Afghan police officer kills 6 US service members

[Libertarian_Guard]

By HEIDI VOGT and RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Heidi Vogt And Rahim Faiez, Associated Press – Mon Nov 29, 6:19 pm ET

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP — An Afghan border policeman killed six American servicemen during a training mission Monday, underscoring one of the risks in a U.S.-led program to educate enough recruits to turn over the lead for security to Afghan forces by 2014.

A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, Zemeri Bashary, confirmed that the gunman in Monday's attack was a border police officer rather than an insurgent who donned the uniform for a day.

The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying the gunman joined the border police to kill foreign soldiers.

"Today he found this opportunity and he killed six invaders," Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement e-mailed to the media.

The shooter opened fire on the NATO troops and then was killed in the shootout, NATO said, without providing additional details.

Col. Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed that the six killed were American. He declined to provide their identities or say which military branch they were from until next of kin could be notified.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101129/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan

[Libertarian_Guard]

KABUL, Afghanistan — Fellow villagers claimed he was just a poor kid who had taken a police job to help his family get by. Superiors saw him as a reliable foot soldier in the Afghan Border Police who had inexplicably snapped. The Taliban claimed he was a sleeper agent they had planted to kill NATO soldiers.

What is known for sure about the police officer, who shot and killed six American soldiers on Monday in one of the worst attacks by an Afghan service member on NATO forces in nine years of war, is that his name was Ezzatullah and that he had been in the border police since 2008.

“We cannot rule out that he was used by the enemy, but he has been a border policeman for three years, and had been a good boy,” said Gen. Mohammed Zaman Mamozai, a senior member of the Interior Ministry, who until a month ago was in charge of the border police in Afghanistan’s eastern zone, where the killings took place.

“I am really puzzled about why this happened,” the general said.

The Americans and their NATO allies have made the training of the Afghan security forces a centerpiece of their strategy to hand over security to the Afghans and enable the troops to go home. Over the past 12 months there has been an intensified effort to train the security forces, including a big reduction in the instructor-to-trainee ratio and a more comprehensive effort to have Afghan and NATO units work as partners in the field.

At the same time, the intensified training has been marred by at least six cases in the past 13 months in which soldiers or police officers have turned their guns on their Western partners.

“Incidents of this nature are a tragic reality of this kind of effort,” said Lt. Col. John L. Dorrian, a NATO spokesman. “Although we do everything we can to prevent them.”

All that is known about Ezzatullah’s state of mind on Monday is that in the morning his father visited him at his post and asked him to accept a marriage contract with a young girl. He rejected the request, telling his father that the girl was under age. After an argument, both men “were very upset,” according to Ezzatullah’s border police colleagues, who mentioned the incident to senior officers after the shootings of the six Americans.

Those shootings occurred in the early afternoon at a border police outpost high in the mountains in the Pachir-Wa-Agam District of Nangarhar Province, on the Pakistan border. The Americans had gone to the remote site for mortar practice, according to the Afghan Border Police in Nangarhar. When Ezzatullah came to the site, the Americans were not suspicious, most likely because he was a familiar face, General Mamozai said.

What happened next is not entirely clear, said a senior border police official who described two versions. In one, the Americans were alone at the site; in the other, there were other American soldiers and Afghan National Army soldiers and border police officers nearby. What does seem clear is that no one expected Ezzatullah to start shooting, and that it took a little time before he was killed. It is unclear whether he was killed by American or Afghan return fire.

Both Ezzatullah and his younger brother were members of the border police, said Tahir Khan, a tribal elder from Wazir Pir-a-Khail, Ezzatullah’s home village in the Khogyani District, in western Nangarhar. “The father is a poor man, and that’s why both his sons were working for the government,” Mr. Khan said.

Khogyani, although largely peaceful, is known to be a heavily infiltrated transit point for Afghan and foreign insurgents coming from Pakistan. The Taliban have considerable influence in the village where Ezzatullah’s family lives, said several local residents and General Mamozai. Afghans have taken the father and brother into custody for questioning, the general said.

Mr. Khan said he did not think that Ezzatullah was under the sway of the Taliban. “I think it was just an accident,” he said. The Taliban, however, rushed to take credit for the killings, which brought the number of NATO soldiers killed in November to 57, nearly twice the number killed in the same period a year ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/world/asia/01afghan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[mick silver]

dam good job ... were training them to kill us now . i just dont know what to say about this . i am glad my last family members is out of there

[Tronn]

just think how many more of these are out there

[Ponce]

Revenge is sweet if done at the right time and in the right way.....remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Japan is waiting and pay back there will be......you must know their culture in order to know their way of thinking.

Like wolfes at the door the world is waiting for the US to open their doors in order to come in..... the true friends are very few and the enemies are many.

[Libertarian_Guard]

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http://www.sunjournal.com/national/story/951399