Kandahar, AFGHANISTAN – Six American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan last week by people pretending to be sympathetic to NATO soldiers and civilians. This treachery has evidently become part of this conflict in which the enemy is just indistinguishable. Pakistan based Dawn Newspaper has reported that the key ingredient in the international coalition’s formula for winding down the decade-long war is being eroded.

It has claimed that trust is no longer there between the NATO allies side and some Afghans who sometimes turn out to be Taliban sympathizers.

In an editorial, the paper said: It is difficult to gauge what it will take to rebuild a bond of trust after repeated instances of Afghan soldiers and civilians _ or civilians posing as soldiers _ turning their guns on American and other allied troops. At some point, it calls into question the viability of a military strategy that requires close teamwork with Afghan troops.

Peter Mansoor, a retired Army colonel who was General David Petraeus’ executive officer in Baghdad in 2007-08 has said: “There is something fundamentally wrong here. Iraqi troops sometimes betrayed their US partners but not nearly to the extent seen recently in Afghanistan.”

Six US troops have been killed in Afghanistan since February 1st by their supposed Afghan allies. Four French troops were gunned down by a rogue Afghan soldier on January 20th. An Albanian soldier was killed in an attack by Afghan police on February 20th.