Just when the New York Times today published a background piece on fratricide between Afghan and international soldiers, an Afghan soldier killed four French soldiers and wounded another eighteen:
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday that France is suspending its training programs for Afghan troops after the killings, which he announced in a speech after the U.S.-led coalition said an Afghan soldier shot and killed four NATO troops.
Sarkozy said it was "unacceptable" that Afghan troops would attack French soldiers.
Stopping all personal cooperation will be, of course, not a solution to the "unacceptable" problem.
The real number of such green on blue incidents is kept secret:
Military commanders in Afghanistan have stopped making public the number of allied troops killed by Afghan soldiers and police, a measure of the trustworthiness of a force that is to take over security from U.S.-led forces.
…
Since 2005, more than 50 troops had been killed and 48 wounded by Afghan troops, according to data released before the policy changed and USA Today research. In 2011, Afghan troops killed at least 13 ISAF troops.
The Times quotes from an unpublished report which says:
“Lethal altercations are clearly not rare or isolated; they reflect a rapidly growing systemic homicide threat (a magnitude of which may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern military history).”
The superficial reasons why this happening:
“The sense of hatred is growing rapidly,” said an Afghan Army colonel. He described his troops as “thieves, liars and drug addicts,” but also said that the Americans were “rude, arrogant bullies who use foul language.”
The real reason will be deeper. While there is certainly also racism and jealousy involved, I would expect that the sheer value put on a soldier, the money that is spend on their quarters, their equipment and their pay is so vastly different that it creates deep animosities. With an Afghan soldier objectively valued less than a foreigner the foreign soldiers will perceive them as lower class and behave with arrogance towards them while the Afghan soldier will see the situation as degrading. This is thereby a class problem.
According to the Times report special operation soldiers have less green on blue incidents. The Times ascribes that to their culture and language training. That may partly be the reason but what is probably more important is that special operations soldiers tend to live a less pampered life than the regular ones and are willing and often will live with the native soldiers they are cooperating with under the same condition than those have.
Sarkozy's solution is to stop all cooperation. A real solution, besides of course leaving, might be to do away with the luxuries the foreign soldiers enjoy and make them live their time in Afghanistan just as the Afghans live.