prob­lem as seri­ously as do U.S. com­man­ders and officials.

“We’re all seized with (the) prob­lem,” Dempsey was quoted as say­ing. “You can’t white­wash it. We can’t con­vince our­selves that we just have to work harder to get through it. Some­thing has to change.”

Dempsey and other U.S. offi­cials have remarked exten­sively in recent weeks on the need to improve the screen­ing of Afghan recruits and to take other pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures in the face of a series of attacks that so far this year have killed at least 51 allied troops, mostly of them Americans.

“But we’ve got to make sure our Afghan coun­ter­parts are as seized about it as we are,” Dempsey said. “We have to get on top of this. It is a very seri­ous threat to the campaign.”

Dempsey com­mented after attend­ing a meet­ing in Roma­nia of NATO mil­i­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tives. He said they dis­cussed the sit­u­a­tion in Afghanistan, includ­ing plans for the remain­ing two years of the cam­paign and the insider attack problem.

In the lat­est instances of such attacks, two British sol­diers were killed by an Afghan police­man in the south­ern province of Hel­mand on Sat­ur­day and four Amer­i­can troops were killed in a sim­i­lar attack Sun­day in Zabul province.

Dempsey said an assault on Camp Bas­tion, a British air base in Hel­mand province, on Fri­day in which two U.S. Marines were killed and six U.S. Har­rier fighter jets were destroyed, should not be cat­e­go­rized as an insider attack even though the attack­ers were wear­ing U.S. Army uniforms.

He said an ini­tial review of the mat­ter had deter­mined that the attack­ers had no inside assis­tance at Bas­tion. Other offi­cials said the attack was clearly a well-planned, well-rehearsed assault car­ried out by Tal­iban fighters.

Posted by AP News on Sep 16 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.