Saturday, February 25, 2012

Green on Blue Attack: 2 Americans Killed as Afghan Unrest Enters Fifth Day

NYT reports:
Two American officers were shot dead inside the Interior Ministry building here on Saturday, and NATO responded by immediately pulling all advisers out of Afghan ministries, in a deepening of the crisis over the American military’s burning of Korans at a NATO army base...Although there was no official statement that the shooter was an Afghan, in an e-mail sent to Western officials here from NATO headquarters the incident was described as “green on blue,” which is the military term used here when Afghan security forces turn their weapons on their Western military allies...
The official cautioned that no one was "panicking," but that the initial reaction to the growing hostility from Afghans was to convince more officials that the pace of the American drawdown needed to be hastened, and that sooner the mission was transitioned to one of training and counter-terrorism, the better. 
“You look at this as clearly and objectively as you can, what you see is that we’re in a weaker position than we were maybe two or three or four weeks ago,” said the official, who asked not to be identified because he was discussing internal deliberations. “I’m not sure anyone knows the clear way forward. It’s gotten more and more complicated. It’s fraught.”
It appears the Afghans have finally had it.

2 comments:

  1. I see here (London) that the British embassy in Kabul has rapidly withdrawn all British staff attached to Afghan government departments. I don't recall that happening previously in Afghanistan or Iraq.

    It's one snippet of news which suggests a deeper worry about what's going on.

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  2. And yet another empire is looking for a way out of that place.

    I guess the drone attacks haven't helped.

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