The five soldiers had been mentoring and living with the Afghan police The killing of five UK soldiers at an Afghan checkpoint by a rogue policeman was "the single most shocking incident" a brigadier experienced there.The men were shot at a checkpoint in Nad Ali, Helmand province, in 2009, when Brig James Cowan was the most senior Army officer in the country.
"I viewed the incident as appalling and I was deeply shocked," he told the inquest into their deaths.
He said it became the catalyst for changes to Afghan police training.
Warrant Officer Class 1 Darren Chant, 40, Sergeant Matthew Telford, 37, and Guardsman Jimmy Major, 18, from the Grenadier Guards, as well as Corporal Steven Boote, 22, and Corporal Nicholas Webster-Smith, 24, from the Royal Military Police, were gunned down on November 3, 2009.
Police training overhaulBrig Cowan told the inquest in Trowbridge, Wiltshire: "I viewed the incident as appalling and I was deeply shocked.
"During the course of my tour 64 soldiers were killed but this was the single most shocking incident."Of the aftermath, he said: "You do need to recover from that shock and you owe it to your soldiers to stay calm and to try and find the silver lining in the cloud."
He used the incident to push, via a commission set up by President Hamid Karzai to investigate the shootings, for changes to the Afghan National Police which was rife with drug taking, ill-discipline, insubordination and corruption.
He said a vetting system for the police was introduced, as well as compulsory drug testing and the use of biometrics.
Corrupt and ineffective police commanders were also removed from their posts and a police training college in Helmand Province was established, with graduates made to swear an oath of allegiance to Afghanistan on the Koran.
Brig Cowan said: "I cannot overstate the degree of shock and shame in Afghanistan at what had taken place. I cannot stress how shocking the incident was but also the degree of good that came as a result of those changes."
Heat injuriesThe troops had been resting after a patrol at a police checkpoint and were not wearing their body armour or helmets - which are not compulsory to wear while off-duty.
Brig Cowan supported the decision by WO Chant to allow his men to remove their protection, saying: "I would have done the same, as he was only doing what was sensible to sustain his force for the next six months and not go down with heat injury."
Brig Cowan was asked whether it was "surprising" that WO Chant had not taken any action when two Afghan men were seen on a rooftop earlier in the day.
"Two men standing on a roof unarmed in a very, very densely populated area does not amount to a terrorist act.
"Indeed for him to have treated them as acting hostile would have been entirely wrong because the other part of what we were going is called 'courageous restraint' - the courage not to take action.
"If you had shot them and they had turned out to be two men fixing a roof, you would have not killed two terrorists but made 50 enemies."
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