U.S. military suspends joint patrols with Afghans
This is good to see. They recently implemented additional security to weed out infiltrators. But obviously, our troops aren’t safe working with certain Afghan soldiers at this point. I have a bad feeling about the future of this engagement.
The strategy for getting U.S. forces out of Afghanistan depends on training Afghan soldiers and police to protect the country themselves, but on Monday the U.S. military suspended most joint field operations with Afghan forces because so many Americans are being killed by the men they are training.
Afghan government troops — our allies — have turned their guns on NATO forces 36 times this year, killing 51, most of them Americans. That is more attacks than the last two years combined.
The order effectively suspends “until further notice” most of the operations which U.S. and Afghan troops conduct side by side. At higher headquarters, Afghans and Americans will still work together, but in the field small unit operations putting Afghan soldiers alongside Americans — the guts of the U.S. strategy to turn the fighting over to Afghans — will be suspended unless an exception is granted by a commanding general.
via CBS News.
I’d like to know how the continued presence of nearly 68,000 soldiers and Marines in country can be justified any longer. The surge followed close on by the draw down may have killed alot of Taliban but seems to have had no strategic effect. (None that I can see anyhow. Reporting on Afghanistan is so sparse, who knows?) The only remaining mission was standing up an Afghan military and police force sufficient to maintain order and protect the government and population from the Taliban. If our guys can’t do joint patrols with Afghans for fear of green-on-blue attacks, then that mission has failed and the justification for our forces is gone.