US commander ‘mad’ about insider attacks in Afghanistan

US: The top US commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen said he was “mad as hell” about attacks by Afghan soldiers on Western troops, but expected them to continue even after the United States and NATO end combat operations in 2014.

“I’m mad as hell about them, to be honest with you,” Allen told CBS’s “60 Minutes” program scheduled to be aired Sunday.

“We’re willing to sacrifice a lot for this campaign, but we’re not willing to be murdered for it,” the commander pointed out, according to excerpts of the interview released by the network.

He added, however, that the “vast majority of Afghans... they’re with us in this.” On Saturday, a NATO soldier and a civilian contractor were killed in a suspected insider attack in eastern Afghanistan, which also resulted in Afghan army casualties.

If confirmed as an insider attack, it would total number of ISAF troops killed in 36 such attacks this year to 52, accounting for about 15 percent of all coalition casualties in the war.

The so-called green-on-blue attacks pose a serious question to NATO plans, which portrayed the advising and training of Afghan forces as the key to the scheduled pullout of Western troops.

Earlier this month, ISAF announced a scaling back of joint operations with its Afghan partners following a dramatic rise in such assaults, in which Afghan soldiers turn their weapons on their Western allies.

Allen said that just as homemade bombs had become the signature weapon of the Iraq war, he believed that in Afghanistan, “the signature attack that we’re beginning to see is going to be the insider attack.”

AFP