US Censors Afghan War Data as Military Ramps up Combat Role
The US has taken on a greater combat role in Afghanistan, dropping the most munitions against the Taliban and the Islamic State in September since 2012, an inspector general told Congress Tuesday.
"Afghanistan is at a crossroads," said John F. Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan, whose office compiled the quarterly report.
"President Donald Trump's new strategy has clarified that the Taliban and Islamic State-Khorosan will not cause the United States to leave. At the same time, the strategy requires the Afghan government to set the conditions that would allow America to stay the course," he said.
In SIGAR's (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) latest report released October 2017, Sopko says the situation there is getting worse, with armed clashes at an all-time high, insurgents controlling more territory and civilian casualties from pro-government forces up 52 percent this year.
The report states American combat casualties are increasing, with 10 US troops killed from Jan. 1 through Aug. 23 and another 48 wounded. That's double the period from 2015 and 2016.
The audit also found Afghanistan's own security forces are struggling to maintain ranks, with the army dropping by 4,000 troops and the national police losing 5,000 people.
The new report is the 37th quarterly study the inspector general has delivered to Congress.
One new issue, Sopko said, is the US military for the first time is declaring some important information classified.
Among the details being kept private in the report are the number of people in the Afghan army and police force, how many of them have been wounded or killed, and the state of their equipment.
"The Afghans know what's going on; the Taliban knows what's going on; the US military knows what's going on," Sopko said in an interview. "The only people who don't know what's going on are the people paying for it."
Capt. Tom Gresback of the Navy, the spokesman for American forces in Afghanistan, defended the decision to classify the information, saying that it was done at the Afghan government's request.
