Afghanistan hopey changey; recruit kills 5 NATO troops, 4 Afghans
I don't think they're making enough progress to start coming home in July. The Washington Post:
A suicide bomber who had recently been recruited into the Afghan army blew himself up Saturday morning inside a military base, killing five NATO troops and four Afghan soldiers.
The bombing took place at the headquarters of the Afghan army's 201st Corps, known as Forward Operating Base Gamberi, in eastern Afghanistan's Laghman province. The base also has a contingent of NATO troops.The bomber blew himself up at about 9:30 a.m., as local leaders had gathered for a meeting, according to Dawood Zarbah, the province's deputy police chief.
In a statement asserting responsibility for the attack, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said that the bomber, Abdul Ghani, came from Daikundi province and had joined the Afghan army a month ago in order to carry out such an operation.
It was the second consecutive day that a bomber was able to strike inside a fortified Afghan facility by wearing a uniform of the security forces. On Friday, a man in a police uniform killed the provincial police chief of Kandahar in the courtyard of police headquarters.
You have to wonder how many more sleepers they have in their midst. And that, ultimately, is the problem with training the army. This is, at bottom, a civil war. It's very easy to sow distrust in the ranks using operations like this. As long as the Taliban can get away with it, they will continue to do so.