Afghan ‘soldier’ cuts down NYer
A US Army major general from upstate New York was shot dead by a gunman wearing an Afghan military uniform Tuesday at an officertraining facility near Kabul.
Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, 55 — the highestranking officer killed in the nearly 13yearold war — was gunned down by a man Afghan authorities labeled a “terrorist.”
The gunman was shot dead but not before he wounded up to 15 other military personnel, including eight Americans, several Afghan officers and a German general.
The unidentified killer was inside a building at Camp Qargha and fired wildly from a window with an assault rifle at the soldiers gathered outside, a US official said. There was no initial indication that Greene was specifically targeted.
“It’s so sad that this happened,” Harold Greene, 85, the general’s dad, said at his upstate home. “As a father, you never want your children to die before you do. And now I have to bury my son.”
The father said that the general’s mother died a year ago and they were still grieving that loss.
“It’s just too much tragedy that’s hit this family,” he said. “My wife, Eva, died about a year ago. As a family, we are just trying to stay strong.”
Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby said the general was there for a “site visit” to observe the training of Afghan soldiers, adding that officials believe the gunman was “a member of the Afghan national security forces.”
Kirby called such insider attacks “a pernicious threat” but had few other details. “It’s impossible to eliminate that threat [of insider attacks] but you can work hard to mitigate it. Afghanistan is still a war zone,” Kirby said.
In a statement, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid praised the “Afghan hero soldier who turned his weapon against foreign invaders.”
The Taliban stopped short of taking responsibility for the attack, but hardline Islamic jihadists have repeatedly encouraged such insider attacks in the past.
The BBC reported that the attacker was a soldier recruited by the Taliban three years ago, cit ing Afghan defense sources.
NATO said it was investigating the attack, which Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned as “cowardly.”
Maj. Gen. Greene, a Schenectady native commissioned as an officer after graduating Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1980, was an Army engineer who had been posted to Afghanistan for the first time this year to prepare Afghan forces for the withdrawal of US and coalition troops.
His current stateside home was in Falls Church, Va., where he lived with his wife, Army Col. Sue Myers, and their daughter, Amelia Greene.
Harold J. Greene — the first general killed since Lt. Gen. Timothy Maude was died in the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon — had a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California and held a variety of research and development posts in his 34year military career.