For any army in the world, the issue of losses in one or another armed conflict can be very acute. In some cases, officials are trying to frankly underestimate human losses in order to show the best combat capability and training of army soldiers and officers, in others the figures are deliberately overestimated in order to demonstrate to the world community the aggressiveness of the enemy with whom they have to fight.
Even more difficult is the issue of losses associated with the so-called "friendly fire". This concept refers to the attacks of the enemy, which in a certain way managed to infiltrate the allied units in order to deliver crushing, let's say, insider strikes - strikes literally from the inside.
Recently, US servicemen participating in the Enduring Freedom mission in Afghanistan have often come across "friendly fire". At the same time, the number of American losses associated precisely with "friendly fire" in the past few months has exceeded the number of losses of American servicemen in Afghanistan for other reasons. This, in particular, was mentioned by the head of the Pentagon Leon Panetta, who even decided to make a kind of remark to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Panetta said that he was concerned about the frequent attacks on representatives of the NATO contingent and other allied states by persons wearing the uniform of Afghan soldiers. According to the head of the Pentagon, Karzai must take a tougher approach to recruiting recruits for the Afghan army in order to stop the attempts of militants to become combat units of this very army in order to carry out an attack on ISAF and NATO soldiers.
It would seem that Panetta is talking about some oddities, but his words about the frequent attacks on allied soldiers by representatives of Afghan troops indirectly confirm the statements made at one time by such a person as Mulla Omar. According to some sources, the leader of the Taliban movement was killed during a special operation last spring in the Pakistani city of Quetta, but then it suddenly turned out that the destruction of Mohammed Omar was more like an information bluff.
So it was Mullah Omar who said that Taliban groups infiltrated the ranks of the Afghan army to destroy NATO soldiers. According to him, now the Taliban have gained very strong control over the army centers of the Afghan army, and now it is possible to strike at American and other foreign military personnel, taking advantage of the effect of absolute surprise.
In one of the personal diaries of an American infantryman, it is reported that the American troops did not see much support from the Afghan military before, and for some time in general, every Afghan in military uniform began to be treated with extreme suspicion, which makes the entire NATO operation in Afghanistan worthwhile. under great doubt.
Recently, several dozen American servicemen have died at the hands of Afghan servicemen, or rather, militants who managed to become representatives of the Afghan army. According to experts, the total losses of NATO and ISAF forces from "friendly fire" for the entire period of "Enduring Freedom" can amount to up to a thousand soldiers and officers.
In a recent bloody incident involving US and Afghan military officials, six United States military personnel were invited to dinner with a senior police officer in Helmand province. After the Americans began their meal, the Afghan police officer shot all six, and then left his service and went to the Taliban. A few hours before this incident, three more American soldiers were victims of automatic gunfire from an Afghan employee of one of the military bases in Afghanistan.
Shootings and killings take place not only on the part of Afghan servicemen in relation to the military of the NATO contingent, but also vice versa. So in mid-August, American soldiers shot and killed an Afghan soldier, saying that if they had delayed firing, he would have shot them all with his machine gun …
All these materials served as a pretext for the suspension of the training of Afghan recruits by the American military. Moreover, in Afghanistan, the Americans decided to conduct their own large-scale investigation into the identification of representatives of the Taliban in the ranks of the Afghan military. It is reported that a total of about 27,000 Afghan soldiers will be tested. I wonder how the Americans are going to identify Afghans wearing military uniforms for involvement in cooperation with the Taliban?..
The initiative to check Afghan soldiers by American troops came after President Hamid Karzai said that there should be no cause for concern on the part of the NATO military contingent. In his words, the presence of the Taliban and their supporters in the current Afghan army is a myth, which is only intended to create distrust in the combat capability and effectiveness of the Afghan troops. Such words clearly puzzled Washington. And after Karzai's words that he was not against the nomination of Muhammad Omar as a presidential candidate in future elections, some representatives of the American authorities had a feeling that the policy of the current Afghan president had become very dubious. Although this policy has never been unambiguous, and today it is the fruit of the entire "Enduring Freedom", during which the actions of the NATO contingent gave rise to complete disbelief in the country in the expediency of their presence in Afghanistan. Both Afghans and the American servicemen themselves are talking about this today, realizing that the mission, by and large, has failed, and as soon as the bulk of NATO troops leave the country, the Taliban will immediately take the positions that it had here before 2001 year. And the words of Hamid Karzai that the spiritual leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, could well be nominated as a presidential candidate if the military confrontation ends, look nothing more than an attempt to please the Taliban, who are clearly ready for political revenge.
It turns out that the war that the Americans unleashed in Afghanistan under the slogans of fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, if it ends in the near future, will result in a new coming to power of the former Taliban, reinforced by the awareness of a great victory. As they say, what they fought with, they ran into it. The old slogans are pretty worn out, the American authorities obviously have problems with the new ones, and therefore the "friendly fire" can, oddly enough, quickly cut this Gordian knot - that is, contribute to the understanding in Washington that the bloody massacre in Afghanistan is unnecessary. Afghanistan, not the United States. It's time to call a spade a spade, and declare the complete failure of the mission. But will the White House decide on this in the midst of the presidential campaign? - The question is obviously rhetorical …
