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Infiltration or bad blood behind Afghan attacks?

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The U.S. military trainers handed the new recruit, Mohammad Ismail, his AK-47 to defend his remote Afghan village. He turned around and immediately used it, spraying the Americans with bullets and killing two — the latest of nine U.S. service personnel gunned down in two weeks by their supposed Afghan allies.

The shooting in western Farah province was not the only such attack Friday. Hours later a few provinces away in Kandahar, an Afghan soldier wounded two more coalition servicemen.

One turncoat attack per month raised eyebrows last year. One per week caused concern earlier this year. But when Afghan forces turn their guns on international trainers twice in a day — as they now have two weeks in a row — it's hard to argue there's not something going on. The question is, what is it?

The U.S.-led alliance says it's too soon to tell what's behind the rash of insider attacks. The most likely explanations: Either the Taliban are increasingly infiltrating the Afghan police and army, or relations between Afghan and American forces are turning toxic — or both.

"There's no positive spin on this," said Andrew Exum, an analyst with the Washington-based Center for a New American Security who has advised the top U.S. generals in Kabul. He said the number of Afghan insider attacks has risen beyond what can be explained as isolated incidents.

That's bad news for the U.S. exit strategy for Afghanistan, which has seen Washington spend more than $20 billion on training and equipping a nearly 340,000-member Afghan security force on the assumption that it would eventually be strong enough to fight the Taliban on its own.

The coalition has downplayed the insider attacks as anomalies and mostly a result of personal grievances, even as their numbers soared from 11 last year to 29 so far in 2012. The alliance says only about 10 percent of the attacks were related to infiltration by the Taliban insurgency. But that analysis was done before the latest furious spate of seven attacks in 11 days, a frequency that suggests some type of coordination.

"Whether or not these specific events turn out to be insurgent-initiated ... we're just going to have to do the investigations and figure that out," said Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition.

The problem has become so pronounced in the Afghan war that all U.S. forces there are now being instructed to carry loaded weapons — even on base — as a precaution against insider attacks, a U.S. official said Friday in Washington. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because policy forbids discussing military procedures.

Some historians are hard-pressed to find precedent for this in previous wars.

"I have never heard of anything in Vietnam comparable to what we have recently experienced in Afghanistan," said James McAllister, a political science professor at Williams College in Massachusetts who has written extensively about the Vietnam War. A British military expert on colonial wars, Martin Windrow, said the level of these types of attacks were "almost unheard of" in any conflict he'd studied.

Exum said the insider attacks have "tremendous strategic impact" beyond the 36 coalition forces killed this year because they damage morale among international troops and further weaken support for the war in the U.S. and other NATO nations training Afghan soldiers and police to take over security nationwide by 2014.

What's unclear, he added, is how much influence the Taliban actually have in organizing the increasing numbers of attacks.

The insurgents have been happy to take credit. The Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, boasted Thursday that the insurgents "have cleverly infiltrated into the ranks of the enemy" and were killing a rising number of U.S.-led coalition forces.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told The Associated Press in an interview this week that the attacks may reflect the Taliban's use of unconventional tactics against a coalition force it cannot defeat on the battlefield. He added that U.S. military commanders say such attacks still remain "sporadic" and not a long-term trend.

Friday's deadly shooting in Farah, at least by the accounts of local Afghan officials, seemed unlikely to be a personal dispute. Mohammad Ismail, a man in his 30s, had joined the Afghan Local Police just five days earlier. He opened fire during an inauguration ceremony attended by American and Afghan forces in Kinisk village, Farah provincial police chief Agha Noor Kemtoz said.

"As soon as they gave the weapon to Ismail to begin training, he took the gun and opened fire toward the U.S. soldiers," Kemtoz said. The police chief added that he had warned U.S. forces organizing and training the community not to move too fast to recruit in the village, which he said is heavily influenced by the Taliban.

Afghan military analyst Amrullah Amman has no doubt that Taliban infiltration of Afghan security forces is rising. He said that despite new methods of screening, it's simple to forge documents and invent references in Afghanistan.

"The gate is wide open. The enemy is infiltrating because they see it's very easy," Amman said.

But the turncoat attacks may also reflect growing mistrust and resentment among Afghans working with international forces.

Afghan soldiers interviewed by the AP earlier this year offered their own explanations: The Afghans feel disrespected, the soldiers said. They complained of getting inferior equipment and condescending treatment by Americans.

In May 2011, a U.S. Army team led by a behavioral scientist compiled a survey that indicated many Afghan security personnel found U.S. troops "extremely arrogant, bullying and unwilling to listen to their advice."

"I think infiltration is easier to address, actually," Exum said. "I think the worse thing is, if your entire strategy going forward from the next three or four years depends on partnering with Afghan forces, then if relations have already devolved to this degree, you're really worried."

The U.N. Security Council late Friday strongly condemned coordinated terrorist attacks in various parts of the country on Tuesday and Wednesday and reiterated its serious concern "at threats posed by the Taliban, al-Qaida and illegal armed groups to the local population, national security forces, international military and international assistance efforts in Afghanistan."

