http://www.navytimes.com/news/2012/09/military-Afghan-troops-re-screened-after-insider-attacks-090612/
By Andrew Tilghman - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Sep 6, 2012 12:05:46 EDT
The Afghan military has launched a sweeping internal review of its 352,000 troops in an effort to root out insurgent sympathizers who may be plotting insider attacks on U.S. and allied forces.
Specifically, the re-screening process will involve taking a fresh look at troops? identification cards and their recommendation letters from village elders, which have become requirements for individual enlistments. The Afghans may also be conducting additional criminal background checks and drug screenings, officials said.
?I can?t tell you right now how long this process is going to take,? Lt. Gen. James Terry, the deputy commander for U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, told reporters at the Pentagon on Sept. 5.
The Afghan military?s move to rescreen its entire force comes amid heightened pressure from U.S officials to halt the inside-the-wire attacks that have killed 45 U.S. and NATO troops so far this year, a significant increase from the 35 killed during all of 2011.
Afghan officials also announced they already have arrested or expelled hundreds of current Afghan soldiers who were improperly vetted and may have links to the Taliban insurgency. Terry said he believed that included about 200 to 300 troops.
In addition, the command that oversees U.S. special operations in Afghanistan recently said it would suspend the training of 1,000 local Afghan police recruits to ensure they were adequately vetted.
U.S. officials will assist in the Afghan-led re-screening process.
?My senior commanders and staff are also holding frequent meetings with representatives of the Afghan government and security forces at the national and local levels to coordinate further effective action,? Marine Gen. John Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, said in a Sept. 6 statement. ?The problem of insider attacks hurts our Afghan partners as much as they hurts us, and like the battle for stability in Afghanistan, insider attacks are a problem that we are only going to solve through steadfast partnership.
?We have stood up a new executive oversight group of senior Afghan and coalition leaders to monitor, direct and drive our threat mitigation initiatives,? Allen said.
?We?re going to help them prioritize that. We?re going to talk to them about specific techniques that they can use in terms of establishing those priorities,? Terry said. ?We?ll be able to better focus their efforts based on what we?re seeing out there in terms of analysis and trends.?
Yet Terry acknowledged that identifying insurgent infiltrators will not prevent all insider attacks. About 75 percent of attacks have no link to the Taliban insurgency but instead stem from personal or cultural tensions between the Afghans and their Western partners, Terry said.
Another underlying factor in the attacks is the Afghan?s culture of violence.
?It also has a gun culture out there. And we also understand that a lot of grievances and dispute resolutions are done, frankly, at the barrel of a gun,? Terry said.
The insider attacks are fueling new criticism of the Afghan war, which is already unpopular with many Americans. Some critics say the U.S. encouraged the Afghan National Security Force to expand too quickly and placed emphasis on quantity rather than quality of recruits.
?In our effort to build up the ANSF, we focused on recruiting as many Afghans as possible. At the time, that was the right thing to do. Now, however, is the time to tighten the vetting process, even if it slows the pace of recruitment,? said Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, in a statement released Sept. 5.
?I believe we should look for ways to accelerate the transition of responsibility for security and governance to the Afghan people and redeploy U.S. personnel from Afghanistan as soon as we responsibly can,? Smith said.
Rick Maze contributed to this report.
Videos You May Be Interested In
the express zappos hacked jane fonda jon huntsman bit coin huntsman w.e.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.