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How Not to Wage Counterinsurgency, 2005 Edition

From Newsweek's very interesting oral history of the Taliban fight:

The Americans and their Afghan allies made mistakes after mistake, killing and arresting innocent people. There was one village in Dayak district near Ghazni City where the people had communist backgrounds, from the days of the Russians, and had never supported us. But the police raided the village, beat the elders at a mosque and arrested them, accusing them of being Taliban. They were freed after heavy bribes were paid. After that incident the whole village sent us a message asking forgiveness for the abuses of the communist era.

This of course is exactly the sort of thing that McChrystal is trying to stamp out.

P.S. Previous installments in this series here and here and here.