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Ashe County, N.C. A Youngsville soldier killed in Afghanistan earlier this month was laid to rest in the western part of the state Friday.

Sgt. Dillon Baldridge was born in Raleigh and raised in Youngsville. Family members said he was drawn to military service and Friday, in Ashe County, they remembered a hero.

Its supposed to be a time of celebration. Its tough, said Baldridges brother, Zachary Palmer.

There was a large crowd at Ashe County High School honoring 22-year-old Baldridge. His brother choked back emotions to speak at the memorial service.

I want to thank my brother for his sacrifice and thank you guys for being here, Palmer said.

Baldridge was one of three soldiers shot and killed in Afghanistan on June 10 and was part of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell.

He joined the Army when he graduated high school and reenlisted in 2016. He told family members he loved the job too much to walk away from it.

Couldnt ask for a better person. The sacrifice he made, hes a hero, said Baldridges aunt, Melissa Strickland.

In West Jefferson, people lined the streets. Some held flags and others held a salute.

Its just a family that I couldnt be more grateful for, Palmer said.

After the service at the high school, Baldridges family held a private graveside service.

Baldridge was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, Purple Heart and Combat Infantry Badge after his death.

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'He's a hero': Youngsville soldier killed in Afghanistan laid to rest - WRAL.com

As the security situation in Afghanistan continues to slip, NATO has askedCanada to help with its Resolute Support mission by sending trainers to help buildan Afghan military and police force capable of defending the country.

For the past three years, Canadian soldiers have been training and mentoring Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in Iraq with great success and only one fatality: Sgt. Andrew Doiron was killed in a "friendly fire" incident that all sides agree was a tragic but honest mistake.

The Canadians have developed a relationship of mutual trust and even affection with their Kurdish hosts, according to Canadian military commanders.

So the Afghan training and mentoring mission NATO is now asking Canada to take on, might also seem to be a relatively safe assignment.

But bitter experience has taught NATO that the Afghan frontline runs through every army base, police detachment and training classroom. Western soldiers have died not only on the battlefield, but on the parade ground, the firing range and even sitting down to dinner with their Afghan counterparts.

"Insider attacks" have been a constant of the Afghan war, and many have taken the form of so-called "green-on-blue" shootings, in which foreign instructors are deliberately killed by their own students.

In August 2012, an Afghan police commander called Asadullah sat down to a pre-dawn meal with three U.S. marines in Helmand province. The marines were there to train Afghan national police. Asadullahinvited them, he told them, to discuss security arrangements.

Partway through the meal, Asadullah produced a pistol and shot the three marines dead. He then fled the base in the dark.

"He is with us now," Taliban spokesperson Qari Yusuk Ahmadi later confirmed to AgenceFrance-Presseby phone.

Sixty foreign advisers were killed by Afghan soldiers and police that same year, according to figures compiled by the International Security Assistance Force.Theattacks prompted new measures by ISAFto protect trainers from their trainees.

The changesincluded strengthened identity vetting forAfghan security forces members.

That's no simple matter in a country where the typical recruit is an illiterate villager with no real birth certificate and often, no family name (many Afghans use only a first name).

The Afghan military is now using biometric scans, with equipment and supervision provided by ISAF,on all new recruits.Recruits must also provide references fromtwo trusted elders from their home district.

Western trainers also instituted a system of "guardian angels," where a coalition soldier is assigned to stand guard over Afghan recruits at all times.

Afghan police demonstrate their skills during a graduation ceremony at a police training centre in the Adraskan district of Herat province, Afghanistan, in March, 2011. (Reza Shirmohammadi/Associated Press)

On military bases where Afghan soldiers and police mix with foreign forces, the Afghans are required to be unarmed inside the gates, or have the firing pins removed from their rifles.

It was partly because of that rule that a recent Taliban attack on an Afghan army base in Mazar-e-Sharif was so deadly, says Bill Roggio, a former U.S.soldierwho today edits the Long War Journal, published by theWashington think-tank the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies.

In that incident, about 10 attackers were recentlyable to kill about 140 mostly unarmed recruits.

"It tells you just how the Taliban strategy of conducting insider attacks has second and third order effects that people often don't consider," saidRoggio. "They just aren't being trusted right now and trust is the first thing you need when you'repartnering with foreign forces.

"You have cases where Afghan soldiers have gone through the vetting process, they didn't have any problems and then after a couple years in service, or a couple of months or weeks, they've been pressured or talked to by the Taliban and recruited to conduct attacks," he said.

Roggio says the countermeasures taken by NATO forces are not the main reason for the reduction in insider attacks.

"The primary reason for the reduction over the last several years is there's been less coalition forces partnered" with Afghan forces, he says, and fewer Westerners in Afghanistan generally.

