US refuses to release Taliban attacks information
May 1, 2020
The NATO-led Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan has refused for the first time to publicly release its data on insurgent attacks, a Washington-based watchdog announced on Friday.
The report comes amid the implementation of a peace agreement between the US and the Taliban. US President Donald Trump's administration is eager for the US-Taliban agreement to be a success so Trump can fulfil his commitments on pulling troops out of Afghanistan.
Washington's Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) expressed its concern in a quarterly report, which dealt with the reduction in ground operations of Afghan forces. Statistics on the number of attacks may indicate the Taliban's level of adherence to the peace agreement.
The data on the Taliban and other militant attacks "was one of the last remaining metrics SIGAR was able to use to report publicly on the security situation in Afghanistan," according to Inspector General John F. Sopko, head of the watchdog.
US forces have classified all casualty information from Afghan national defense and security forces for the first quarter of 2020, according to the report. The office of Afghanistan's national security adviser said earlier this week the Taliban have carried out 2,804 attacks during March and April.
The US and the Taliban signed the peace agreement on February 29.
Read more: Afghan peace process: Is Washington running out of patience?
'Unacceptably high' level of violence
A Pentagon spokesman said data on insurgent attacks is important to discussions regarding the Taliban's adherence to the peace agreement.
"It will be releasable to the public when no longer integral to the deliberations, or the deliberations are concluded," said Army Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Campbell.
"The US, NATO and our international partners have been clear that the Taliban's level of violence against the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces is unacceptably high," he added.
The Afghan Defense Ministry estimates that the Taliban conducts 10 to 15 daily attacks on Afghan security officials.
However, the UN mission to Afghanistan has noted a drop in civilian casualties in the first three months of this year. Between January and March, 533 people, including 152 children, were killed in fighting. Hundreds more were wounded.
ed/aw (AP, dpa)