Afghan soldier fires on NATO troops, kills one

KABUL, Afghanistan -- An Afghan soldier killed one U.S. marine and wounded another before being shot to death in return fire Sunday in southern Afghanistan, the latest in a series of attacks against foreigners blamed on government forces within their own ranks.

Nearly 20 such attacks this year have raised the level of mistrust between the U.S.-led coalition and their Afghan partners as NATO gears up to hand over security to local forces ahead of a 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of combat troops.

In another sign of deteriorating security, the United States is considering abandoning plans for a consulate in the country's north because the building chosen was deemed too dangerous to occupy. The U.S. spent $80 million on the project despite glaring security deficiencies in the former hotel, according to a copy of a document drafted by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

Those problems -- including shoddy construction that would lead to a "catastrophic failure" of the building in a car bomb attack -- were overlooked and waivers to strict State Department building rules were granted as officials rushed to open the consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif as a sign of America's long-term commitment to Afghanistan, the diplomatic memo shows.

While Mazar-i-Sharif was considered relatively safe when the project was approved in 2009, the memo said, a number of incidents in the city indicate that is no longer the case, including an attack last April on a nearby United Nations compound in which a mob stormed the facility and killed seven foreigners -- three workers and their guards.

Winning over the ethnic Tajik and Uzbek minorities who dominate the north, was one of the reasons the U.S. wanted a consulate there. But the site picked was doomed from the start, the embassy documents show.

The compound shared a perimeter wall with local shopkeepers and was surrounded by tall buildings that could be used for an attack, the memo said. The distance between the compound's buildings and the outer wall also was not up to U.S. standards, it added.

In the event of an emergency, there wasn't even enough space to land a single helicopter, so one would have to land on a nearby street, the memo said.

Neighborhood security also was in question. The compound was near a large mosque that is often the center of large protests in the city, and a nearby truck stop and pickup spot for day laborers provided easy cover for surveillance or attack, it said.

The memo, which was first reported in the Washington Post, said the "security vulnerabilities" at the site and increased threats in Mazar-i-Sharif were overwhelming.

"Consequently, establishing a diplomatic presence at the current location is no longer believed to be tenable and the search for an alternative site has been initiated," it said.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Gavin Sundwall declined to comment on the report, saying only that "the security situation has evolved in Afghanistan and any decisions we make are driven by our responsibility to ensure the safety of our personnel."

Persistent violence has threatened to undermine President Barack Obama's effort to show progress in stabilizing Afghanistan at a NATO summit later this month in Chicago. Obama traveled to Afghanistan on Tuesday to sign a long-term strategic partnership governing the relationship between the two countries through 2024.

The Afghan soldier opened fire on international troops in the Tarekh Naver in the Marjah district, a former Taliban stronghold that was the site of a major offensive by coalition forces in 2010, said a spokesman for the governor of Helmand province.

A senior U.S. defense official in Washington said Sunday that the victim was a U.S. Marine in Helmand province, and that one other Marine was wounded. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the attack is under investigation had no other details.

The shooting marks the second recent killing of a U.S. Marine in Helmand by an Afghan soldier. Lance Cpl. Edward Dycus was shot in the head by an Afghan soldier in Helmand's Marja district while on guard duty on Jan. 31 and died the next day.

The provincial governor's spokesman, Daud Ahmadi said the service member was killed in a gunfight between NATO forces and an Afghan army soldier, with one service member killed and another wounded.

The insider threat to foreigners trying to mentor and strengthen Afghan security forces has existed for years but has grown more deadly.

The U.S.-led coalition routinely reports each time an American or other foreign soldier is killed by an Afghan in uniform, but the military is underreporting the number of overall attacks. The Associated Press reported earlier this month that the coalition does not report attacks in which the Afghan wounds -- or misses -- his U.S. or allied target. It also doesn't report the wounding of troops who were attacked alongside those who were killed.

The number of such attacks have been on the rise. So far this year there have been 19 attacks killing 12 soldiers, compared to 21 last year killing 35 coalition service members, according to NATO figures.

That compares with 11 fatal attacks and 20 deaths the previous year. In 2007 and 2008 there were a combined total of four attacks and four deaths.

U.S. officials say that in most cases the Afghans who turn their guns on their allies are motivated not by sympathy for the Taliban or on orders from insurgents, but rather act as a result of personal grievances against the coalition.

Also Sunday, a NATO service member was killed by a bomb in eastern Afghanistan, the alliance said, raising to 139 the number of foreign troops deaths so far this year.

The heads of the House and Senate intelligence committees claimed Sunday that the Taliban has actually grown stronger since 33,000 more U.S. troops were deployed to Afghanistan in 2010.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, and Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, offered the pessimistic report on CNN's "State of the Union" after a fact-finding trip to the region where they met with President Hamid Karzai.

When asked if the Taliban's capabilities have been degraded, Feinstein said: "I think we'd both say that what we've found is that the Taliban is stronger."

More than 1,800 U.S. troops have been killed in the decade-long war. About 90,000 service members remain deployed, down from a peak of more than 100,000 last year..