Afghan Soldiers Went AWOL in Texas
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. Published: June 30, 2010
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HOUSTON — If the 17 foreign soldiers who walked away from language training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio had been from, say, Guatemala or Kenya, they probably would not have received much attention. Military officials say it is not uncommon for officers visiting from countries where life is hard to get a glimpse of the American dream while studying here and go absent without leave.
But the 17 officers who deserted between 2006 and this year were all from Afghanistan, and in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Fort Hood last fall, that fact belatedly raised eyebrows among military and law enforcement officials who track terrorists.
Last week, a joint terrorism task force in Fort Worth finally got around to putting out a notice to military police and local law enforcement personnel, warning them to be on the lookout for the missing Afghans, members of the American-backed army who had been issued military passes allowing them to enter bases in the United States.
The idea of a terrorist attack on an American base had seemed far-fetched before the Fort Hood shootings on Nov. 5, in which a Palestinian-American Army psychologist, Maj. Nidal Hasan, has been charged with shooting 13 people to death. The shootings have caused a tightening of security on bases and led military officials to rethink the danger posed by foreign soldiers who may have obtained base passes during training.
“The Fort Hood shooting caused people to pay more attention to unaccounted-for people who have fort ID cards,” said one official with the Navy Criminal Investigation Service, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.
Known as a “Be On the Look Out” notice, it caused a political uproar when it was leaked to Fox News. Texas lawmakers demanded to know how the Air Force had lost track of the errant Afghan soldiers, in some cases years after they had disappeared.
Military officials have not provided an explanation for the long delay in putting out the notice.
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, called the matter “a breach of national security” and fired off letters to the secretaries of the Air Force and homeland security, demanding to know why the notice was released only this month. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Representative Lamar Smith, also Texas Republicans, joined the chorus.
Agents from the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement scrambled to locate the Afghans, all commissioned officers except for one sergeant, agency officials said.
On Friday, an Air Force spokeswoman, Capt. Rose Richeson, said all but 4 of the 17 men had been accounted for. She declined to say which four were still missing, or what the Air Force believed had happened to them.
Of the 13 found defectors, 4 had already been arrested by immigration officials and were being held in federal detention centers awaiting deportation, Captain Richeson said, adding that they were in custody long before the notice was issued. (One of the jailed men, Mohamed Fahim Faquier, 23, has married a woman in San Antonio and is seeking residency.)
Eight others had crossed into Canada, Captain Richeson said. Six had requested asylum and two had been granted permanent residency permits by Canadian authorities.
One man has obtained legal residency status in the United States.
Military and federal investigators said they had yet to find any evidence that the 17 men were connected to the Taliban or any jihadist terrorist organizations, though they could not rule out that possibility. The investigators said they did not believe that the men had acted in concert and that most had left the base over the last 18 months.
“They were all ones and twosies,” said the official with the Navy Criminal Investigation Service. “It’s not as if there was a mass defection.”
Several of the men were studying to become pilots and needed to learn English. All had been vetted by both the Defense and State Departments before being granted permission to come to the Defense Department’s English language institute at the Lackland base.
Thousands of foreign military personnel pass through the institute’s English program each year. In 2010, there were 3,243 trainees who went to the school, including 228 Afghans. Officials at the base declined to say how many had gone AWOL.
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By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. Published: June 30, 2010
Article Link
HOUSTON — If the 17 foreign soldiers who walked away from language training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio had been from, say, Guatemala or Kenya, they probably would not have received much attention. Military officials say it is not uncommon for officers visiting from countries where life is hard to get a glimpse of the American dream while studying here and go absent without leave.
But the 17 officers who deserted between 2006 and this year were all from Afghanistan, and in the aftermath of the mass shooting at Fort Hood last fall, that fact belatedly raised eyebrows among military and law enforcement officials who track terrorists.
Last week, a joint terrorism task force in Fort Worth finally got around to putting out a notice to military police and local law enforcement personnel, warning them to be on the lookout for the missing Afghans, members of the American-backed army who had been issued military passes allowing them to enter bases in the United States.
The idea of a terrorist attack on an American base had seemed far-fetched before the Fort Hood shootings on Nov. 5, in which a Palestinian-American Army psychologist, Maj. Nidal Hasan, has been charged with shooting 13 people to death. The shootings have caused a tightening of security on bases and led military officials to rethink the danger posed by foreign soldiers who may have obtained base passes during training.
“The Fort Hood shooting caused people to pay more attention to unaccounted-for people who have fort ID cards,” said one official with the Navy Criminal Investigation Service, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.
Known as a “Be On the Look Out” notice, it caused a political uproar when it was leaked to Fox News. Texas lawmakers demanded to know how the Air Force had lost track of the errant Afghan soldiers, in some cases years after they had disappeared.
Military officials have not provided an explanation for the long delay in putting out the notice.
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, called the matter “a breach of national security” and fired off letters to the secretaries of the Air Force and homeland security, demanding to know why the notice was released only this month. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and Representative Lamar Smith, also Texas Republicans, joined the chorus.
Agents from the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement scrambled to locate the Afghans, all commissioned officers except for one sergeant, agency officials said.
On Friday, an Air Force spokeswoman, Capt. Rose Richeson, said all but 4 of the 17 men had been accounted for. She declined to say which four were still missing, or what the Air Force believed had happened to them.
Of the 13 found defectors, 4 had already been arrested by immigration officials and were being held in federal detention centers awaiting deportation, Captain Richeson said, adding that they were in custody long before the notice was issued. (One of the jailed men, Mohamed Fahim Faquier, 23, has married a woman in San Antonio and is seeking residency.)
Eight others had crossed into Canada, Captain Richeson said. Six had requested asylum and two had been granted permanent residency permits by Canadian authorities.
One man has obtained legal residency status in the United States.
Military and federal investigators said they had yet to find any evidence that the 17 men were connected to the Taliban or any jihadist terrorist organizations, though they could not rule out that possibility. The investigators said they did not believe that the men had acted in concert and that most had left the base over the last 18 months.
“They were all ones and twosies,” said the official with the Navy Criminal Investigation Service. “It’s not as if there was a mass defection.”
Several of the men were studying to become pilots and needed to learn English. All had been vetted by both the Defense and State Departments before being granted permission to come to the Defense Department’s English language institute at the Lackland base.
Thousands of foreign military personnel pass through the institute’s English program each year. In 2010, there were 3,243 trainees who went to the school, including 228 Afghans. Officials at the base declined to say how many had gone AWOL.
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