‘Afghan govt is struggling to gain territory’

KABUL : The Afghan government is struggling to recover control of districts lost to Taliban insurgents while casualties among security forces have reached record levels, a US watchdog agency said on Thursday.

The latest quarterly report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) underlines the heavy pressure on the government in Kabul even as the United States has opened initial contacts with the Taliban on possible peace talks.

“The control of Afghanistan’s districts, population, and territory overall became more contested this quarter,” the agency said.

The Taliban have still not succeeded in taking a major provincial centre despite assaults on Farah in western Afghanistan and Ghazni in the centre this year but they control large stretches of the countryside.

Data from Afghanistan’s NATO-LED Resolute Support mission showed that government forces had “failed to gain greater control or influence over districts, population, and territory this quarter”, the agency said.

As of September, it said the government controlled or influenced territory with about 65% of the population, stable since October 2017, after a year of heavy fighting in Farah and Ghazni as well as other provinces like Faryab and Baghlan in the north.

However, it reported only 55.5% of the total 407 districts were under government control or influence, the lowest level since SIGAR began tracking district control in 2015.

“While the districts, territory, and population under insurgent control or influence also decreased slightly, the districts, territory, and population ‘contested’ — meaning under neither Afghan government nor insurgent control or influence —increased,” it said.

Six months before presidential elections, the figures are a sign of the degraded security situation in Afghanistan, even as the US special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, has met Taliban officials to map out possible peace talks. REUTERS