Enemy inside the gates

US refuses to stop the Afghan killers in our troops’ midst
By PAUL SPERRY

Last Updated: 11:40 PM, March 3, 2012
Posted: 10:36 PM, March 3, 2012

In July 2010, Shir Ahmad, an Afghan security guard at a coalition base, started making threatening comments, saying he wanted to kill US troops.

His employer, Afghan-owned Tundra Security, a subsidiary of Canadian military contractor Tundra Group, fired him and recommended he not be rehired. But according to an investigation by Rep. Howard McKeon (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Tundra officials failed to pass that recommendation up the chain of command; nor was Ahmad added to any military watch list.

Tundra rehired Ahmad on March 9, 2011, without a background check. Ten days later, while working security at Forward Operating Base Frontenac in Southern Afghanistan, Ahmad picked up an AK-47 and fired into a group of soldiers who were cleaning their weapons.

He killed two — Cpl. Donald R. Mickler Jr., 29, of Ohio, and Pfc. Rudy A. Acosta, 19, of California.

They were only two of the 75 soldiers killed since 2007 by “green on blue” attacks executed by our supposed Afghan allies, aided and abetted by wishful thinking on the part of the Obama administration and lax security measures in Afghanistan. Despite these murders — including six in the last two weeks — officials plan to do nothing to take guns away from Afghans stationed with our troops.

After the Ahmad attack, the Pentagon told Congress that it had improved the screening process for Afghan forces — requiring all troops undergo a criminal-background check, including fingerprinting, and that they produce two letters from their village elders vouching for their character.

McKeon calls the system “tragically weak.” There’s no central Afghan database to check the fingerprints against, for one, and nothing to determine if the recommendations come from an elder in cahoots with the Taliban. McKeon introduced a bill Thursday that would require US bases to be guarded only by American troops, not foreign nationals or private security firms.

“We must recognize that the existing processes failed to identify 42 attackers in 2007 to 2011,” he said.

Things have only gotten worse since Korans were burned outside a prison in Bagram on Feb. 20 because they contained covert messages from terrorist detainees.

Three days later, a uniformed Afghan soldier shot and murdered in cold blood two American soldiers — Army Sgt. Joshua Born, 25, and Army Cpl. Timothy Conrad, 22 — at a forward operating base near Jalalabad.

On Feb. 25, an Afghan policeman working inside the Afghan Ministry of Interior — one of the most secure buildings in the country — pulled a gun, walked up behind two unarmed American officers and shot them both in the back of the head.