Police forces clash with protesters during a demonstration in Kabul earlier this month. Hundreds of demonstrators demanded better security in the Afghan capital in the wake of a powerful truck bomb attack that killed scores of people. (Massoud Hossaini/Associated Press)

Yet three more U.S. soldiers fell victim to such an attack on June 12. The men of the 101st Airborne were killed in Nangarhar province by an Afghan National Army soldier who was immediately killed by return fire.

A week later, seven more Americans were shot by an Afghan soldier inside the Mazar-e-Sharif base. All seven survived.

Canada has been involved in training Afghan police before.

Ottawa police Sgt. Colin Stokes, who trained Afghan police in Kandahar from 2009 to 2010, operatedmostly out of Camp Nathan Smith.

He says his experience was mostly positive, but remembers the precautions he and his fellow police officers took, particularly when their students were armed at the firing range.

Ottawa police Sgt. Colin Stokes oversees an Afghan police trainee during weapons training in Kandahar. Stokes was posted with the Canadian Armed Forces as a trainer in 2009 and 2010. (Colin Stokes )

"When we were on the range with them, we always ensured there were other police officers, basically, very hands on and close to all the Afghan soldiers and constables that were on the line," he says.

Stokes said his Afghan trainees were mostly keen to learn, but says it's impossible to prevent all green-on-blue killings when dealing with armed recruits.

"Mistakes are made, things slip through the cracks. Everybody tries to do the best we can to vet personnel, but it's a war zone and you can't be too surprised when people get killed."

He says he'd be willing to return under certain circumstances.

"If Canada does go back, if I was to go back, I'd want to mentor Afghans that have the capacity to absorb the type of police training that we have to give."

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Previous attacks underscore dangers for Canadians in Afghanistan training mission - CBC.ca

A man is transported to hospital after the car bomb attack in Lashkar Gah. Photograph: Abdul Malik/Reuters

At least 30 people have been killed in Helmand province after a car bomb targeted soldiers, government employees and other civilians queueing to collect pay cheques from a bank in the provincial capital.

The blast outside New Kabul Bank in Lashkar Gah is the latest in a series of brazen attacks in Afghanistan during the holy month of Ramadan.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. It has been responsible for similar attacks against the bank, where most government employees have their salaries deposited.

The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, condemned the attack. The perpetrators have no respect for any religion or faith. They are enemies of humanity, he said.

Lashkar Gahs main trauma centre, received 23 bodies and admitted 43 injured patients. Several windows shattered at the hospital, which is close to the bank, but staff were unharmed, said Dejan Panic, a programme coordinator.

Omar Zawak, spokesman for the Helmand governor, said 30 people had been killed and more than 60 injured, many critically. He said most of the fatalities were soldiers.

It is the third time in three years that militants have targeted crowds collecting salaries at the bankA suicide bomber and a gunman killed 10 people in 2014, and seven were killed in a suicide bombing in February. The Taliban claimed responsibility for both attacks.

A border police officer who gave his name as Rahmatullah said he had kept his distance from the queue as he waited to get inside the bank because of the spate of attacks.

I was waiting in front of the bank to take my salary, but I was worried about an explosion so I didnt join the crowd. And then suddenly the blast happened. I saw lot of injured and dead people, he said. He sustained a leg injury in the blast. .

Helmand has long been a Taliban stronghold. Lashkar Gah is one of the only populated areas in the province under government control.

US Marines returned to Helmand for the first time since 2014 in April, deploying 300 personnel to a province where more foreign and Afghan soldiers have lost their lives than anywhere else in the country.

The Trump administration has said it will deploy about 4,000 extra troops in Afghanistan, in addition to the 8,400 still serving there. Nato allies such as Australia and Denmark have also pledged more troops.

Most analysts doubt the Taliban can be defeated militarily, particularly given that it proved impossible with 150,000 foreign troops at the height of Barack Obamas surge.

The US defence secretary has said that while the country is not winning the war in Afghanistan, we will correct this as soon as possible. In response to criticism from senators, James Mattis said he would provide details of a new strategy in mid-July.

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Afghanistan: Taliban claims responsibility for suicide car bomb attack - The Guardian

Photo President Trump arriving at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Friday after a day trip to Miami. He has given Jim Mattis, the defense secretary, the authority to send several thousand additional troops to Afghanistan. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re President Cedes Afghan Strategy to the Pentagon (front page, June 19):

I read with shock and dismay that President Trump has in effect given over the planning and implementation for the war in Afghanistan to the military, which argued to expand the military effort even though Afghanistan is an unstable country with endemic corruption. Even though Afghanistan is far from the American mainland. Even though the 3,000 to 5,000 troops are being asked to deploy without an overall strategy, let alone an endgame.

