Source: New York Times
Author: Farooq Jan Mangal and Matthew Rosenberg
KHOST, Afghanistan — A member of a militia promoted by the American military to protect rural villages drugged his Afghan colleagues and killed at least nine of them as they slept on Friday, a police official said, in the third deadly episode involving the irregular guard force in March.
The killings added to concerns about the militia, known as the Afghan Local Police. Supported by American military commanders as a way to give Afghans a larger stake in battling the insurgency, the program has been assailed by rights advocates and many Afghans as bringing former Taliban and criminal elements into positions of armed authority.