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A NATO-trained Afghan policeman killed five British soldiers in a murderous rampage that will send shock waves through the entire counterinsurgency effort that depends on tight integration between Afghan and foreign forces.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack – the deadliest but not the first instance of Afghan soldiers or policemen turning on foreign soldiers – raising the troubling spectre that the policeman had been a plant, or been turned by the militants. The gunman, named Gulbuddin, was reportedly a three-year veteran of the notoriously corrupt and ill-equipped Afghan National Police.

“We want to sow mistrust between the Afghan National Police and foreign forces,” an unnamed Taliban spokesman was quoted telling British news organizations.

Six more British soldiers and two Afghan policemen were also wounded when the so-called “rogue” gunman opened fire from atop a police checkpoint. Initial reports suggest the attack was planned – not a spontaneous outburst – because the gunman waited until nearly 20 soldiers and policemen returned from a joint Afghan-British patrol, took off their helmets and laid down their weapons.

A platoon of British military police had been mentoring and living with Afghan police for the past several weeks at the checkpoint in Helmand province and only a few kilometres from the sector under Canadian control.

While there's a massive hunt under way for the gunman, the investigation into what went wrong will be even more important.

Various scenarios, none of them good, are under investigation. If the gunman was either a long-time Taliban “plant” or sleeper operative, the attack would represent a major security failure – he had reportedly been vetted and trained as a policeman in Kandahar and spent at least two years in the Afghan National Police.

“If it was a long-planned infiltration then every policeman will become suspect, that's the worst-case scenario,” said a former senior officer with long familiarity with NATO operations in Afghanistan. If the gunman had previously been a loyal officer but was “turned” or bought by the Taliban, it will reinforce suspicions that the Afghan National Police remain unreliable and vulnerable to betraying the government for money or Islamic ideology.

There have been at least two previous instances of Afghan police or soldiers turning their weapons on coalition troops. There were also similar occurrences in Iraq.

The least serious scenario – albeit no less grim in terms of outcome – is that the gunman acted in rage or combat stress. All armies suffer such casualties from time to time. But Wednesday's killing rampage, at least in terms of timing, suggests it wasn't an unplanned outburst.

Foreign forces – including Canada's – attempt to screen for infiltrators and watch for turncoats among the Afghan units they operate alongside but are severely limited. They cannot be too intrusive or suspicious without undermining the trust that is essential to effective, combined operations.

“The first point I would make is that we have to trust the uniform of the Afghan police,” said Major-General Nick Carter, Britain's Afghanistan commander, said in Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province. “The second point I would make is that we will get better at this.”

Canada's Conservative government has left open the possibility of small, embedded Canadian military advisers to train and mentor Afghan police and army units even after the 2011 deadline for quitting combat operations.

Currently, several hundred Canadian soldiers and scores of Canadian police are mentoring Afghan military battalions and police units in Kandahar. Only a few of the foreign armies deployed in Afghanistan place mentoring units on a semi-permanent basis with Afghan units.

Top Canadian commanders have long stressed the importance of integrating combat operations with Afghan forces and embedding small teams of mentors or trainers. “They eat, sleep and fight with them,” Canada's army commander, Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie, said this week, adding that Canadian mentoring teams sometimes spend months with Afghan units.

The killings seem certain to further erode sagging British public support for the eight-year-old war. Kim Howells, a senior British MP and former cabinet minister, called for an exit: “Bring home the great majority of our fighting men and women.”

Gordon Brown, Britain's embattled Prime Minister, said Afghan police training programs must continue. They are an “essential element of the whole coalition strategy that we train up the Afghan forces,” he said.