The Taliban hold a permanent presence in 72 percent of Afghanistan, a think tank said yesterday, but NATO said the figures were not credible and it was impossible for militants to control large parts of the country.
The findings by the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) come in the wake of a series of critical reports on Western-led military and development efforts to put an end to the seven-year Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
The US government is itself now conducting a wide-ranging review of strategy aimed at countering the Taliban guerrilla and bombing campaign that analysts agree has grown in both scale and scope in the last year.
PHOTO: AP
But while the trends in the ICOS report reflected prevailing sentiment on Afghanistan, many of its findings appeared flawed and contained some glaring errors, security analysts said.
“The Taliban now has a permanent presence in 72 percent of the country,” ICOS, formerly known as the Senlis Council, said in the report, adding that the figure had risen from 54 percent last year.
The report defines a permanent presence as an average of one or more insurgent attacks per week over the entire year.
ICOS said a “permanent presence” then would include many areas of the country where the Taliban traditionally launch a large number of attacks in the spring and summer “fighting season,” before melting away during the harsh winter months.
“We don’t see the figures in this report as being credible at all,” NATO spokesman James Appathurai said. “The Taliban are only present in the south and east which is already less than 50 percent of the country.”
At least 4,000 people have been killed in fighting in Afghanistan this year, around a third of them civilians, UN figures show.
In the traditional Taliban heartlands of the mainly ethnic Pashtun south and east, NATO-led and US-led coalition forces are engaged in daily clashes with militants fighting to overthrow the Afghan government and drive out foreign troops.
But the insurgents generally shy away from massed attacks against Afghan and international troops, preferring “shoot and scoot” ambushes, backed by roadside and suicide bomb attacks.
The Taliban, Appathurai said, “don’t control any areas where Afghan and international forces are present. Whenever Afghan or international forces patrol into an area they simply run away. So the idea that the Taliban control large swathes of the country is simply impossible.”
ICOS said the Taliban was “closing a noose” around the Afghan capital, Kabul, “establishing bases close to the city from which to launch attacks ... Using these bases, the Taliban and insurgent attacks in Kabul have increased dramatically.”
While the Taliban have built up a presence in provinces just to the south, west and east of Kabul in the last year, the number of insurgent attacks inside the city has actually gone down this year, the UN said.
That is largely because of a much stronger and highly visible police presence in the city in response to a series of high profile suicide attacks in Kabul last year.
ICOS said Kabul was “virtually Taliban-free a year ago” and said in the city there were “no police checkpoints at night and few in the day.”
An ICOS map of Kabul also showed the area occupied by the US embassy, the sprawling NATO headquarters and the Afghan presidential palace as one of “high Taliban/criminal activity.”
Fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar is promising more violence over the coming year, even as the US plans to deploy thousands more troops in hopes of turning around the deteriorating war in Afghanistan.
In a statement posted on Sunday on a militant-linked Web site, Omar also rejected Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s calls for peace talks until foreign troops leave the country.
Afghanistan is going through its most violent period since the Taliban was ousted in the US-led invasion in 2001.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of