Updated: Wed Nov. 04 2009 20:28:10

The Associated Press

KABUL — The killing of five British troops by a rogue Afghan policeman underlines concerns about training and discipline within the ranks and possible insurgent infiltration of a police force that the U.S. hopes will be its ticket out of Afghanistan someday.

The attack caused anguish in Britain, where public support for the war has been waning. Britain is the largest contributor to NATO forces in Afghanistan after the United States, and its continued presence here is central to President Barack Obama's strategy as he weighs dispatching tens of thousands more U.S. troops.

The five British soldiers, who had been advising Afghan policemen, were shot and killed Tuesday at a checkpoint where they were living in the volatile southern province of Helmand. Another six soldiers were wounded, as were two Afghan policemen when the soldiers returned fire, officials said.

The gunman escaped and his motive was unclear.

The incident, which echoed two police shootings of U.S. soldiers last year, raised questions about whether international forces are trying to recruit and train Afghan police too quickly.

"There isn't a lot of vetting of police before they are hired," Peter Galbraith, the former top American official at the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, told BBC Radio 4.

In September, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., called for increasing the size of the Afghan army and police "much faster than presently planned" instead of sending tens of thousands more Americans to fight here.

In Washington, Defence Department press secretary Geoff Morrell condemned the attack and defended Afghan forces and the international training effort, a main part of the U.S. strategy for the war.

"However tragic and criminal this act was, it represents a rare and, luckily, thus far isolated incident. (NATO) troops continue to partner effectively with the Afghan national security forces and continue to build their capacity to take the lead in ultimately defending their country on their own."

In October 2008, a policeman threw a grenade and opened fire on a U.S. foot patrol, killing one soldier. The previous month, a policeman opened fire at a police station, killing a soldier and wounding three before he was fatally shot.

Training and operating jointly with Afghan police and soldiers, as the British were doing Tuesday, are key to NATO's strategy of dealing with the spreading Taliban-led insurgency and, ultimately, allowing international forces to leave Afghanistan.

But obstacles are far greater with the police than with the army.

A Defence Department Inspector General report, released in September, found that Afghan police are crippled by serious corruption and subject citizens to frequent street-level "shake-downs." Senior officials lack control of their personnel and do not routinely monitor job performance, the report said.

"Unlike the Afghan National Army, which is the most respected institution in the Afghan government, there is a wide consensus that many elements of the Afghan National Police are too corrupt, and too tied to politics and power brokers," former Pentagon analyst Anthony Cordesman wrote last month.

"Realistic efforts to shake out new units, give them continuity of effective leadership, deal with internal tensions and retention problems, and help them overcome the pressures of corruption and power brokers take time," Cordesman said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai sought not to highlight the Afghan policeman's role in the deaths of the five British soldiers. His first statement condemning the attack said it was carried out by a member of the national police. A corrected statement, released about an hour later, didn't mention the police at all.

Downplaying the incident, Karzai's spokesman Humayun Hamidzada called it an isolated attack.

"In the U.S., people shoot up people in a shopping mall," Hamidzada told The Associated Press. "There are crazy people everywhere."

However, Karzai's main challenger in the recent election, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, said the ongoing violence showed Karzai's administration has failed to stabilize the country despite eight years of assistance from international forces.

"In the absence of a credible and reliable and legitimate partner, more soldiers, more resources" are needed to fight the war, entering its ninth year, Abdullah told reporters.

In London, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, trying to rally support for the war, warned against judging the entire Afghan police force on this one incident. The latest deaths bring the British death toll in the war to 229.

Hours before Tuesday's attack was made public, a senior Labor figure, former Foreign Office minister Kim Howells, broke with Brown and called for a phased withdrawal of British forces, arguing that the money could be better spent protecting Britain's borders.

Afterward, Howells said the shootings show how hard it will be for Britain and the U.S. to bring the Afghan army and police to the point where they can provide their own security.

"This is a real blow because it strikes right at the heart of that policy," he said.

Last month, Brown announced plans to send another 500 British troops to add to the 9,000 already in Afghanistan. But as fatalities rise, public support for the war has fallen. That has prompted British military officers, who normally avoid the limelight, to take the unusual step of publicly urging Brown to increase the number of troops even more.

Brown told the House of Commons that although evidence was still being gathered, "the Taliban have claimed responsibility for this incident." However, his office was unable to provide details of any specific statement made by the Taliban.

Lt. Col. David Wakefield, spokesman for the British forces in Helmand, said the assailant was "possibly acting in conjunction with one other" when he opened fire at the checkpoint in the Nad-e-Ali district.

The Interior Ministry's head of the criminal investigation police, Jamil Jumbish, said the attacker joined the local force about 18 months ago and was from Helmand.

A Helmand police official said authorities searched through the night and on Wednesday for the attacker. He said the assailant had graduated from a regional police academy.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said the motive was unclear.

Comments are now closed for this story

Chat
Frankly, people are getting tired of the casualty count. Except for a handful of people connected to the military, nobody seems to care. This Afghan mission is a complete disaster. It will destroy NATO and those Taliban will grind our forces to the ground. And then, our leaders will decide to leave, with tail between legs. I do not understand why my tax dollars have to be wasted on a no-hope cause like this.

waiting at home
My thoughts and prayers go out to those families. While my husband started his tour in sept, he is working with the Afghan civilians, and I have often wondered how closely they are vetted. I am sure the vast majority want peace in their country and welcome the help, but it only takes one to destroy all the hard work. I believe they died heroes doing what they thought best for their country and family.

robert sachs
Just as I've always said, you cannot trust the bastards. They have no respect for their own countrymen, and they sure as hell don't care about any foreigners.

