Afghan forces fight an enemy within
By Lal Aqa Sherin
KABUL - A Taliban fighter infiltrated the Afghan police force, killing seven
Afghan officers and British soldiers. Similar attacks have taken the lives of
US troops.
The Interior and Defense ministries deny that the screening of prospective
soldiers is poor, but a police officer admitted to Killid that he was accepted
into the Afghan National Police (ANP) after submitting falsified papers that
were never verified by recruiters.
On November 3, in Helmand's Nad e'Ali district, a group of British soldiers
from the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards sat down to breakfast at an ANP
compound known as Blue 25. Among them
was an ANP officer named Gulbadeen from Musa Kala district. Gulbadeen had been
with the ANP for two years, and graduated from police academy last year.
But on that November morning his true allegiance became clear. While inside the
Blue 25 compound, Gulbadeen drew his weapon, fired first at his Afghan
commander and assistant commander and then turned the gun on the British
soldiers who were there to mentor and train the Afghan police. In all, five
foreign soldiers and two ANP were killed. Another five British soldiers were
injured before Gulbadeen fled the compound, hopped on a motorcycle and made
good his escape.
Despite a massive dragnet by the Ministry of Interior (MOI), secret police and
British forces, Gulbadeen remains a free man. MOI officials declined to comment
about the incident, citing the continuing investigation, but a Taliban group
later took credit for the shootings.
This is not the first such attack on coalition forces by a member of the Afghan
security services. Last March, an Afghan National Army (ANA) soldier opened
fire on a group of US soldiers in Mazar-e-Sharif, killing two and wounding a
third. One of the dead was a female navy officer named Florence Choe, a doctor
who specialized in treating Afghan children.
Attacks like these undermine a crucial aspect of the coalition effort in
Afghanistan. Battlefield training and mentoring programs are contingent on a
foundation of trust between Afghans who want a more secure nation and foreign
armies delivering knowledge and expertise. But when Western soldiers lose trust
in the men they are mentoring, resentment builds on both sides and the mission
breaks down.
At the heart of these attacks lies a frightening commonality: poor screening of
police and army applicants. Apparently all it takes to join these forces is an
easily forged national identity card and at least one working leg.
It's hard to blame the police and army for taking allcomers, however. The
security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating more quickly than new
recruits can be given uniforms and with expanding units - such as the southern
border guards - security forces will need fresh personnel for some time.
Also, one in 10 ANP officers will die in the line of duty this year. As grim as
it sounds, those men need to be replaced, even if it is by those of lesser
mettle.
Experts and former members of the Afghan security forces fear that the lax
selection process has allowed insurgents easy access to the ranks of police and
army.
Retired Colonel Aqa Muhammad Logari says that attacks like the one on November
3 are proof that insurgents have a toe-hold within the security forces and
worries about more such attacks if the government does not become more careful
about whom it hires and arms.
"The government should take this issue more seriously," Logari says. "They
should not let just anyone join the army and police. It damages everything from
moral to the [Afghan security forces'] public image."
Despite their protestations to the contrary, some Afghan government officials
acknowledge that there is an effort on the part of insurgents to break into
government security forces.
In the aftermath of the attack on British soldiers, Defense Minister Abdul
Rahim Wardak told The Washington Post that the ANA has had to be "very watchful
because we do have reports that [insurgents] are really trying to infiltrate."
Wardak did, however, say "as far as the army's concerned, we have been
relatively successful. It has not been a major problem up to now."
Wardak says that the army wants to implement a biometric scanning system of the
kind used by coalition forces in Afghanistan. The scanners record retinal
images, fingerprints and other data. The information can be checked against an
existing biometric database of insurgents as well as used as a record of all
successful recruits.
Wardak repeated that the police had a much bigger insurgent infiltration
problem than the army.
When asked about The Washington Post story, an MOI spokesman, Zmarai Bashari,
blanched, denying the defense chief's statement. "We do not approve this
report," Bashari says of the story. "It is not true. The MOI does not have any
reports that enemies have infiltrated the police, except in one or two
instances."
Some of the friction between the MOI and Wardak could come from the fact that
Wardak's ministry is responsible for the army and the MOI is responsible for
the police.
But despite intra-agency squabbles, a parliamentarian, Khalid Pashtoon, says
that insurgents have long tried to infiltrate government security forces, even
back in the days when the government was Soviet.
"The mujahideen were always trying to find ways to break into the police,"
Pashtoon says. "It was the perfect way to strike against the government."
In many ways, it still is.
(This report was originally published in the Killid Weekly. Afghanistan's
independent Killid Group and Inter Press Service have been partners since
2004.)
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