The Afghan government lost control or influence of nearly 5 percent of the country’s districts in four months, according to an inspector general report released Friday.
The assessment comes from a quarterly report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) and cites information provided by U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A).
{mosads}The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) “have struggled to respond to the Taliban’s growing national presence,” the SIGAR report says. “Many of the issues preventing the ANDSF from properly engaging the Taliban relate to deficiencies in key areas such as command and control, leadership, logistics, and overall coordination. High attrition rates, including high casualty rates, continue to make the sustainability of the ANDSF a major concern and priority for leadership.”
U.S. Forces Afghanistan reported that about 65.6 percent of the country’s districts are in control or under the influence of the Afghan government as of May 28, according to SIGAR. That’s down from 70.5 percent on Jan. 29.
That means that 268 districts out of the 407 are under government control or influence, according to SIGAR.
Meanwhile, 36 districts are under insurgent control or influence. Of that, nine have a population of 524,072 people and 27 have a population of 1.98 million, the report says.
Additionally, 104 districts are “at risk,” the report adds.
“USFOR-A assesses that the increased insurgent control since January be put in context of the Afghan sustainable security strategy which focuses Afghan forces in high-priority areas to achieve strategic and operational objectives,” the report says. “This strategy includes redeploying forces from check-points and lower-priority areas so they are available to conduct offensive operations, gain and maintain the initiative, exploit opportunities and consolidate tactical gains.”
In a press briefing Thursday, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said the Taliban has a presence in about a third of the country but controls just 10 districts.
“There’s other districts where they have some influence, where they have a greater degree of presence,” Gen. John Nicholson said. “One thing to understand about the Afghan campaign plan in ’16 versus 2015 is that after 2015, learning from the operations last year, the Afghans decided to concentrate their effort in key parts of the country.”
Further, he said, the Taliban is largely in rural areas, not provincial capitals or district centers.
“What they have been unable to do is to seize and hold any terrain,” Nicholson added. “And we think that the end of 2015, after their brief success in Kunduz, they believed they were going to be able to seize and hold terrain, and they failed to do so. So this fight is not over, but I would say that we’re cautiously optimistic.”