SPY EYES

The massacre of 16 civilians in an Afghan village, allegedly by a U.S. sergeant on a rampage, is certain to test the already fragile U.S.-Afghan relationship during a critical chapter of the war.

Interviews Monday with a variety of Pentagon officials and analysts in Kabul and Washington found deep concern about the long-term implications of one of the most alarming incidents of the decade-old war. Efforts to minimize the impact came even as the sergeant accused of the killings was being interviewed by military investigators.

On Monday, Afghanistan remained relatively calm, whilePresident Obama insisted that a single horrific incident would not push his administration off the long-term goal of winding down the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

The incident signals “the importance of us transitioning, in accordance with my plan,” Obama told WFTV of Orlando, “so that Afghans are taking more of the lead for their own security and we can start getting our troops home.”

As details of the killings in Panjwai, which included 11 children, dribbled out on Monday, Afghans and U.S. lawmakers pondered the motivations behind the incident and how it fits into larger questions about the American presence here.

The alleged shooter, an Army staff sergeant whose name has not yet been released, left the small Special Forces base at about 3 a.m. local time Monday, according to a Pentagon official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident is under investigation. An Afghan guard saw him leave the base and reported it but did not try to stop him, the official said. The soldier, an infantryman, belongs to a conventional unit that supports Green Berets who are training local security forces.

Villagers began bringing bodies and wounded civilians to the base within an hour, and troops realized that the missing soldier was the likely suspect. The death toll might rise from 16 because some of those wounded were in critical condition. The dead were as young as 2, according to the official.

The alleged shooter was based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, Wash. It has had a troubled history in recent years. Last fall, three members of a Stryker brigade were convicted of participating in an alleged “kill team” that targeted Afghan civilians and collected body parts as souvenirs. The soldier did not belong to that unit, the official said.

The soldier, 38, was four months into his fourth combat deployment, his first in Afghanistan. He had seen combat during previous tours in Iraq and had sustained a non-combat injury there. He is not speaking to investigators, the source said, and a motive is unclear, though the stress of multiple deployments may have been a factor.

Another senior Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the man in custody as being “troubled” despite no obvious incidents in his military record.

Though some Afghan lawmakers were calling Monday for the soldier to be tried in Afghanistan, U.S. troops accused of wrongdoing there are subject to U.S. military law. The military has a death penalty, but it hasn’t been used since the early 1960s, military experts say. A handful of people are now on military death row. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday that the death penalty might be considered in this case.

However, the job of compiling evidence capable of holding up in court may prove difficult in Afghanistan, legal experts say. “It’s going to present a real challenge getting in there and getting the information,” says Jeffrey Meeks, a defense attorney and retired Marine Corps judge. “You’re looking at the same rules of evidence that would be used in federal court.”

‘An added bit of worry’

Back at Fort Lewis, Staff Sgt. Marvin Linnebur is preparing to leave March 31 for the same area where the shooting occurred. It will be his fourth deployment, too. His last tour, also in Afghanistan, was pretty calm.

The shooting “does put an added bit of worry to the deployment,” he says. He calls the shooter’s actions “unacceptable,” as was the burning of the Qurans in Afghanistan a few weeks ago. He expects anger from the Afghan citizens in the area.

“They won’t see this as an individual act,” he says. “It’s just all Americans.” However, he says that his unit is well-prepared and that he doesn’t “foresee anything remotely close to this happening with our unit.”

The incident raises tough questions about the wisdom of staying the course in a war that has left 1,800 U.S. troops dead, 15,000 wounded and has cost $400 billion.

Even before Sunday’s incident, the president and his advisers were reviewing plans to withdraw U.S. and allied forces while turning over security to the Afghan government by the end of 2014. The pace of the withdrawal is one of the topics of this week’s visit to Washington by British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Afghanistan also will top the agenda in May when leaders from the G-8 countries meet atCamp David and for NATO summits in Chicago. And Panetta had previously suggested that the combat mission could end sooner. But White House spokesman Jay Carneyinsisted on Monday that the killings will not affect the timetable.

“The pace of that withdrawal will depend on a variety of factors,” Carney said. It will not be affected by “a single event.” Carney added that the U.S. objectives remain the same: disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al-Qaeda terrorists.

