KABUL — The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan on Saturday recalled all NATO personnel working in Afghan ministries in the Kabul area — a bold and potentially divisive response to the killing of two American service members by an Afghan security official in the country’s fortified Interior Ministry earlier in the day.
Marine Gen. John R. Allen’s directive comes five days after U.S. military personnel burned a pile of Korans at the largest military base in Afghanistan in an apparently inadvertent act that set off violent protests across the country. More than 25 Afghans have died in those demonstrations, and four NATO soldiers have been killed by men wearing Afghan security uniforms since Thursday, when the Taliban urged Afghan soldiers and police to turn their weapons on their Western counterparts.
The week’s events have exposed a core vulnerability of the Obama administration’s strategy for winding down the decade-long Afghan war: a fraying trust between two presumed allies who must depend on each other to keep the insurgency at bay.