Digger death shows Afghanis 'unreliable'

news.com.au ^ | 25th July 2009 | Ian McPhedran

[naturalman1975]

AN INQUIRY into the death of an Australian soldier in Afghanistan has confirmed what Diggers have always known - Afghan National Army troops are unreliable.

The Daily Telegraph reports an inquiry into the death of Corporal Mathew Hopkins found major deficiencies with the performance of ANA soldiers being trained by the Diggers.

The 21-year-old new father died from a single enemy shot to the head after the joint Australian/ANA patrol was ambushed about 12km north of Tarin Kowt on March 16.

Cpl Hopkins was the first member of an Australian Army training team to die since the Vietnam War and the ninth of 11 Diggers killed in Afghanistan.

The inquiry found that apart from carrying the fatally wounded soldier from the battlefield, the Afghan troops did not fight.

"Throughout the main part of the contact there appears to have been limited involvement by the ANA personnel," the report by Lieutenant Colonel Craig Barker said.

[Rodebrecht]

They have no desire to fight for their own country. Why should we continue to carry the burden, losing our treasure and eve more precious blood?

[myknowledge]

Looks like they lost their fighting spirit. Never the same as the Afghan Mujahideen, who waged a near decade long guerrilla war against the Soviet Union throughout the eighties.

[CaptRon]

We are in aplce with no sense of country. The Tribe is eveything. However respectful we try to be will make no differnce. They live in the bronze age.

Send in the Predators and to hell with moral equivalence.

[Gay State Conservative]

One could suspect that any Afghan or Iraqi soldier or policeman has been compromised or actually sympathetic to the cause of the bad guys....or...that their heart just isn’t in the fight.I guess that’s one of the things that happen when a civilized country’s Army is fighting in a 9th Century society.

[DemforBush]

Sadly, I’m not surprised. The Afghani troops fighting on the side of the government during the Soviet invasion were often similarly apathetic, or worse. As other posters have pointed out, loyalty to kin and tribe is still strong.

Prayers for the fallen Australian soldier. He deserved a hell of a lot better than that.

[Karliner]

bambi gave the order there will be no victory because it sounds so much like Tojo surrendering to gen Masc on the USS Missouri...obama’s battle cry=” That idiot racist cop...”

[Karliner]

Oh here's the quote I read, from a freeper link to Commentary magazine:

President Obama has put securing Afghanistan near the top of his foreign policy agenda, but “victory” in the war-torn country isn’t necessarily the United States’ goal, he said Thursday in a TV interview.

“I’m always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur,” Obama told ABC News.

The enemy facing U.S. and Afghan forces isn’t so clearly defined, he explained.

“We’re not dealing with nation states at this point. We’re concerned with al Qaeda and the Taliban, al Qaeda’s allies,” he said. “So when you have a non-state actor, a shadowy operation like al Qaeda, our goal is to make sure they can’t attack the United States.”

So victory itself is now an outdated construct — like ideology or, heaven forbid, American exceptionalism. If the president thinks that asymmetric war precludes victory, then the U.S., in his estimation, is likely never to win a war again