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Mine violence hits at South Africa's political problem

Striking miners hold weapons as they wait to be addressed by former African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) President Julius Malema outside a South African mine in Rustenburg, 100 km (62 miles) northwest of Johannesburg August 18, 2012. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko View Gallery

MARIKANA, South Africa (Reuters) - The bloody protest by South African miners that ended in a hail of police gunfire and 34 deaths this week could also wound the ruling ANC and its main labor ally, laying bare workers' anger over enduring inequalities in Africa's biggest economy.

Thursday's shooting, bringing back memories of apartheid-era violence, underlined that after 18 years in power the African National Congress and its union partner have not been able to heal the fissures of income disparity, poverty and joblessness scarring the country.

The deadliest security incident since the end of apartheid has exposed grass roots discontent among the rank and file of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the country's biggest union that has been a training ground for ANC leadership and a staunch supporter of President Jacob Zuma.

"The NUM is all about politics. They have forgotten about the man in the mine shaft," said Lazarus Letsoele, one of the striking miners at the Lonmin Marikana mine, about 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Johannesburg.

He escaped on Thursday when police opened fire on the strikers in what has been dubbed "the Marikana Massacre", prompting a government inquiry and a wave of soul-searching in post-apartheid South Africa.

Despite billions of dollars of spending by the ANC on poverty reduction and union friendly laws to protect workers exploited by the past white-minority regime, the gap between haves and have-nots is still one of the highest in the world.

Per capita GDP is over $8,000 a year but nearly 40 percent of the population lives on less than $3 a day.

At the Lonmin mine producing the precious metal platinum used in vehicle catalytic converters and jewelry, stray dogs pick over litter-strewn, wind-swept fields of dust near the clustered corrugated tin homes that are mining settlements.

"We want more money and we want someone who can get it for us," said a mineworker who asked to be called by his first name Paulo and lives in a shanty facing the field where the miners were gunned down.

Platinum sells for about $1,440 an ounce but a worker drilling underground at tonnes of rock face to extract it makes less than $500 a month.

"This is a strike against the state and the haves, not just a union matter," political analyst Justice Malala wrote in the British daily Guardian in reference to people like Letsoele, who live in the mine's shantytowns.

POWER PLAYS

Thursday's shooting, in which a rank of police fired automatic weapons against advancing strikers, has been likened to the 1960 Sharpeville township massacre near Johannesburg under apartheid, when white-led police fired on a crowd of black protesters, killing more than 50.

South Africa's police, now predominantly black, said they fired in self-defense at Marikana to protect themselves against men armed with spears, machetes and pistols.

Peter Major, mining consultant at Cadiz Corporate Solutions in Cape Town, said the Lonmin unrest was an ugly reminder of the social instabilities that still persist, but are often hidden by the ANC's electoral dominance.

"These people aren't just going on strike for better wages. There are power plays and rogue elements involved as well. And remember: these mines are surrounded by townships of thousands of unemployed people, tens of thousands often, of volatile, unemployed, uneducated people," he said.

The ANC has enjoyed virtual one-party rule since taking over in 1994, with its nearest opponent more than 40 percent behind in the last 2011 elections. Its base of support is among poor blacks, who are loath to vote for the main opposition Democratic Alliance, seen as the party of white privilege.

Labor federation COSATU, with more than 2 million members has been a vote-gathering machine powering the ANC to victories.

Critics see what they call an "iron triangle" of power among the ANC, traditional unions and industry that enriches the politically connected and protects COSATU's dominance, but shuts out masses of poor looking for jobs.

At Lonmin, many striking workers said they saw NUM as out of touch and too cozy with tight-fisted management.

"Workers have become increasingly disaffected by the traditional entrenched unions affiliated to COSATU - seeing cadre deployment of union management, increasingly remote and politically involved management not close to the concerns of workers on the ground," said Peter Attard Montalto, an emerging market economist at Nomura International.

ENTWINED INTERESTS

ANC heavyweight Cyril Ramaphosa is an example of how the interests of the former liberation movement are entwined with unionism, but also with the fortunes of industry.

Anti-apartheid activist Ramaphosa helped forge the NUM in the 1980s to fight mine owners, staging several deadly strikes. He moved into the ANC's senior leadership, using his political connections to become one of the wealthiest businessmen in South Africa. He sits on the Lonmin board as a non-executive director.

NUM has said its feud with the militant and upstart AMCU union, seen as behind the Lonmin strike, could spread, threatening a setback for labor relations in South Africa.

This could in turn feed into lower levels of investment, possibly lower growth, and a deteriorating fiscal balance.

Zuma tried to reassure investors their money would be safe, saying at a tour of the bloodied Marikana mine on Friday: "We remain committed to ensuring that this country remains a peaceful, stable, productive and thriving nation."

But the knives are out for Zuma, who is seeking re-election as the ANC's leader at a major conference in December. If he wins the party vote, he is almost assured of an another term as the country's president, which would last until 2019.

Zuma is close to the NUM: his right hand man ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe is a former NUM leader. Any damage NUM suffers could hurt Zuma, especially with some other unions in the COSATU group indicating they want him gone.

($1 = 8.3335 South African rand)

(Editing by Pascal Fletcher)