A watchdog group from the US has said on Friday, May 1, that the number of attacks during the military mission in Afghanistan has not been reported by NATO since the US signed a peace agreement with the Taliban. The Trump administration is eager to go ahead with an agreement so that the US President can successfully retrieve the troops from the region.
According to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR's quarterly report to Congress about Afghanistan, the NATO's Resolute Support mission is not releasing the numbers because the Taliban "is now a critical part of deliberative interagency discussions regarding ongoing political negotiations between the US and the Taliban."
SIGAR monitors US aid to Afghanistan and in the quarterly reports has assessed the ground operations in Afghanistan. The US signed an agreement with the Taliban on February 29 for a week-long reduction of the attacks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. The report by SIGAR said that the Resolute Support said that the Taliban refrained from attacks between March 1 to 31. But thy noted that there had been an increase in the attack on the Afghan National Defense Forces "to levels above seasonal norms."
No numbers since the agreement were signed
The Resolute Support includes more than 8,600 US troops who have been deployed to Afghanistan. According to the head of the watchdog group, John F Sopko, the data on attacks by the Taliban and other militant groups "was one of the last remaining metrics SIGAR was able to use to report publicly on the security situation in Afghanistan."
The report said that the information regarding the casualty from Afghan national defence and security forces the US has classified it for the first quarter of 2020. According to the National Security Adviser of Afghanistan, the Taliban had carried out 2,804 attacks since the agreement was signed in February.
The US and Afghanistan have urged the Taliban to reduce the attacks after the agreement. Recently on Wednesday, April 29, a police security chief in southern Helmand province and two other police officials were killed during an attack. The Afghan Defense Ministry officials said that the Taliban was conducting at least 10 to 15 attacks on a daily basis.
According to the SIGAR report, during the first three months of 2020 Afghan special forces conducted 528 ground operations. During the first quarter of this year 533 people, including 152 children were killed and wounded during the attacks. Although there are continued attacks in the country, the reports by the UN suggests that the civilian attacks were less.
