#insider attacks

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WASHINGTON | Mattis: Afghans boost troop vetting after insider attacks

WASHINGTON — The Afghan military has increased its vetting of local forces working with American troops as a result of recent insider attacks that killed two U.S. service members, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday.

Mattis was making his first public comments about his meetings in Afghanistan last week when he raised the issue with President Ashraf Ghani amid increased concerns about Afghan forces attacking U.S. troops they work alongside.

Speaking to Pentagon reporters, Mattis said that Afghan leaders increased training for their troops and expanded security checks “to make certain we’re catching people who’ve been radicalized.”

Cpl. Joseph Maciel of South Gate, California, was shot and killed and two others were wounded in July at Tarin Kowt in southern Uruzgan province. And Army Command Sgt. Maj. Timothy A. Bolyard, of Thornton, West Virginia, was shot and killed and another service member was wounded by a member of the Afghan national police in eastern Logar province. The troops were all part of the 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, which is spread out across Afghanistan to train and advise local forces.

Mattis made a brief, unannounced visit to Kabul on Friday to meet with government leaders and the new commander of U.S. and coalition forces, Army Gen. Scott Miller.

A key subject during his meetings, Mattis said, was the path to reconciliation with the Taliban and how to ensure that the warfighting campaign is sustained even as peace talks are sought with the Taliban.

“We spoke about the need for clarity among everyone so that there is never something going on” regarding reconciliation that all sides don’t know about, Mattis said. He added that they also discussed security for the upcoming parliamentary election.

The U.S. has been increasing efforts to support reconciliation between the Taliban and the Afghan government, naming veteran diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad as a special adviser for the matter last week.

Mattis and other military leaders have talked more optimistically about the prospects for reconciliation, saying they are seeing greater support for the peace process around the country, including Taliban participation in a brief ceasefire in June.

Still, Mattis conceded that there has been little quantifiable data showing that the move to peace is advancing. The Taliban, he said, has so far not met three critical conditions: to stop killing people, break away from al-Qaida and abide by the country’s constitution.

Indeed, the Taliban have increased high-profile, deadly attacks on provincial centers, including a deadly assault on Ghazni last month that killed dozens of Afghan security forces and civilians.

The Pentagon is a year into a new war strategy outlined by the Trump administration, and military leaders have indicated no significant change in that game plan or the number of troops on the ground. There are roughly 14,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

In addition to the Taliban fight, the U.S. has been supporting Afghan forces in an aggressive campaign against Islamic State group insurgents in eastern Nangarhar province. The IS affiliate, however, has repeatedly been able to carry out horrific and brazen attacks in the heavily fortified capital of Kabul.

By Anna Mulrine, CS Monitor, August 5, 2014

WASHINGTON--The news that a two-star general was shot in Afghanistan Tuesday--the first US general to be killed in action during America’s wars in Iraq or Afghanistan--will inevitably renew questions about the threat of insider attacks on US troops, and whether a change in the US game plan might be in order to mitigate those risks.

More than a dozen troops, including other Americans and a German brigadier general, were wounded in the attack by a gunman who is believed to have been an Afghan soldier.

The shooting took place at a military training center in Kabul--a pointed setting for the attack, given that it is now mission No. 1 for American troops to train their Afghan counterparts in preparation for the departure of US combat forces at the end of this year.

Top Pentagon officials insist there is no reason why the death of the highest-ranking US officer in America’s post-9/11 war effort will change US strategy.

Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) “continue to perform at a very strong level of competence and confidence--and warfare capability,” Rear Adm. John Kirby, Pentagon press secretary, said during a briefing with reporters Tuesday, adding that the Pentagon is withholding the general officer’s name pending the notification of his family.

That said, he acknowledged the ever-present danger of insider attacks, calling them “a pernicious threat.”

It is a threat that reached peak levels in 2012, when Afghans who were posing as soldiers--or who actually were soldiers--killed 62 troops, according to International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) figures.

These attacks accounted for nearly a quarter of all coalition forces killed in action that year.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai suggested at the time that the killings were the result of Pakistani intelligence services brainwashing Afghan recruits. US commanders took issue with that explanation. “I’m looking forward to Afghanistan providing us with the intelligence that permits them to come to that conclusion,” said Gen. John Allen, the US commander in Afghanistan at the time.

The Pentagon undertook its own study of the problem and found that while many killings were the result of Taliban infiltration, the majority were committed by disgruntled Afghan troops who felt disrespected by coalition forces or disillusioned with the war effort. The Taliban has not claimed responsibility for the latest attack.

In the wake of the attacks in 2012, NATO began implementing cultural training programs for coalition troops. It also hired contractors to tutor coalition forces on body language clues that might indicate an Afghan counterpart was about to open fire. And it put “guardian angel” programs into place, which involved having an armed coalition guard present in all interactions between Afghan and coalition forces.

The challenge, commanders said at the time, was putting these security measures in place without insulting their Afghan counterparts.

Insider attacks have declined markedly since 2012, with two insider attacks against ISAF troops in the first quarter of 2014. Even so, the point of the attacks is to create a wedge of mistrust between US and Afghan troops.

Each attack succeeds in doing just this, according to the Pentagon report, released in 2013. “Despite their sharp decline,” it noted, “these attacks may still have strategic effects on the campaign and could jeopardize the relationship between coalition and ANSF personnel.”

The news that a US general officer was killed Tuesday “just points out the risks that all of these soldiers and Marines share,” says retired Lt. Gen. David Barno, commander of US forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005.

An Afghan soldier opened fire on U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday after arguing with one of the Americans, killing two service members and a civilian, U.S. and Afghan officials said.

The confrontation marked the deadliest insider attack in the country this year and added to the death toll from an intense fighting season, which U.S. and Afghan officials are watching closely for indicators of the Taliban’s resilience as American troops accelerate their withdrawal. In a separate attack Saturday, an Italian captain was killed by a grenade in western Afghanistan.

The insider attack occurred shortly after noon in Paktika province, which borders Pakistan, after an Afghan soldier got into a verbal dispute with an American service member, according to an account by the provincial governor’s office. The Americans returned fire, killing the Afghan gunman, provincial officials said. Afghan and American officials are investigating the incident, but provincial authorities said they had found no evidence that the Afghan soldier had links to the insurgency.

The U.S. military said an Afghan was detained after the shooting, but it provided no details about the circumstances.

Insider attacks became a paramount concern for the U.S.-led coalition here last year, when Afghan troops killed 64 foreign military personnel and civilians in 48 incidents. Far fewer have occurred this year. Before Saturday’s attack, five coalition members had been killed in so-called “green on blue” attacks.

U.S. military officials went to great lengths to study insider attacks last year after their prevalence began to poison the military partnership at the heart of the U.S. strategy for winding down the Afghan war. Investigators found that relatively few such attacks could be traced to the insurgency, with a high percentage stemming from fights over cultural differences.

Earlier Saturday, an Italian military training team was returning to its base in Farah province when it came under attack. One soldier was killed and three wounded in the blast, according to the Italian Defense Ministry.

The Taliban did not assert responsibility for that attack but hailed it in a statement. According to local reports, its statement, which could not be corroborated, said an 11-year-old child had lobbed a grenade at the Italians.

“This incident clearly shows the utter hatred of Afghans toward the foreign invaders who have occupied our land in the past decade,” the statement said.

The latest quarterly report from the US government’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reports that 15 percent of US casualties in Afghanistan from “hostile action” came in the form of Afghan police and soldiers turning their guns on their erstwhile allies.