KABUL – The US-led NATO mission in Afghanistan has stopped releasing keydata on how much of the country falls under insurgent or governmentcontrol, a US watchdog said Wednesday, the latest war metric to fall frompublic view.
NATO s Resolute Support mission previously gave a running tally on whocontrolled or was contesting Afghanistan s districts, and the percentage ofthe Afghan population this reflected.
US officials would frequently refer to the data to underscore battlefieldsuccess, but according to the US Special Inspector General for AfghanistanReconstruction (SIGAR), Resolute Support (RS) now says thesedistrict-stability assessments are “of limited decision-making value to the(mission) commander”.
The last data RS provided showed the percentage of Afghans living in areascontrolled or influenced by the Kabul government slipping from 65.2 percentto 63.5 percent.
The downward slide undermined predictions that 80 percent of the populationwould be under government control by the end of this year.
SIGAR head John Sopko said the decision to withhold the data nurturedsuspicion.
“When you start hiding things like this, over-classifying… You tend tocreate cynicism in your populace and everybody else that you re losing, orit s bad news,” Sopko told journalists ahead of the SIGAR report s release.
At the request of the Afghan government, RS has also agreed to stoppublishing casualty figures for Afghan security forces.
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The numbers showed massive losses for the local forces, reaching severalthousand per year.
SIGAR s report also noted that violence in Afghanistan had increased 19percent between November 2018 and the end of January, compared to theprevious quarter.
The uptick comes even as the United States tries to negotiate a peacesettlement with the Taliban.
A new round of talks between the insurgents and US peace envoy ZalmayKhalilzad is expected to start in Qatar on Wednesday, according to theTaliban.
A possible deal to end the 17-year-old war would see foreign forces leaveAfghanistan in return for the Taliban guaranteeing the country could not beused as a safe haven for terror groups.
But for an enduring peace, any deal must include the Afghan government, andso far they have not been included in talks.
