Pentagon says gag order a mistake

WASHINGTON — In an abrupt reversal, the U.S. military on Tuesday said it made a mistake when it ordered an independent federal auditor to stop providing the public with information about U.S. war efforts in Afghanistan that help to measure how the 16year-old stalemated war is going.

Just hours after the report was publicly released, the U.S.-led NATO coalition in Afghanistan issued a statement blaming “human error” for the order, and provided a few segments of the data that has been restricted. The newly released information revealed that 44 percent of Afghanistan is contested or under the control of insurgents.

Other previously available information on the size, attrition and performance of the Afghan forces continue to be unavailable.

The auditing agency, established by Congress and known as the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, revealed the new gag order in a threemonth assessment of conditions in Afghanistan released overnight.

The restrictions seemed to contradict previous Pentagon assertions that it was striving to be more transparent about the U.S. war campaigns across Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

In response to the release of the report, Navy Capt. Tom Gres-back, coalition spokesman, said Tuesday that about 56 percent of the country’s 407 districts are under Afghan government control, 30 percent are contested, and 14 percent are under insurgent control.

Late last year, a Pentagon report said the Afghan government has control or influence over 60 percent of the population, while insurgents had control or influence over approximately 10 percent of the population, with the remainder contested.