‘ Infiltrations’ not as they appear
Fewer than 20 per cent of deaths are connected to insurgency: soldier
Not much gets the Taliban the public attention they crave quite like the murder of a NATO soldier at the hands of an Afghan army comrade.
Every time NATO announces such a death the Taliban are instantly on the media to crow about their triumph and there are a rush of dire stories — as there were a few weeks ago when four French military advisers died — that the insurgents have infiltrated Afghanistan’s security forces.
That is not how Maj.- Gen. Mike Day regards it. The strapping Canadian former special forces commander oversees about 6,000 NATO advisers — including slightly more than 900 Canadians — who work closely with Afghan soldiers and their instructors.
Since 2007 there had been 43 “green on blue” incidents where Afghan soldiers shot and killed coalition soldiers, the general said.
“Each of these deaths is a tragic event that has changed the lives of the families who have lost loved ones,” he said. “But less than 20 per cent of them have any connection to the insurgency at all. And we unpack each of them hard. We drill into the detail.
“Here is the harsh reality. It is an ‘ info ops’ victory every time the press mislabel this as an infiltration. To pretend that this is not an issue is wrong. To pretend that is a success of the insurgency is not only wrong, it is harmful because it strengthens the insurgency by perpetuating the myth they want you to believe.”
Whether by luck or because they are more respectful and sensitive to cultural issues than other western troops — whom Afghans sometimes regard as crude and imperious — there has not been one green on blue incident involving the 20,000 or so Canadians soldiers who have rotated through Afghanistan over the past decade.
NATO boilerplate is that Afghan security forces are improving. This is demonstrably true. Afghans lead many operations now and do more complex soldiering.
Canada’s advisers have seen no evidence indicating looming trouble, but they are keenly aware that an Afghan they work alongside might get the drop on them at any time. One soldier told me he put his finger on the trigger when an Afghan recruit stared at him queerly and with what appeared to be hostile intent. Others admitted the possibility of such an attack lurked in the back of their minds, but their doubts were not nearly strong enough to interfere with their daily work with Afghans.
“There is always a threat of green on blue, but that does not make me distrust my ANA counterparts,” said Capt. John Miller, who leads a team of 16 Canadian advisers based in Herat. “Such incidents do not happen overnight. There have to be conditions that are met to turn an ANA comrade against a NATO soldier. To avoid green on blue it is important to spend as much time as possible with the ANA.”
Capt. Jake Irsag, an adviser to an Afghan colonel at the sprawling consolidated fielding centre to the east of Kabul, agreed, “most green on blue originates with some kind of grievance. But I am not blowing smoke when I tell you the guys I work with have been great. There are always handshakes, tea and discussions about our families. The Afghan way is to take a while before there is any business.”
After the recent French deaths, Canada reinforced its standards, “because for us force protection is the No. 1 issue,” said Col. Rory Radford. “We always go in pairs, wear our personal protection gear and use armoured vehicles when moving around the training area.”
There were three reasons why green on blue incidents took place, said Col. Ahmadullah Dawar, who is mentored by Radford. “Neighbours such as Pakistan train people to come here and affect our situation,” he said. “Our soldiers are uneducated and some of them do not appreciate how much help we get. And some NATO troops have caused outrage by killing civilians or by urinating on the bodies of the enemy’s dead.”
Given the relatively low number of such attacks over the past decade, Day held that it was perverse how such incidents provoked so many overarching, negative commentaries in the West.
“Look, how many hundreds of thousands of Afghan- coalition inter- actions are there every week?” the general asked rhetorically. “I bet there are more than one million of them. And over the past few years we have trained more than 400,000plus Afghans.”