A number of disturbing developments in recent days would appear to indicate the mission in Afghanistan is going to get a lot more violent before 2014, the projected pullout date for NATO forces.

The international community’s current strategy is to train and equip the Afghan security forces to the status of self-sustainability prior to their withdrawal. In support of that objective, Canada has committed 900 military personnel to train Afghan recruits through 2014.

While on paper the notion of fielding a combined Afghan police and army force of 400,000 should easily counter the threat of an estimated 15,000 insurgents, the problem has always been one of motivation.

A great majority of Afghans who enlist in the security forces are not doing so in loyalty to President Hamid Karzai or for the concept of democratic freedoms. (The Karzai regime is widely despised by the population as being corrupt puppets.) Those Afghans donning the uniform are doing so to collect the relatively lucrative paycheque, which is entirely financed through foreign aid money.

Despite the fact that there has been an international presence in Afghanistan for more than a decade, the majority of the police and army volunteers are still illiterate teenagers.

More importantly, NATO forces still have no way to independently run even the most rudimentary background check on those who enlist.

In the West, such basics as criminal records, social insurance numbers, school records and even birth certificates can all be verified almost instantaneously. Not so in Afghanistan, where basic administration functions have been virtually non-existent since the collapse of the communist regime in 1991.

Not surprisingly then, we are now seeing a marked increase in what is being termed green-on-blue incidents, whereby Afghan security forces turn their weapons on NATO soldiers.

Last Tuesday, in Wardak province, an Afghan army solider opened fire at an ISAF base, wounding five American soldiers. The gunman was able to escape and has since defected to the local Taliban group where he is hailed as a hero.

Two days earlier, three British soldiers were gunned down and killed at a police checkpoint in Helmand province. The suspect in that case was a member of the Afghan National Civil Order Police, considered an elite unit among Afghan security forces.

The British deaths brought the total number of ISAF green-on-blue fatalities this year to 26, in 19 separate incidents. In 2011, there were 35 ISAF personnel killed in two such attacks.

While there was some dispute as to the actual number of defectors, ranging from 41 to 86, depending on whether you believe government or Taliban claims, it is without doubt that they, en-masse, discarded their uniforms and took their NATO-supplied weapons and ammunition over to the other side.

While it is true that only a fraction of the green-on-blue killings are committed by Taliban sympathizers, the fact the remainder are blamed on disgruntled Afghans settling scores is not reassuring.

There are huge cultural divides between what Western military instructors consider discipline and what Afghan recruits consider insulting, emasculating or abusive behaviour.

If those simmering resentments are already manifesting themselves into violent revenge while NATO maintains a full-scale occupation force, one can only wonder what will happen when the number of foreign troops is reduced to a handful prior to the 2014 pullout.

After decades of almost continual warfare, Afghans are, if nothing else, pragmatic survivors. They know the West is giving up on them and that foreign aid and military funding will soon be drastically reduced.

In the meantime, we continue to equip, arm and train more young Afghan soldiers to prop up a despised regime that even our own leaders have given up on.

All in all, the stage is being set for a very interesting final chapter to the Afghan saga.