Nearly 7,000 miles away from us, in Afghanistan, a disturbing trend has taken root. Afghan military and police officers are turning their weapons on their NATO and American trainers. The so called “green-on-blue” shootings have claimed the lives of 51 coalition soldiers this year, and a total of 114 lives since 2008, according to the Long War Journal, a news blog from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
In a conflict that has already lasted more than a decade, this series of violent episodes clearly underscores the importance of our mission to destabilize terrorist organizations and leave in place a well-trained military.
Because of the shootings, U.S. military commanders have suspended training 1,000 members of the Afghan local police in order to re-vet current officers. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force also indefinitely suspended Afghan and coalition joint patrols, and operations for units smaller than 800-strong battalions.
This is clearly a wise move.
NATO commanders estimate that only 10 percent of these attacks result from enemy infiltration, while the rest are attributed to cultural differences and personal conflicts. The latter of the two causes must be addressed aggressively in order to prevent further bloodshed.
With so many cultural differences between the Middle East and the West, it’s paramount for soldiers on both sides to approach each other with open minds and an understanding that they are all working toward the same goal.
However, both sides are in desperate need of work. A report entitled “A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility,” by Jeffrey Bordin, U.S. political and military behavioral scientist, reveals results of interviews with soldiers on both sides in order to elucidate the root causes of these cultural conflicts.
Problems U.S. soldiers had with their Afghan counterparts included heavy drug use, theft, poor treatment of women and children and low morale. Afghan soldiers were equally put off by American swearing, immodesty, bullying, and cultural insensitivity and ignorance.
Many of these issues are systemic and need to be addressed further up the totem pole, but others can be curbed by enhanced training in cultural sensitivity, which the study found soldiers lacked.
Furthermore, when surveyed, U.S. soldiers said they were dissatisfied with the amount of training they received regarding how to adequately train Afghan personnel. That is the main stratagem for accomplishing our mission, and its absence can only push our intended goals further out of reach.
Military commanders need to thoroughly reexamine their tactics if there is ever a chance for the mission to be completed.
How can this conflict possibly affect us, mere college students so far removed from all of this carnage? As we progress and situate ourselves in the world after our studies, we carry with us numerous markings of our identity. One of the most important is our citizenship.
When we make our marks in the world and proclaim ourselves Americans, we need to wear that badge with pride instead of shame. We are attempting to do real good in an extremely volatile region, and this series of attacks needs to be addressed by acknowledging the shortcomings of both sides.