Afghan recruits 'joined to kill soldiers'

06 September 2012

Over 400 potential recruits to Afghanistan's national army have been rejected this year because they only appeared to have signed up in order to kill International Security Assistance Force troops in the country, according to reports.

A "senior Afghan army official" quoted in The Times said that sixty applicants a month had been rejected since February after they appeared to only be interested in killing foreign soldiers.

The statistic means that 420 out of 15,000 potential recruits who signed up during that time had "insurgent leanings", according to the report.

The news follows revelations earlier this week that training for 1,000 Afghan Local Police recruits had been halted to allow for "intensive re-vetting" of all candidates in the wake of 45 'green-on-blue' incidents so far this year. In 2011 there were 14 such attacks leading to the deaths of 31 coalition troops.

Some 8,000 Afghan commandos and 3,000 members of Afghan Special Operations Forces are also currently being re-vetted, while all 350,000 members of the Afghan National Security Forces have been checked already, leading to around 300 dismissals and some prosecutions.