Panetta denies “trend” in Afghanistan
The Army Times reports that Leon Panetta wants the American public to ignore the elephant in the room in regards to the recent spate of murders of Americans and NATO troops in Afghanistan by suicide gun men;
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday that the killing of U.S. and NATO troops by Afghans are sporadic incidents and do not represent a trend that should derail ongoing negotiations with the Afghans on night raid operations and other issues.
“There are going to be those that are vengeful, there are going to be those that decide to use this as a way to express their anger and their concern,” Panetta said. “These still are sporadic incidents, and I don’t think they reflect any kind of broad pattern.”
Yeah. Sporadic. That’s it. Nine killed in the last few weeks is sporadic. I guess compared to the larger picture, it could be sporadic. But, they could also be considered common incidents, or you might say that the incidents occur more often than we’d like. But to wave them off as “sporadic” is ignoring the problem.
Here’s another “sporadic” effort from Fox News. Afghans have arrested 16 people in a plot to explode 16 buses with 16 suicide vests which were accidentally discovered moments before the buses were to be loaded with Afghan soldiers. The terrorists who were arrested were ANA soldiers themselves.
Despite the fact that the attack would have killed scores of ANA soldiers, applying the Panetta Rule, it would have been just one incident and thus, sporadic. So let those guys go, the 16 who were arrested. It was just a sporadic incident, and so, not significant.
Thanks to Kevin for the links.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Terror War
Jonn,
In the SECDEF’s defense, this really is not new. Cases of Green on Blue in Afghanistan are known dating back to at least May 2007.
http://news.yahoo.com/attacks-afghans-us-troops-often-personal-072555863.html
I don’t have access to full data, so I don’t know if I’d agree that it’s “not a trend”. But if it’s a trend, I’d say it’s not exactly a recent one.
Hondo- Agreed that this is nothing new, but 48 deaths in the past two years might indicate a “trend,” or at least a problem with the vetting process for ANP/ANA.
In the meantime, the reintegration fairy is replacing COIN as solution to all our problems. Not enough ANA/ANP are turning on us, so let’s PAY the Taliban to send people over claiming to be on our side now.
One American doing something stupid and it is considered a trend requiring a full on investigation, public persecution of the individual, awarness training for the entire military and a presidential apology.
The only trend is what was expected by anyone with common sense – those we’re supposedly “helping” are turning on us.
Nuke the damned place after a full withdrawl of our troops (and allowing the Tallywhackers fillet and dice Karzai).
Here in NC the tree-hugger scum are always raising hell about all the waste from hog production, so I’ve come up with a solution. We take all the pig shit and leftovers from the slaughterhouses, and Start ARC LIGHTS over he whole friggin region with 2000lb combo HE/Pigshit munitions.
Jackal: That might indicate a trend, or it might not. We can’t know without more details.
Between May 2007 and Jan 2012, there were a minimum of 45 Green on Blue incidents in Afghanistan. Those incidents killed 70 and wounded 110 Americans. But identifying a trend over time requires knowing the temporal distribution of the incidents as well as some key details about each (e.g., how many KIA/WIA in each incident). We’d also need to know how many US troops were in-country at the time of each incident – because more US troops present implies more troops are exposed daily to the risk of such an incident. And the ANA and ANP have also expanded during the same period, so we’d need that info as well (how many ANP/ANA were serving at the time of each incident).
If I had to guess, I’d guess that there has been an increase in the occurrence of such incidents lately. Of course, the US also has more troops in Afghanistan now than we did 2 years ago, and there are also more ANP and ANA troops also. So how much of that increase is due to simply more exposure/larger populations and how much to an actual increase in likelihood of such an attack, I don’t know. And without data, we can’t know. We can only speculate.
I’m not trying to minimize the issue, which seriously concerns me as well. I’m merely pointing out that we can’t know if it’s an increasing trend/decreasing trend/constant rate/cluster aberration/or what without access to more info.
CPT Drew Russell was killed by an ANA Soldier on 8 OCT 2011. It was never even reported as a Green on Blue incident. He was our Battle Captain in our SQDN TAC, set up in a secure ANA compound. An ANA Soldier opened up on the TAC tent from ourside as he walked bye and killed him and another CPT from BDE, CPT Joshua Lawerence. When you look up their names, it onyl says killed by RPG fire. There was RPG fire that day, from another ANA Soldier during the same incident, that fired at another set of Soldiers close to our TAC. The whole incident wasn’t covered up, as much as the Army just let it go and didn’t say anything about it.
