Monitoring Desk
KABUL: Weeks after a long-awaited deal between the US and the Taliban* was signed to end nearly two decades of violence in Afghanistan, the country continues to face repeated attacks by Taliban militants.
The office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) claimed that NATO’s US-led mission in Afghanistan has stopped providing key information on numbers of attacks conducted by the Taliban in the country.
The watchdog underscored that data on enemy attacks “was one of the last remaining metrics SIGAR was able to use to report publicly on the security situation in Afghanistan”.
Afghan security forces stand guard after an attack by Taliban militants near an Afghan National Army (ANA) outpost, in Kunduz Province on March 4, 2020.
SIGAR also quoted Pentagon officials as saying that the US Department of Defence might restart releasing the information in the future.
While in previous months the Resolute Support (RS) mission had disclosed data on “enemy-initiated attacks” as well as the strength of the Taliban and other rebel groups, in March RS gave only a short statement on the Taliban stepping up attacks.
The remarks by RS came after at least four Afghan policemen were killed and five others injured as Taliban militants carried out an attack on a security checkpoint in the Nachin area of the country’s central province of Oruzgan late last week.
The attack was the latest in a series of such assaults that have been conducted by the Taliban since a peace agreement between the militant group and the US was signed in Doha, Qatar on 29 February.
The deal also stipulated that intra-Afghan negotiations were to begin on 10 March. Nonetheless, the power crisis between Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his political rival, Abdullah Abdullah, who refused to concede defeat in the presidential election, as well as Kabul’s reluctance to exchange prisoners with the Taliban, has resulted in a standstill in the peace process.
Courtesy: (sputniknews)
