Attack ignites British outcry

KABUL — The deaths of five British soldiers at the hands of an Afghan policeman with whom they were working has unleashed an outcry in Britain and highlighted the vulnerability of Western troops as they train more Afghan army soldiers and police officers.

The attack occurred Tuesday in Helmand province as the soldiers relaxed on the roof of the joint checkpoint overlooking a shared British-Afghan compound. They had shed their body armor and helmets, never thinking they would be attacked by one of the men they lived and worked with. The attacker fled, setting off a manhunt.

The attack came as public support for the war in many NATO countries, including critical allies such as Britain and Germany, has grown increasingly shaky. For Britain, it was one of the highest number of deaths in a single attack since the Afghanistan invasion eight years ago, bringing to 92 the number of British troops killed in a single year.

It also came one month after an Afghan policeman fired on U.S. soldiers during a joint patrol in Wardak province, killing two, and intensified concerns about Taliban infiltration of the Afghan security forces, in particular the police.

Soldiers wounded

An Afghan official in Helmand said local people believed the gunman was sympathetic to the Taliban insurgents who have been fighting an increasingly bold campaign against Afghan and NATO forces. Six British soldiers were also wounded.

Lt. Col. David Wakefield, a British spokesman in Helmand, described the Afghan policeman as an "individual rogue."

"This is not the first incident and will not be the last one; it will continue in the future," said Haji Muhammed Anwar Khan, a local elder and a representative of Helmand in parliament.

"As much as we are losing the territories, we will face this kind of trouble, and also as much as there is distance between the government and ISAF and the local people, we will have face this kind of event," he added, referring to the International Security Assistance Force, the NATO-led operation of more than 67,000 troops from 42 nations.

An important part of the counterinsurgency strategy embraced by the U.S. is to train more Afghan troops and police to protect people, in hopes of allowing foreign forces eventually to leave.

Col. Wayne Shanks, a public-affairs officer for the NATO force, acknowledged the plan entailed risks, but he called the attack a "very isolated incident" and said the training was already making a positive difference.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, said, "We will not let this event deter our resolve to building a partnership with the Afghan National Security Forces to provide for Afghanistan's future."

Lingering differences

But there are clear indications of lingering political differences over Afghan strategy among NATO allies and of waning public resolve. Speaking to journalists in Paris, the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said Wednesday that European allies needed to get together and not wait for the U.S. to make all the decisions. Asked if the NATO alliance was not working very well in Afghanistan, he said, "it's not working at all."

The seeming disarray and rising number of casualties among allied soldiers has taken a toll on public support. In Britain recent polls showed that less than half those surveyed support the British role, and about half of those urged an early withdrawal.

Both the Labour Party government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the opposition Conservatives led by David Cameron have stood firmly by the British commitment.

British intelligence chiefs have said three-quarters of terrorist plots uncovered in Britain in recent years have had links to Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is the ancestral homeland of the majority of Britain's 1.5 million Muslims. "If Afghanistan is not secure, then Pakistan is not secure, and if Pakistan is not secure then Britain is not secure," British defense minister, Bob Ainsworth, said in a BBC interview.

U.N. to relocate

much of staff

KABUL — The United Nations said today that it is temporarily relocating more than half its staff in Afghanistan following last week's deadly Taliban attack against U.N. workers.

The U.N. mission is still reeling from a pre-dawn assault on a guesthouse in the capital that left five U.N. staffers dead.

Some 600 staffers will be moved for four to five weeks to more secure locations inside and outside of Afghanistan. Spokesman Aleem Siddique stressed this was not a pullout or a scale-down in operations.