Asylum Seekers?

Two men, Mohamma Yasin Ataye, 22, and Mohd Naweed Samimi, 24, went missing in action from a group of Afghan police officers training with the Drug Enforcement Administration in Quantico, Virginia, while on a side trip to Washington on September 13. They're there, in the United States, on trust, having been completely vetted, according to U.S. Central Command. On a spur-of-the-moment whimsy these trusted and cleared Afghans made their way to Buffalo, N.Y. where they were discovered five days later.

The DEA explained that the men had been especially selected to participate in the training program put on by the administration since they were among "the best and brightest" in their country. They were, after being apprehended in Buffalo where they explained they were searching for family, returned to Afghanistan in the wake of the balance of the class of 29 other police officers who had completed their five-week training program, three days earlier.

According to Rusty Payne, a spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration "They were held and returned. They were not a security threat, not a danger. They were not armed. They were just looking for a better life". And whoops! that doesn't represent the only such little incident of wayward entrants to North America. Another three, this time with the Afghanistan National Army, disappeared while in a training program in Massachusetts.

They were detained in the process of attempting to cross the border into Canada. They were then held in the custody of the Canada Border Services Agency. Their point of attempted entry was the Rainbow Bridge, connecting Niagara Falls, New York, and Niagara Falls, Ontario. The Massachusetts State Police aided in their search, and they are now awaiting questioning by U.S. authorities. There are, of course, entirely legitimate processes of claiming refugee status, or emigrating from country B to country A.

Major Jan Mohammad Arash, Captain Mohammad Nasir Askzada and Captain Noorullah Aminyar were taking part in a U.S. joint military exercise at a Cape Cod military base. "There is a lot of speculation within the military that they may be trying to defect", ventured Governor Deval Patrick. "They were vetted by the military. They were cleared by the military", the governor told reporters. No one suspects, evidently they posed a public danger.

They were participating in a U.S. Central Command Regional Co-operation training exercise at Joint Base Cape Cod, having arrived at Camp Edwards on September 11, last seen at the Cape Cod Mall in Hyannis. Doesn't everyone go to the Mall? The exercise, involving over 200 participants from Tajikistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan and Mongolia, along with the United States, was scheduled to conclude on Wednesday. It was the Saturday before that the three were reported missing.

There were no immediate comments from the Pentagon, however. These missing men were senior military officers who had received clearance by the U.S. State Department, to enable them to participate in the joint military training exercises. Not that anyone might fail to commiserate with anyone seeking a better life, preferring to leave Afghanistan and migrate elsewhere, preferably somewhere in North America.

And they were vetted, after all. No one appears to have mentioned the frequent deadly trusted-and-vetted Afghan police and military working closely with their U.S. military mentors on training exercises who suddenly took it into their heads to raise their U.S.-issued weapons at the very NATO military mentors they were training with, and killing them.

"Since 2007, an estimated 80 NATO service members were killed by Afghan security forces, according to an Associated Press tally, which is based on Pentagon figures released in February. More than 75 percent of the attacks have occurred in the past two years.
Sixteen NATO service members — 18 percent of the 84 foreign troops killed so far this year — have been shot and killed by Afghan soldiers and policemen or militants disguised in their uniforms, according to the AP tally."                                CBS News 2012