Amid a battlefield stalemate in Afghanistan , the US
military has stopped releasing information often cited to measure progress in
America’s longest war, calling it of little value in fighting the Taliban
insurgency, AP reported.
The move fits a trend of less information being released
about the war in recent years, often at the insistence of the Afghan
government, which had previously stopped the US military from disclosing the
number of Afghans killed in battle as well as overall attrition within the
Afghan army.
The latest clampdown also aligns with President Donald
Trump’s complaint that the US gives away too much war information, although
there is no evidence that this had any influence on the latest decision.
A government watchdog agency that monitors the US war
effort, now in its 18th year, said in a report to Congress on Wednesday that
the US military command in Kabul is no longer producing “district control
data,” which shows the number of Afghan districts — and the percentage of their
population — controlled by the government compared to the Taliban.
The last time the command released this information, in
January, it showed that Afghan government control was stagnant or slipping. It
said the share of the population under Afghan government control or influence —
a figure that was largely unchanged from May 2017 to July 2018 at about 65
percent — had dropped in October 2018 to 63.5 percent. The government’s control
or influence of districts fell nearly 2 percentage points, to 53.8 percent.
Less than two years ago, a top American commander in Afghanistan
called population control “most telling.” Gen. John Nicholson told reporters in
November 2017 that he wanted to see the figure, then about two-thirds, increase
to at least 80 percent, with the Taliban holding only about 10 percent and the
rest contested.
“And this, we believe, is the critical mass necessary to
drive the enemy to irrelevance,” Nicholson said then.
Nicholson’s successor, Gen. Scott Miller, believes there
already are enough such assessments available to the public, including one
produced by intelligence agencies.
“We are focused on setting the conditions for a political
settlement to safeguard our national interests,” Col. David M. Butler, a
spokesman for Miller, said in an email exchange Tuesday. “The district
stability assessment that was previously provided by DOD was redundant and did
little to serve our mission of protecting our citizens and allies.”
The war is at a sensitive juncture, with the Trump
administration making a hard push to get peace talks started between the
Taliban and the Afghan government. The Taliban recently launched a spring
military offensive and have refused to directly talk to Kabul representatives,
viewing the government as a US puppet.
In its report, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan
Reconstruction, or SIGAR, said Miller’s command offered a further explanation
for no longer producing the “district control” data, asserting there was
“uncertainty” in the way the data were produced and saying “the assessments
that underlie them are to a degree subjective.”
“The command said they no longer saw decision-making value
in these data,” the SIGAR report said. In remarks to reporters last week, John
Sopko, the special inspector general, criticized what he called a trend toward
less openness by the military authorities who are advising, training and
assisting Afghan security forces.
“I don’t think it makes sense,” Sopko said. “The Afghan
people know which districts are controlled by the Taliban. The Taliban
obviously know which districts they control. Our military knows it. Everybody
in Afghanistan knows it. The only people who don’t know what’s going on are the
people who are paying for all of this, and that’s the American taxpayer.”
In January, Trump sharply criticized his own administration
for disclosing information that he said aids enemy forces.
“Some IG goes over there, who are mostly appointed by
President Obama — but we’ll have ours, too — and he goes over there, and they
do a report on every single thing that’s happening, and they release it to the
public,” Trump told reporters. “What kind of stuff is this? We’re fighting
wars, and they’re doing reports and releasing it to the public? Now, the public
means the enemy. The enemy reads those reports; they study every line of it.”
Trump then turned to the acting defense secretary, Patrick
Shanahan, and said, “I don’t want it to happen anymore, Mr. Secretary.”
The war in Afghanistan is largely forgotten in much of
America, as is the enormous, continuing financial cost. This year the Pentagon
budget includes $4.9 billion to provide the Afghan army and police with
everything from equipment and supplies to salaries and food. That is one piece
of a wider array of “reconstruction” assistance the US government has provided
since the war began in 2001, totaling $132 billion.
Overall, the US has spent $737 billion on the war and lost
more than 2,400 military lives, according to the Pentagon.
