Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Times Online:

Five British soldiers have been shot dead after a rogue Afghan policeman turned his weapon against a British training team inside a checkpoint in Helmand Province.

The soldiers, three from the Grenadier Guards and two from the Royal Military Police, died in the village of Shin Kalay in Nad-e’Ali district of Helmand Province yesterday afternoon. Six British soldiers were injured in the same incident, several of them seriously. Two Afghan policemen, including the commander of the checkpost, were also injured before their assailant managed to escape.

Western military officials in Afghanistan told The Times that the British training mentoring team, which consisted of two specialist trainers from the Royal Military Police and 14 Grenadier Guards, had just returned from a patrol with Afghan policemen when the incident occurred.

The mentoring team had been working continuously with the same 15 Afghan police at checkpoint Blue 25 for more than two weeks without previous incident. They were part of an operation designed to extend government influence into the north-west of Nad Ali, an area of the district that has a notably strong Taleban presence.

Abdul Ahad Helmandwal, the head of the district council in Nad Ali district, told The Times that the Afghan police and their British mentors were drinking tea together when the firing began.

“He first fired on the commander of the police and his deputy then on the British soldiers. He escaped on a motorbike,” said Mr Helmandwal.

One military official told The Times that the British troops were undertaking post-patrol administration and resting when the attack began. All would have had a loaded weapon to hand, but they were clearly not expecting an attack inside their base, and may not have been wearing body armour.

“Without warning one of the ANP (Afghan National Policemen), potentially in concert with another, picked up his weapon and started firing,” he said.

Officials said that the gunman, who was named by local people as Gulbaddin, fled the scene, possibly with his accomplice. It has been suggested the killer may have had links to the Taleban.

“The initial reports suggest a member of the police started firing. He, or they, then fled from the scene before anyone could respond,” the official added.

Another military official in Afghanistan said: “You can imagine how we feel about this. The main thing is that we are after him – no stone will be left unturned getting after this bloke. This was a bolt from the blue. Two Afghan police were shot as well and we were getting on very well with them, as it should be. This was not a mass revolt it appears to have been a rogue individual.”

If the culprit turns out to be a Taleban recruit not weeded out by the vetting process, the whole strategy of partnership between the British and Afghan security forces, the key element of the campaign in Helmand could be undermined, analysts warned. The killing comes a month after the killing of two American soldiers by a policeman in Maidan Wardak.

The wounded were airlifted to the British field hospital at Camp Bastion using Chinook helicopters and a US Black Hawk. Ambulances took the injured from the helipad to the emergency department, where a large group of hospital medics and consultants was waiting to treat them.

The two ANP casualties were evacuated by the ANP to the hospital at Bost in Lashkar Gah.

Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, said: “The death of five brave soldiers in a single incident is a terrible loss.

“My thoughts, condolences and sympathies go to their families, loved ones and colleagues. I know that the whole country too will mourn their loss.

“They fought to make Afghanistan more secure, but above all to make Britain safer from the terrorism and extremism which continues to threaten us from the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“I pay tribute to their courage, skill and determination. They will never be forgotten.

“It is my highest priority to ensure our heroic troops have the best possible support and equipment —and the right strategy, backed by our international partners, and by a new Afghan government ready to play its part in confronting the challenges Afghanistan faces.

“Our troops deserve nothing less. My commitment to them remains unshakeable.”

The massacre makes 2009 the bloodiest year for the armed forces since the Falklands War more than two decades ago. Up until now, the worst period since the Falklands was 2007, when 89 members of the armed forces died on active service. The latest deaths bring this year’s figure to 94.

The death toll of British forces in Afghanistan since the conflict began in 2001 now stands at 229, 198 of them killed in action.

Two parallel inquiries have begun into yesterday’s shooting, by the British Military Police and the Afghan Police. The local chief of the ANP and the Afghan National Director of Security (NDS) have begun an investigation at the scene.

Soldiers and police have been instructed to hunt for the culprit.

It is not the first time that Afghan policemen have turned on their Western mentors. In October a policeman shot and killed two American soldiers in Wardak. In September a policemen opened fire on an American soldier in the capital, Kabul, seriously wounding him, because the American was drinking water during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims traditionally fast during the day.

Police trainers are privately wary of the Ministry of Interior’s vetting process designed to stop the Taleban infiltrating the force. Almost a third of the force quits each year. Their fear is that the men who leave take their training, and their weapons, over to the insurgents.

Ahmad Shah, 27, quit the police in 2003 and joined the Taleban in Wardak. “Back then the salary was only $60 (£36) a month,” he said. “We were always getting attacked by the Taleban, and I couldn’t visit my family in Jagatur because the Taleban controlled the area. Now I joined the Taleban, I don’t get a regular salary but I get around $300 month, and it’s much safer.”

Peter Galbraith, who left his post as deputy head of the UN mission in Afghanistan amid disagreements over the presidential elections, said that the “rushed” bid to train extra Afghan officers meant that such deaths were to be expected.

“The process of police training and recruiting has been very rushed. Normally the police get an eight-week training course. That is actually very short and there isn’t a lot of vetting of police before they are hired,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

“And actually, in recent months, they shortened the training programme from eight weeks to five weeks because they wanted to get more police boots on the ground in advance of the elections. So there was a real rush to recruit an additional 10,000, particularly in the South, particularly in Kandahar and Helmand provinces.”

Kim Howells, an influential Labour backbencher and former junior Foreign Office Minister, who now chairs the Intelligence and Security Committee, said that the shooting undermined the British and US strategy of building up the Afghan security forces.

“There are many people who have argued that there is only one way out of this for Britain and America and that is to train up the Afghan army and police force so that they can become responsible for their own security,” he told the BBC. “This is a real blow because it strikes right at the heart of that policy.

Last night Mr Howells split with official Government policy by calling for British troops to withdraw from Afghanistan.

“It would be better to bring home the great majority of our fighting men and women and concentrate, instead, on using the money saved to secure our own borders, (and) gather intelligence on terrorist activities inside Britain,” he said, writing in The Guardian.