The Plan to Stop Green-on-Blue Violence
The Pentagon’s secret PowerPoint on Afghan insider attacks.
- By Nate JonesNate Jones is Freedom of Information Act coordinator at the National Security Archive.
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According to the Pentagon’s December 2012 Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan, "green on blue" attacks — incidents in which members of the Afghan security forces attack NATO coalition soldiers — "increased sharply" last year. At least 52 coalition soldiers died as a result of at least 37 green-on-blue attacks in 2012. A recently declassified set of slides produced by U.S. Central Command, published below and made public here for the first time, illustrates some of the steps that the U.S. military has taken to defeat "insider threats" — and why "green on blues" are so difficult to prevent.
The Centcom slides identify four types of threats: "Infiltration," when insurgents join the ANSF with the intent to attack, spy, or create mistrust; "Co-opting," when insurgents use "intimidation, blackmail, or connections" to persuade an existing ANSF member to conduct an attack; "Mimicking," when insurgents use stolen uniforms or forged ID cards to attack ISAF soldiers; and "Destabilizers," ANSF soldiers who (often due to "stress, mental instability, or… drug use") attack ISAF soldiers without having been influenced by insurgents.
Centcom’s ANSF Screening and Monitoring Timeline shows a robust — if belated — effort to quantitatively monitor each soldier in the Afghan army. Screening was hampered because a NATO intelligence-sharing agreement with the Afghan government wasn’t reached until March 2008, and the ANSF biometrics program was not officially established until September 2009. In response to insider attacks, the Afghan Ministry of Defense began extensively ramping up its counterintelligence program in late 2010.
Troublingly, some other basic steps were not undertaken until late in the war effort. The document reports that in May 2011, "10,000 ANSF uniforms [were] removed from bazaars," but it does not elaborate on how and why they were there; or how many uniforms remain available for purchase by non-soldiers who might attempt "Mimicking" attacks.
The final declassified slide details the eight-step screening process Afghan recruits must complete to enter basic training. These steps include: providing a valid tazkera (identification card), two letters from elders, biometric collection (currently the database stores 430,000 records), a criminal records check, fitness check (officers only), and medical and drug screenings. Failing a THC (marijuana) screening does not disqualify a recruit from serving in the ANSF — despite the document’s earlier claim that drug use can factor into "Destabilizer" (non-insurgent) insider attacks.
Centcom claims that this screening process — which is undergoing "ongoing improvements" — gives "the ANSF a better chance to identify ‘insider threats’ before they enter the service." Since the creation of this May 2011 document, these "ongoing improvements" have included a process for receiving anonymous tips, suspending the training of the Afghan Local Police and some joint "mentoring" operations, installing NATO service members dubbed "guardian angels" to observe all gatherings of NATO and Afghan troops, meetings between Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and senior Afghan commanders and officials, as well as discussion of this problem between Presidents Obama and Karzai.
Despite these efforts and improvements, green-on-blue attacks continue to escalate, making Centcom’s assessment that "continued shortfalls… will allow some insider attacks to continue to occur" all the more ominous.
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John ReedJohn Reed is a national security reporter for Foreign Policy. He comes to FP after editing Military.com’s publication Defense Tech and working as the associate editor of DoDBuzz. Between 2007 and 2010, he covered major trends in military aviation and the defense industry around the world for Defense News and Inside the Air Force. Before moving to Washington in August 2007, Reed worked in corporate sales and business development for a Swedish IT firm, The Meltwater Group in Mountain View CA, and Philadelphia, PA. Prior to that, he worked as a reporter at the Tracy Press and the Scotts Valley Press-Banner newspapers in California. His first story as a professional reporter involved chasing escaped emus around California’s central valley with Mexican cowboys armed with lassos and local police armed with shotguns. Luckily for the giant birds, the cowboys caught them first and the emus were ok. A New England native, Reed graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a dual degree in international affairs and history.
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