KABUL — NATO Tuesday ordered a cutback on operations with Afghan forces in response to a surge of so-called insider attacks on foreign servicemen, but said the restriction was temporary and would not derail a 2014 handover of security to Afghan forces. The order indefinitely suspending most mentoring operations was issued by the second most senior US commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. James Terry, and applies to all front-line missions involving units smaller than an 800-strong battalion. But a senior NATO spokesman, US Colonel Tom Collins, said the order was only a “temporary and prudent response” to current threats of insider attacks and a week of mounting anger across the Muslim world over a film mocking the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). “It will apply only until the threat level returns to a tolerable level,” Collins said, adding that separate training missions would be unaffected and the scaling back would apply only to smaller front-line and field troops. Enabling missions, like NATO helicopter support for Afghan troops and medical evacuations by air, would also be unaffected, Collins told Reuters. But even a limited cutback is a major turnaround for NATO's core mission of a strong training role for the 350,000 members of the Afghan security forces who will now have to cope with reduced support from the 100,000-strong NATO-led force backing the Afghan government against Taliban insurgents. At least 51 members of the NATO force have been killed in insider attacks this year, in which Afghan police or soldiers have turned their weapons on their Western mentors. That represents a spike of more than 40 percent on similar incidents for the whole of last year. The order, which appeared to take several coalition members including Britain and Australia by surprise, was issued after weekend attacks by Afghan police in which six foreign soldiers were killed in the south, where the Taliban draw most support. Australian troops, based in the southern province of Uruzgan, were seeking urgent clarification on how the change would be applied, while British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond did not mention the shift in parliament Monday. But Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague told a parliamentary committee in London Tuesday that the strategy ahead of the 2014 pullout of most Western combat troops was unaltered. “The impact on UK operations will be minimal. It doesn't mean the way UK troops conduct operations ... is going to change. It does require the chain of command to be consulted in a different way,” Hague said. NATO commanders said that meant smaller joint operations could still be approved, but on a case-by-case basis in which junior commanders would have to set out measures to reduce the risk of attack by rogue Afghan soldiers or police. — Reuters
