Taliban violence in Afghanistan surged in Biden’s first months

Even as the United States begins its troop withdrawal, Afghanistan experienced a rising wave of violent attacks against security forces and civilians during President Biden’s first three months in office.

The attacks, blamed mainly on the Taliban insurgency, raise fresh questions about the country’s fate as President Biden sets a definitive end date for U.S. combat troops in the country. Power-sharing talks between the Taliban and the U.S.-backed government in Kabul have largely stalled even as the Pentagon and NATO countries begin the process of bringing their troops home.

In a just-released report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, “enemy-initiated attacks” in the first quarter of 2021 increased nearly 37% compared to the same quarter last year. Officials from both NATO’s Operation Resolute Support and the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA, recorded “strikingly high” civilian casualties during the same time period, auditors reported.

The number of so-called insider attacks on Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) troops increased by 82% this year over the same period last year. NATO reported more than 2,000 civilian casualties — including 643 deaths — in the latest January-to-March quarter. Anti-government forces, predominantly the Taliban, are believed responsible for more than 90% of civilian casualties, according to the SIGAR report.

Afghan security forces conducted more than 90% of their missions during the first quarter of 2021 independent of any support from the U.S. or coalition partners, NATO reported. Officials with SIGAR said that figure is well above the percentage of independent operations during the same period last year.

Almost 17,000 civilian contractors — a mix of U.S. citizens, third-country nationals and Afghan civilians — were working in Afghanistan during the first quarter of the year. Pentagon officials said the American contractors will be joining the U.S. troops in fully withdrawing from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021 as ordered by President Biden earlier this month.

“It is unclear who, if anyone, will replace them or perform their work after their withdrawal,” SIGAR officials said in the report.

The contractors provide the bulk of the maintenance work for the airplanes and vehicles used by Afghan government forces. The report says local Afghan employees have “dramatically improved” their ability to take on the work, but remain well below the benchmark for how much they are supposed to perform.

The conditions for local Afghans will continue to be grim once U.S. military forces are no longer in the picture. More than 40% of its population — up to 17 million people — will likely face drought and food insecurity, according to the SIGAR report. According to the U.N. Children’s Fund, child mortality rates in Afghanistan increased by 2.7% while neonatal rates increased by 3.6%. Maternal deaths rose by 3.6% during this period, officials said.