Killings by insiders stir fear, anger, lost of trust

SISAY OUTPOST, Afghanistan— There is an Afghan version of this story and a very different American one, but the moral is the same: Insider killings ofWestern troops and civilians, which have taken 51 coalition lives this year, have broken trust between them and the Afghan forces and laid bare the anger and fear each harbors toward the other.

The details of an insider shooting that happened Sept. 29 near this army outpost in eastern Afghanistan underscore the escalating distrust. The attack devolved into a rare melee that led U. S. soldiers to shoot at some Afghan soldiers who insisted they had no part in any insider killing. After 35 minutes of gunfire and grenades, two Americans and ultimately four Afghans died; three Americans and two Afghans were wounded; and the coalition had experienced one of the most corrosive insider attacks of the war.

“Something like this is fairly traumatic and we want to stop it from affecting future operations,” said one senior official with the NATO- led International Security Assistance Force, commonly referred to as ISAF. “But there’s also the recognition that talk can’t fix everything.”

Afghan soldiers say the relationship between the two forces now seems more starkly distant.

“We cannot be their friends, because they do not speak our language,” said Redi Gul, 28, a soldier whose back was burned raw when his outpost was set ablaze by U. S. gunfire and grenades.

The fighting unfolded along a bad stretch of highway near the mouth of the Tangi Valley in ruggedWardak province. The Taliban are never far away here, and insurgent attacks occur almost daily against army and police convoys and traveling fuel tankers.

Surprise visit

On the day of the attack, a U. S. unit suddenly drove up and began doing security checks on drivers passing the checkpoint. The Afghans saw the surprise visit as an upsetting breach of field etiquette, said Capt. Abdul Khaliq. The Americans say it was unannounced to keep locals from avoiding the checkpoint.

Khaliq said his men began working with the U. S. unit seven or eight months before, “but we haven’t sat down together at all.” U. S. officials dispute this and insist the two units were acquainted.

One Afghan soldier, named Yusuf, brought a cup of tea for the Americans’ interpreter and then returned to the outpost, according to the Afghan account. Moments later, another Afghan soldier at the checkpoint, a Tajik named DinMuhammad, raised his gun and fired, killing Sgt. 1st Class DanielMetcalfe, 29, and wounding another American, according to the U. S. account.

The Americans responded, killing Din Muhammad. They then saw aman in an Afghan army uniform behind the outpost up the hill. The man began firing, they said, killing an American civilian with the force and wounding two other GIs.

With five team members down, including their platoon sergeant, the Americans were taking no chances, an ISAF official told a reporter for The New York Times.

“They thought, ‘ Oh, this is a setup, we’ve been ambushed,’ ” the official said. “You’re going to do whatever you can to neutralize that threat … you’re going to pour asmuch lead in as possible to save your life.”

Death and confusion

For Gul, the first sign that something was wrong was when a hail of fire struck the outpost. They were scrambling for their rifles when a grenade set the place on fire. He said he managed to claw his way out the back, burned but able to function, and crouched by a sand- filled barrier.

He saw Yusuf run past out of the outpost, and only then realized that it was the Americans who were gunning them down. “We did not fire a single shot,” Gul said. “We didn’t know who to shoot at. A second grenade hit the outpost and blew up. There was some ammo that caught fire and started exploding.”

The Americans saw Yusuf running and shot him, unsure whether he was trying to escape or attack. Then, more confusion: Both the Afghan and U. S. soldiers say that fire began coming from a ridge behind the outpost.

The Afghans said they were caught in a crossfire, and later found bullets from a PKmachine gun, a weapon used locally only by the Taliban, embedded in the barriers around the outpost.

In the aftermath, Khaliq is still looking for answers.

“The other American teams who came here were very good, they visited with us every three or four days,” he said, adding that if the U. S. unit, a platoon of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, had coordinated with him ahead of time, he might have headed off any hard feelings— perhaps even the shooting itself.

ISAF officials acknowledged Khaliq’s concerns, and confirmed that the surprise checkpoint visit was a tacit acknowledgment that after months of so- called “green- on- blue” attacks, things are different in the field.

“These green- on- blue have really driven a wedge,” one said.