Wade Ens
This is sad. Nothing could really be done here. But what could be done about road side bombs is giving afgans more vehicles to drive up and down the roads or pave them.

Josh
To Chat. So we should just leave, and let all the things that have been accomplished there turn to dust. Then all the men that have died die for nothing. People that say it is hopeless make me sick. You cant say it is hopeless unless you have been there and see the things that are going on there.It would be even more disastrous if we pulled out and let the country fall back to the state it was before.You think the Taliban is just going to take over Afghanistan and stop there? Answer no.We are their way into heaven. They want all the infidel AKA people who dont believe in Islam either converted or killed.So just remember that these men and women are dying to protect you.

ADM Saskatchewan
NATO wants to continue working with the police force. Is there a check done on the men who apply to become members of the police force to make sure they have no connections to the insurgents or to the Taliban? The soldiers who are there fighting are now going to have to be wary of the police forces they are working with, therefore paying less attention to the fighting. I realize that the soldiers who are there believe in what they are doing, but I am starting to think that the sooner they pull out the better.

Ed
From the beginning, the war on treason should have been fought with money, not guns. The mission could have created suspicion among the insurgents for each other, instead of suspicion for us. (They already mistrusted our motives.) Their governing mindset is "better the enemy you know than the one you don't". Hatred between their factions already existed, just not to the extent it existed towards us. So, why have we used a strategy that strengthened their alliances against a common enemy?Why have we not executed a strategy whereby we lessened their resolve against us by feeding their existing suspicions towards each other? When water runs into the crevices of even the hardest of rocks and freezes, it fractures the rocks. By targeting their leaders and others, we could have fostered suspicions of infidelity to their own cause. A picture taken at a convenient moment, a dalliance with a western woman, the ‘discovery’ of apparent bribes placed in off-shore bank accounts by the Americans, the possibilities are endless – showing up in all kinds of places (just as they do physically)… in a short time the insurgents would have become internally-focussed. In their honour cultures, leaders would lose respect, forced to defend their own reputations. And soon, they would have begun to kill each other in an attempt to purge their own ranks of Western-loving brothers. How much ‘internal erosion’ could have been purchased for even 10-20 billion dollars – a fraction of the actual cost to date. Less time and money. Fewer lives lost. May our leaders and strategic thinkers start to play outside of the box and use what already exists within the enemy camp, rather than trying to start something new in ancient cultures. Play the enemy’s game and beat them at it!

Willi
Before the war it seems there were few drug addicts. Less poverty, less unemployment and no Radiation and DU contamination. Less civilians died. Like everywhere else the US invaded everything changed for the worse not the better. There have been no improvements for the lives of Afghans don't kid yourselves. The Radiation and DU contamination will continue to kill for years to come. Future generations will always be affected by it. Using bunker buster bombs with Radiation is a war crime pure and simple as is DU contamination.

Question Everything
To JoshThe old " we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here is an oldtired song. The taliban are not interested in dominating Canada or any other western country for that matter. Democracy in Afghanistan is a joke. Thats why the opposition candidate quit. You need to diversify your reading rather than searching out only the info that supports your beliefs.

Rose
You do realize the more troops that are sent to Afghanistan the more violent it becomes. Innocent civilians die too. Their numbers are growing each day. Over 10,000 have died and there are over 60,000 who have been injured. As for soldiers and their injuries nobody is talking. So how many have been injured. Why the Hush over it all. Of course they were also attempting to hide Civilian death and injuries as well. It was a British soldier who who told the truth on civilian deaths and got in a lot of hot water over it. Afghanistan may as well be run by a Dictator. Seems the election was just for show anyway. No real election just a farce for the Public at large.

Portes
Reminds me of Nam, you could trust no one, even so called friends. When the Cong came in they turned and helped them. I the end we had no friends in Nam and did our own thing. One of my friends had a girlfriend in one of the villages and I will say that he went there every day and brought food etc to help the villagers,as did many of us. The only thanks we got was to be shot in the back. As I have said before the only way to win a war is to win it. WW2 was fought the correct way, but these days you can't do anything to the enemy as then you are considered the bad guy, even if they are killing our men and women. Someone do gooder will want their heads because they slapped the prisioner(poor Prisioner), they would have killed you if they captured you. You can't be a nice guy in warIn ending I salute our troops and offer my deepest sympathy to the families of those who have died. I would like to request all of you on this site to attend the Remembrance Day Parade in your area, let us all say thank you to the brave men and women who give their lives for our country and thank those of the past. LET US REMEMBER

Chat
To Josh: I understand your feeling, but I am afraid it is rather naive thinkig. What you are advocating is throwing good money after bad, as we call it in business. There is no way that we or anybody else can win in Afghanistan. The only places we can win are places where we can bomb from 30,000 feet and defeat the enemy. We do not have the desire, the commitment, or frankly the money to win. The sooner we get out, the better. If the Taliban get back in to power, so what? Those people are too primitive to do anything big - can they send armies here? send missles here? No way! The only thing they can do is train some terrorists. That does not change ANYTHING because there are so many other places in the world where terrorists can be trained, including in our own backyards.