Has President Trump no feeling at all about the extreme danger to which he is subjecting these troops with apparently no interest in providing a rationale for their deployment? Is there no end to ill-conceived military exploits in a faraway land we know nothing about?

Have we not learned anything since Vietnam?

BRUCE CHADWICK, BROOKLYN

A version of this letter appears in print on June 22, 2017, on Page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: Handing Off Afghanistan.

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Handing Off Afghanistan - New York Times

In an effort to check the deteriorating security conditions in Afghanistan, the Trump administration is expected to approve an increase in the number of United States troops there. Yet as should now be unmistakably clear, such a deployment will have no impact on the military balance there, will not improve prospects for peace, and perhaps most critically, will not accomplish any U.S. national security objectives.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to understand how advocates of our 16 years of war in Afghanistan continue to argue, emphatically, that not only should the mission continue, but we should expand it.

Reportedly, the president is considering up to 5,000 more troops. This proposal should be rejected.

In a 2009 report I authored while at the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, I argued that the then-30,000 troop increase under consideration would not succeed. I warned that by sending that many troops, "we risk upsetting the local population upon whom we rely for support but providing too few to militarily defeat the Taliban."

In February 2012, after I returned from my second deployment to Afghanistan, I publicly reported that despite numerous positive assessments from senior U.S. officials, the troop surge had failed to accomplish its mission, and in fact, the U.S. was on a path to defeat. I wrote that as "this report has shown conclusively the military surge failed to reduce the insurgency, and with the drawdown in full swing, our future efforts are virtually certain to likewise fail."

With the Taliban stronger today than at any time since 2001, we now know the surge failed.

Therefore, I continue to argue that in the current environment it wouldn't matter if the U.S. deployed 5,000 troops, 50,000 troops, or even a massive 250,000 troops. U.S. national security would not improve, the insurgency would not be defeated, and untold numbers of U.S. men and women would again sacrifice their lives for a mission that will fail. There are several reasons why I make this assessment with such confidence:

First, as has been well documented, the Pakistani intelligence service has for decades been supplying, harboring and sometimes directing insurgent attacks in Afghanistan from its territory in Pakistan. Until or unless that support is eliminated or severely curtailed, the war will continue.

According to Sen. Hasibullah Kalemzai, the deputy speaker of the Afghan legislature's upper house, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has confirmed that the blast materials for the horrific attack on May 31 that killed 150 in Kabul had come from Pakistan and that the ISI had supported the attack. It was necessary, Kalemzai believes, for the U.S. "to put full diplomatic pressure on Pakistan" to stop their support to the Taliban.

Second, as has also been well documented, corruption of the Afghan government is pervasive. Secretary of Defense James Mattis testified at a recent House Armed Services Committee hearing, "This is a critical problem. I'd say this is the biggest strategic problem we face, is corruption."

Finally, stabilizing Afghanistan cannot be militarily attained. Afghanistan is a massive country, containing more than 250,000 square miles of territory, much of which is mountainous and inhospitable. I traveled throughout eastern and southeastern Afghanistan during the 2010-11 surge and observed that even with 140,000 NATO troops there were vast swaths of the country where the Taliban had free reign. It is a physical impossibility to prevent nefarious actors from operating in Afghanistan.

Of far greater importance, however, is the fact that political solutions cannot be imposed on any nation from outside by means of military power. The people on the ground who will have to live with the results must be the ones to craft the solution.

At present, the overriding priority for the U.S. is to keep the nation safe from terrorist strikes originating from overseas. To protect the U.S., we don't need to rebuild the entire country of Afghanistan. Thankfully, as with the rest of the vast territory around the globe, the Pentagon and intelligence community can and should continue their important work of identifying and eliminating security threats. That is a totally different mission than that which policy makers have pursued there for many years.

Instead of surging military forces into Afghanistan, Washington could engage in a concerted diplomatic effort in the region, including Islamabad, Kabul, and New Delhi, to convince Pakistan to cease or severely curtail cross-border support for the insurgency. If the Taliban and other entities lost their support from Pakistan, the Afghan security forces might be able, on their own, to sufficiently degrade the insurgency.

The U.S. could also put pressure on the Kabul government to make genuine, measurable progress in reducing corruption. Whatever course of action the administration chooses, however, Congress should demand assurances that further aid, or the life of one more American troop, won't be wasted.

The U.S. government has an obligation to keep our citizens safe. We must now recognize, however belatedly, that accomplishing that objective cannot be accomplished in Afghanistan by deploying additional U.S. combat power. Sending more troops into Afghanistan now cannot and will not make the U.S. safer. It is time to instead employ means and tactics that have a chance of success.

Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow at Defense Priorities. He retired from the Army as a Lt. Col. after 21 years of active service.

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Instead of sending more soldiers to Afghanistan, Trump should do this - Washington Examiner