http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2012/02/29/the-afghan-debacle
The Afghan Debacle
The Obama administration’s strategy in Afghanistan is in tatters. This month’s violence, sparked off by the reported burning of Qurans at an American military base, has claimed at least thirty lives. Two of the dead were U.S. Army officers murdered at their post inside the Afghan Interior Ministry, supposedly one of the most secure locations in the country.
The killings prompted General John Allen, who commands U.S. and NATO forces, to pull his personnel from Afghan government buildings, while NATO advisers in Kabul have limited communication with Karzai’s ministries to telephone and e-mail.
The problem is not new. In May 2011 a U.S. Army study established that murders of Westerners by Afghan national security forces did not represent “rare and isolated events”: between July 2010 and May of last year, more than thirty NATO personnel were killed by Afghan soldiers or policemen. Even before the latest incident there had been little trust between U.S.-led coalition forces and their local Afghan “allies” in the elusive quest for peace and stability.