The massacre comes weeks after Afghanistan convulsed in violence following the inadvertent burning of Qurans at a U.S. military installation. The shooting spree, as with the Qurans incident, has been widely condemned by American officials. The Taliban has vowed revenge for this “inhumane crime.”

Obama — who apologized to Afghanistan for the burning of Qurans — said Sunday that he was saddened by the incident. But the president, whom GOP presidential contenderMitt Romney criticized for being too quick to say sorry for American action on the world stage, stopped short of apologizing for the Panjwai incident. White House officials did not respond to queries about whether an apology could be forthcoming.

On Capitol Hill, GOP lawmakers called the incident unfortunate, but urged Obama to stay the course.

“Now is not the time to abandon hope and freedom’s cause, but to persevere. It has been too long since our men and women in uniform, their families and the American people have heard the president rally the American people to this cause and demonstrate the will to win,” said Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

A muted response

U.S. and Afghan officials braced for waves of anger and protests, but the reaction so far has been more subdued than the riots and violence that followed the Quran burnings. Those protests ended with almost 40 dead, including four U.S. servicemembers.

About 300 Afghan civilians staged a non-violent protest Monday in Kandahar province not far from where the shootings occurred, says Paraag Shukla, who served as a civilian intelligence officer with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and is now an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.

The Quran burnings “were seen as universal, against all Muslims and against their way of life,” Shukla says. “The religious insult is far more personal and touching to people not themselves located in that area” where the shooting happened.

Seth Jones, an analyst at Rand Corp., says that, while the shooting was atrocious, Afghans have grown accustomed to violence and civilian casualties after three decades of bloodshed and war. Reports of violence in a remote village might not prompt the same outrage as reports of religious desecration, some analysts say.

“I just don’t think one incident in one area pulls people together like the religious issue does,” Jones says. “They get used to dealing with violence.”

NATO’s rapid response

The speed with which NATO and U.S. officials issued statements after the incident might also have helped to contain the damage, Jones says. Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, quickly issued a statement and it was followed by a call from Obama to Afghan President Hamid Karzai. U.S. officials pledged to investigate the incident and pursue justice.

Still, Karzai condemned the attack in strong language on Sunday: “This is an assassination, an intentional killing of innocent civilians and cannot be forgiven.”

The incident at Panjwai could very well leave an indelible mark on Afghanistan. One villager, Mohammed Zahir, described cowering in fear as gunshots rang out while the soldier roamed from house to house firing on those inside. His father was wounded in the attack.

“He was walking around taking up positions in the house — in two or three places like he was searching,” Zahir told the Associated Press.

The Taliban said in a statement on its website that “sick-minded American savages” committed the “blood-soaked and inhumane crime.” And the militant group promised the families of the victims that it would take revenge “for every single martyr with the help of Allah.”

But some Afghans, while condemning the incident, say the action of one soldier should be kept in perspective.

“Overall, this was a really bad incident, especially looking at the photos of the kids who were killed,” says Jalil Babak, an Afghan soldier stationed in Nangarhar province. “But this is a conflict, and anything can happen in war.”

As the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan shifts from war fighting to small groups of U.S. troops training Afghan security forces in their communities to counter insurgent groups like the Taliban, American troops will be more isolated and vulnerable, says Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

U.S. officials who want to support a continuing war effort need to educate Americans “that this is war,” he says. “We’re going to see incidents like this and we’re also going to see that this is the new IED (improvised explosive device) for the Taliban and Haqqani network — to push as much strife between Afghan troops and ISAF and NATO as possible.”

One of the most difficult challenges for the immediate future may be controlling Afghan perception of the incident.

“America is saying they are the defenders of the human rights … but the things they are doing in Afghanistan are completely against human rights,” says Abdul Rahim Ayobi, a member of parliament from Kandahar. “It finally gives us the message that now the American soldiers are out of the control of their generals.”

Says Kamal Safai, a member of parliament from Kunduz: “This crime was an individual crime done by a single person. It is not the policy or strategy of Americans to kill innocent civilians. But still, the public reaction will blame the government of America, not the soldier.”

Peter reported from Kabul; Madhani, Michaels and Vanden Brook from Washington. Contributing: David Jackson, Donna Leinwand and Gregory Korte in Washington; Kelly Kennedy and Oren Dorell in McLean, Va.; the Associated Press

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