Despite peace parleys, attacks surge by 50pc

KABUL (Pajhwok): Attacks against Afghan security forces and civilians surged by 50 percent in the third quarter of the current year, says a US federal watchdog.  

The Pentagon’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR) said in its quarterly report to Congress the number of attacks rose from April through June to July through September.

Without putting a specific figure on the attacks, the US command in Afghanistan classified an increasing amount of information about Afghanistan in the last three years.

The information pertained to Afghan civilian casualty data, the number of enemy-initiated attacks, Afghan National Security Forces casualty numbers and assessments of performance by the Afghan military and police.

ABC News quoted the SIGAR report as saying the attacks saw an uptick despite a US-Taliban peace pact, which was signed in Doha at the end of February this year.

As a result, the report said, attacks against US and foreign troops had decreased. However, assaults on Afghan military and police have hiked.

Pentagon spokesperson Major Rob Lodewick said: “The Taliban’s level of violence against the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces and the Afghan people is unacceptably high and directly threatens the peace process."

The watchdog reckoned around 10 million Afghans could have have the coronavirus, including more than half of the population of Kabul and more than one-third of the country’s total population.

PAN Monitor/mud