Afghan Killer of Six Americans Was Trusted Police Officer

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KABUL, Afghanistan — Fellow villagers claimed he was just a poor kid who had taken a police job to help his family get by. Superiors saw him as a reliable foot soldier in the Afghan Border Police who had inexplicably snapped. The Taliban claimed he was a sleeper agent they had planted to kill NATO soldiers.

What is known for sure about the police officer, who shot and killed six American soldiers on Monday in one of the worst attacks by an Afghan service member on NATO forces in nine years of war, is that his name was Ezzatullah and that he had been in the border police since 2008.

“We cannot rule out that he was used by the enemy, but he has been a border policeman for three years, and had been a good boy,” said Gen. Mohammed Zaman Mamozai, a senior member of the Interior Ministry, who until a month ago was in charge of the border police in Afghanistan’s eastern zone, where the killings took place.

“I am really puzzled about why this happened,” the general said.

The Americans and their NATO allies have made the training of the Afghan security forces a centerpiece of their strategy to hand over security to the Afghans and enable the troops to go home. Over the past 12 months there has been an intensified effort to train the security forces, including a big reduction in the instructor-to-trainee ratio and a more comprehensive effort to have Afghan and NATO units work as partners in the field.

Full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/world/asia/01afghan.html

Speaking of Afghan cops, Anderson Cooper did a story for last Sunday's 60 Minutes about corruption in the Afghan police force.