SFC Blizzard
Maybe what he was really trying to say was: “Life in AF is returning to normal- Pre 9-11 times”
Yes, the high command is denying that there is a “trend” of Taliban in ANSF clothing attacking Our Troops inside the wire. Instead they are characterizing this as “sporadic” work place violence.
Why would they do that? Because a Taliban infiltration of the ANSF can be directly linked to the policies of the politicians, which pushed for an explosive growth of the ANSF in advance of a US retreat from Afghanistan.
The recruiting of 100’s of thousands of Afghans in a very short period of time did not allow for those Afghans to be vetted. It was easy for the Taliban to get in, to report intel back to their masters, until such time that the Talib command decided it was more valuable to them to attack from within.
The immediate result of these attacks was a breakdown of the fragile trust between Afghan and American Warriors. Divide & Conquer.
Rippling across the pond, long time, ardent Supporters of Victory in Afghanistan have turned, and now support retreat from Afghanistan, which is the Obama policy. In short, Obama wins, the Taliban win, and the media prophecy of doom comes true.
It is not surprising in the least that 43, now 59 Taliban have infiltrated the ANSF and attacked from within. What is surprising is that in a Nation where 5-10% of the people morally support the Taliban and more than 70% support Democracy and education of their daughters, where more than half a million serve in the ANSF, unvetted, ONLY 43 Taliban have attacked.
But the good news is that as of 3-26-2012, the ANSF recruits will finally be vetted: http://waronterrornews.typepad.com/home/2012/03/vetting-process-now-implemented-on-afghan-security-forces.html
And what I said about the lack of vetting and the violence one month prior: http://waronterrornews.typepad.com/ps/2012/02/counterview-on-afghan-violence.html
Is it a “trend?” Well, one statistic I saw stated that 1/4th of all US fatalities in the last year were shot by Taliban infiltators, i.e. workplace violence, over the last year.
Were there such incidents prior to 2011? Yes, but most likely the totals from 2001 to 2010 were between 12 and 20.
And yes, the same thing happened in Iraq, when politicians pushed for (unvetted) numbers in Iraqi uniforms. Al-Qaeda and the Mehdi Militia stepped up to attack from within.
Once again, this should not surprise anyone. spoiler alert, the situation escalates rapidly once entire battalions of ANA start turning on us. If only there were historic records of similar situations that we could reference to try to avoid this disaster…
From the article “…Panetta said the attacks — including two separate incidents Monday that killed two British troops and one American — should not detract from the highly sensitive discussions about how the U.S. should coordinate with the Afghans on military raids into Afghan homes.” It shouldn’t but it will.
From the article “Under a draft agreement that is expected to be signed this week, Afghan military units would take a larger role in planning and carrying out the raids,…” Okay they should gradually being doing or getting ready to do this anyway. Somehow I doubt their ready in most of the country though.
“…and an Afghan judge or panel would have a say, if not full veto, over the operations.” Good seems they won’t have a veto but an advisory role. This is where we want to be going over the long term.
From the article “We’ve done every possible thing we can do,” Dempsey said” Bullshit! There are whole areas of the country we haven’t even gotten to yet because of Obama’s withdrawal dates and neverwill. Second we don’t even know how large a force the security entity is supposed be, they keep changing it’s parameters. How can you judge when their force is adequate size/skill wise when you don’t even know what consistently it is or how much it will take money/recruit wise to maintain?
9#”Why would they do that? Because a Taliban infiltration of the ANSF can be directly linked to the policies of the politicians, which pushed for an explosive growth of the ANSF in advance of a US retreat from Afghanistan.
The recruiting of 100?s of thousands of Afghans in a very short period of time did not allow for those Afghans to be vetted. It was easy for the Taliban to get in, to report intel back to their masters, until such time that the Talib command decided it was more valuable to them to attack from within.”
Excellent point, I’ve been preaching the exact same. As a side note I don’t think Afghanistan will ever be able to recruit such a large force and historically never has. A small quality army of about 100,000 or so and supplemented locally by police or temporary lashkars when need, is all that is required. We also could subsidize such a force easily.
WOTN: that “statistic” you saw is suspect as hell, if not total BS. In 2011, there were 418 US fatalities in Afghanistan. 25% of that is approx 104.
There were only 70 fatalities due to Green on Blue in Afghanistan between May 2007 and Jan 2012 (see the article I cited above). And I know personally that some of those occurred in 2007.
