Taliban use sophisticated system to infiltrate Afghan army

Reuters:/NY Times:

The Taliban have a sophisticated system in place to infiltrate Afghanistan's security forces and vetting of recruits must be severely tightened, an Afghan army general said on Saturday.

Infiltration has come under sharper focus because of a string of fatal attacks by Afghan security forces on U.S. soldiers since the burning of copies of the Muslim holy book at a NATO base last month ignited widespread protests.

"Placing the rogues inside the army is well-planned by the enemies. The Taliban give them special training," General Abdul Hameed, top army commander for the southern region of Afghanistan, told Reuters by telephone.

"We must enhance intelligence gathering on the movements of recruits, tap their cellphones and we must find out who they are in contact with outside the army."

Two U.S. soldiers were shot and killed on Thursday in an attack involving at least one Afghan believed to be a soldier and a civilian, Western and Afghan officials said.

The killings at a base in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan came less than a week after two senior U.S. officers were gunned down in the Afghan Interior Ministry by what Afghan security officials say was a police intelligence officer.

About 70 members of the NATO-led force were killed in 42 insider attacks from May 2007 through the end of January this year.

These attacks have become more frequent as the United States has sent tens of thousands of more soldiers to Afghanistan as part of a surge to fight in Taliban strongholds.

Some of these incidents have been carried out by Afghan security forces reacting to the recent Koran burning, some have been due to private grievances and others have been carried out by Taliban insurgents who infiltrated the security forces.

The killings in the Interior Ministry stunned NATO and cast doubt on its strategy of replacing large combat units with advisers as it tries to wind down the war, now in its 11th year.

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The Afghans are going to have to quickly solve this problem are they will find themselves fighting the Taliban alone without US support.  The Taliban probably know that it will be difficult to sustain the political support for the war effort if these attacks continue.  These problems would be even worse if Karzai is successful in stopping night raids on the Taliban.