US special forces suspend training of Afghans
US: The commander of US special forces in Afghanistan has suspended
training for all new Afghan recruits until Afghan soldiers are
re-investigated for ties to insurgents, The Washington Post reported
late Saturday.
The newspaper said the re-vetting process will affect more than
27,000 Afghan troops.The suspension comes in response to the killing of
at least 45 foreign troops this year by their Afghan colleagues.
“We have a very good vetting process,” the paper quotes an unnamed
senior special operations official as saying. “What we learned is that
you just can’t take it for granted. We probably should have had a
mechanism to follow up with recruits from the beginning.” According to
The Post, numerous military guidelines were not followed by either
Afghans or Americans because of concerns that they might slow the growth
of the Afghan army and police.
NATO has some 130,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban’s
decade-long insurgency alongside government forces.
Most of the NATO troops are set to withdraw by the end of 2014 in a
US-designed transition process that will put Afghan security forces in
charge of security for their war-battered country.
AFP |