Panetta stated the political line, nothing surprising there. Concerning vetting, one has to remember that we’re dealing with a ‘nation’ of collective groups that doesn’t have the anything close to the institutional bureaucracy we would reasonably expect to use in vetting processes. This has been an issue from the beginning, to blame it on US-domestic politicization is lazy analysis.
And the monkeying with event reporting is not new either. I saw it personally when events of sectarian and EJKs in Baghdad were edited by MND-B to reflect the trends being briefed in from of Congress.
….damn, really need an edit feature for pre-coffee posting.
That should be “events of sectarian violence and EJKs in Baghdad were edited by MND-B to reflect the trends being briefed in front of Congress.”
Hondo, the 25% statistic is indeed suspicious. I don’t recall where I saw it and can’t verify it. Nevertheless, “green on blue” attacks were rare (1-2/year) pre-2011 and have been very prevalent in the last 12 months. Why doesn’t it instead state the number that were killed in the last 6 months? the last year? this year?
Vetting is possible in Afghanistan. No, it isn’t easy, but it is easier in Afghanistan than it has been in other places that it has been done.
And yes, the lack of vetting is DIRECTLY related to Administration politics. The politicians wanted the ANA/ANP rapidly expanded. They wanted numbers, not quality. The timeline did not allow for vetting those recruits. The lack of vetting allowed the Taliban infiltration.
How can recruits be vetted in a place like Afghanistan? The old fashioned way! You send people to the recruits village and ask the right questions, leaning on the culture itself, to get a true picture. Yes, we’ve done this thing in the past.
And, since they are NOW implementing a vetting process, clearly, it is a possibility, and was a possibility, except that the US Administration wanted numbers, and didn’t care how they got them.
WOTN: The fact that there are more attacks recently doesn’t tell us that much about whether such attacks are becoming more likely. With a constant (or even a slowly declining) likelihood of Green-on-Blue incidents, simply having larger forces in-country would imply that we’d see more such incidents.
That may well be a factor here. In 2007, there were somewhere around 25k US troops in Afghanistan. That total rose to 30k in 2008; rose to about 50k in 2009; increased to about 55k in 2010; climbed to about 95k in 2011; and is at about 90k now. And during the same period, Afghan security forces have increased pretty much linearly from about 85k to over 300k.
See charts at http://medillonthehill.net/2012/02/insider-attacks-on-u-s-troops-by-friendly-afghan-forces-on-the-rise/ for US and Afghan security force totals.
More troops on both sides means more opportunity for such incidents – just like having 2 US divisions on a given post means the PMO is going to see a lot more incidents than the PMO on a post with a single brigade. The numbers alone virtually guarantee that.
IMO, the key question to answer here is whether the normalized rate (the number of incidents per a defined fixed number of deployed US soldiers during a set period of time) is increasing. If it is, we have a very serious problem which indicates we may be in real trouble – because that implies the ANA/ANP are becoming less trustworthy over time as allies.
If the normalized rate isn’t increasing, we still have a problem – even one such incident is one too many – but the problem is likely manageable.
@17 – The desire for increased ANA/ANP numbers didn’t start with the current Administration, nor did the vetting process; a process that was expanded from the previous system in early 2010.
What should be concerning to more observers is that the Karzai regime is utterly unable to fund it’s security forces at current levels, much less desired levels…..without massive international [read US] aid.
Sorry, Hondo, statistics do not explain all problems, particularly not when the very essence of the problem is afforded no input into it.
The attacks ARE being initiated by Taliban infiltrators. The peak of Coalition Forces, incl US Forces was Fall 2010 to Mid 2011.
And yes, CI, the previous Administration also wanted the ANSF to grow. The difference is in how rapidly they attempted to expand it.
The problem is that those recruits are NOT vetted (were not) and the Taliban were able to infiltrate the ANSF.
Hondo, I don’t care if you call it a “trend” as per statistical definitions or not. The fact is that the last 6 months have seen far more attacks of this type than the first 9 years of the war. The fact is that these attacks are occuring more frequently, with deadlier results. And that is a direct result of attempting to create quantity, not quality, in furtherance of a political campaign/agenda, i.e. retreat from Afghanistan, which was announced along with “the surge” in 2009.
But CI, you are also correct about the fact that the Afghan Govt cannot afford its current or “future” ANSF. The current Administration has already pledged to fund the ANSF with US tax dollars well beyond the 2014 pullout. It is however considering a force 150,000 smaller than what currently exists, and hence smaller than what it will build up before it unfunds them.