This sucks. Rest in peace to the fallen and my heart goes out to the families and friends of these Afghan guards. My only comment on this is that I am sure there will be many lessons for this security company, and they will certainly be re-evaluating the defense of their main camps. But from the sounds of it, the Taliban conducted a classic raid designed to turn a surprised force inside out. These things take guts to perform, and require planning, surprise and violence of action to be effective. It sounds like they had that in this attack. (Running over fleeing unarmed guards with their cars though?)
The other point to bring up is this whole deal about companies using subcontractors who refuse to use local workers for projects in that locality. Boy, that is rule number one in a new area you plan on doing construction or other types of work at, and that is always hire local.
If you hire the locals, they are more likely to protect their cash cow job, and drop some hints that maybe the Taliban (their cousins and uncles) might want to attack that day or night. Or the work force just doesn’t show up one because their cousins and uncles said not to go to work that day. Using locals for work projects is the way to go, and the project lead on this should have known better.
It would also help if the reconstruction team that handed out the money for this road project, also paid attention to what villages might be pissed off if they built a road through their area, and was not included in the project. Or at least throw in a school or whatever to appease them, while making the case of why a road would be a good thing in their area. It sounds like no one talked these folks, to include the government or the reconstruction team for that area.
The other option is that maybe these locals did talk with everyone, and because they were Taliban supporters, they will never be happy about anything the government or reconstruction teams tell them. –Matt
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Taliban Attack Afghan Guards in Deadly Raid
By ALISSA J. RUBIN and SHARIFULLAH SAHAK
August 20, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban fighters in a rural area near the Helmand River staged an audacious nighttime raid early Thursday, swooping down on several hundred sleeping Afghan private security guards who were securing a road construction project, and killing at least 21, according to guards who escaped.
The attack was striking not only for its scale and viciousness but because it took place in the Helmand River Valley, where thousands of British troops have been stationed for the past three years and where now American troops have entered to try to rout the Taliban.
News of the Taliban raid emerged Friday, as Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, met with President Hamid Karzai for the second time in four days to discuss corruption among members of the Afghan government, some of whom have been implicated in several major cases. Support for the nine-year war, and for Mr. Karzai, is ebbing in the United States, while Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, has signaled that, if anything, the troops would need more time on the ground to accomplish their mission.