WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s South Asia strategy has shown fewsigns of progress this quarter, a U.S. government watchdog report said onMonday, despite public assertions by the U.S. military that Talibanmilitants were on the back foot.An Afghan security force member stands guard near the site of an attack atthe Marshal Fahim military academy in Kabul, Afghanistan January 29, 2018.REUTERS/Omar Sobhani
An inspector general report said that there had been few signs ofsignificant progress by Afghan security forces and the Taliban continued tocarry out deadly attacks.
“Available metrics showed few signs of progress, and during the quarter,the Taliban and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria – Khorasan eachlaunched high-profile attacks in Kabul that killed hundreds,” a statementaccompanying the report said.
In August, Trump committed the United States to an open-ended conflict inAfghanistan, dispatching an additional 3,000 troops to the nearly17-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands of Afghan civilians.
Publicly, U.S. officials have presented an optimistic view of the situationin Afghanistan. U.S. Army General John Nicholson, who leads U.S. andinternational forces in Afghanistan, in November said the country had“turned the corner.”
Nicholson was the latest U.S. military official to try and put a positiveimage on the war, despite few signs of an end to the conflict.
“This quarter the Taliban continued to hold territory and launcheddevastating terrorist attacks in Kabul and across the country,” thewatchdog report said.
The report covered the war in Afghanistan from January to the end of Marchand was compiled by the inspector generals from the Pentagon, StateDepartment and U.S. Agency for International Development.
A Pentagon spokesman said the military felt that progress was being made.
“Chaos and progress can coexist and that is exactly what we feel ishappening in Afghanistan,” Pentagon spokesman Colonel Robert Manning said.
In a sign of the precarious security situation, Taliban fighters closed inon another district in Afghanistan over the weekend, a development at oddswith the positive image U.S. military officials have conveyed.
“Given the different audiences that U.S. military officials have in mindwhen they make these (public) announcements, there is simply a very strongincentive to accentuate and even embellish the positives, (and) to minimizethe negatives,” said Michael Kugelman, with the Wilson Center think tank inWashington.
“It is a war that many Americans don’t support and don’t understand and yetit is war that is probably going to continue for the foreseeable future …it is just like Vietnam,” Kugelman said.