Afghanistan report questions Ashraf Ghani viability, paints bleak situation

The Afghan government continues to lose territory to Taliban insurgents despite a renewed aerial campaign against the radical Islamist group, while the strength of Afghanistan’s armed forces has hit an all-time low, according to a new Pentagon watchdog’s assessment released Thursday.

The downward trends outlined in a new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, illustrate the stark situation facing the Trump White House as it mulls plans to pull U.S. forces out of the country. Mr. Trump has repeatedly touted plans to withdraw 7,000 American troops — or half of all U.S. forces in the country — as peace talks pick up pace with the Taliban.

The SIGAR report raises fresh questions over the viability for the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Taliban negotiators refuse to meet with representatives of the Afghan government during those talks, only holding direct negotiations with U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad.

Mr. Khalilzad characterized recent talks with the terror group in Doha as “more productive” than any previous effort to end the 17-year war. The next round of talks are tentatively slated for Feb. 25 in Qatar.

But SIGAR analsyts found only 63 percent of the Afghan population were under the rule of the central government in Kabul at the end of December, with the rest under the control of the Taliban or in contested areas. That’s down 2 percent for the previous survey in July 2018.

While Taliban attacks against Afghan military and police did drop by 6 percent in 2018, the size of the government’s combined security forces has fallen from nearly 316,000 in 2016 to 308,000 today.

Nearly 45,000 Afghan troops have died since President Ghani came to power in September 2014, according to the SIGAR report. “That number indicates that in those roughly 53 months, around 849 Afghan security personnel have been killed per month on average,” analysts from the independent watchdog group wrote.

The Trump administration has ramped up support for Afghan forces, increasing U.S. and allied air support for those troops as part of the White House’s South Asia strategy. But President Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with the stalemated conflict and is reportedly considering a cut of up to half of the 14,000 U.S. troops in the country.

In a rebuttal included with the report, commanders from Operation Resolute Support — the U.S. and NATO military support mission in Afghanistan — said the SIGAR’s findings are “not indicative of effectiveness of the South Asia strategy,” saying the data and the state of the conflict are not so clear-cut.

Seven American service members have been killed and 39 wounded in a three-month period from last October to January of this year, SIGAR officials said.