Source: BBC
Author: David Loyn
After an Afghan National Army lieutenant shot dead a British soldier and Royal Marine, injuring a third serviceman, the spotlight has fallen on relations between international and Afghan troops.
For a soldier there is nothing worse than facing the prospect of death at the hands of men in uniform supposedly on their own side.
It is a threat of a different order from other risks they face, such as the occupational hazards of death in conflict or by accident.
That is why the growing number of incidents of foreign troops being shot by Afghan police or soldiers is so corrosive, and threatens morale.
“Although the attacks are relatively few in number, the effect that they have is severe,” the senior Nato civilian representative in Afghanistan, Sir Simon Gass, told the BBC.
Shot while asleep
Some things can be done to mitigate the risk. Afghan officers are far better than they were, and monitor their soldiers.
They are now trained to talk to soldiers when they come back from leave to see whether they might have faced undue pressure from the Taliban or others.
But not all officers are good.
The man who shot dead two British soldiers in Lashkar Gah on Monday was an Afghan Army lieutenant.
Categories: Afghanistan, Crime, Crisis, Death, Human Rights, Human values, UK, United States
There is no discussion on the matter that such occurrences are indeed tragic.
But, and importantly, one of the very first things one is taught in a news analysis course is that most readers don’t get past the first few paragraphs of an article, and from therein formulate their opinions. Which is why most news articles will relay that information first and foremost which is easy for readers to digest i.e. which may cement political prejudices or misinformaton (instead of questioning them) before qualifying or rectifying wrong impressions later on in the article.
Be sure to read this article in full, which only at the end cites:
“There is a war-weariness among Afghan troops and civilians in their country’s long conflict.
And the fact remains that more civilians have been killed by one rogue US soldier this year than foreign soldiers who have died at the hands of Afghan troops.”