A new report being circulated by the United Nations reveals a growing number of opposition fighters in Afghanistan, some 15 years after the initial US-led invasion and occupation of the country, with the most recent estimates suggesting about 45,000 opposition fighters present in the country.
While these figures are generally dominated by the Taliban insurgency, it also includes a significant ISIS affiliate in the country, along with al-Qaeda supporters and others simply described by the UN as “bad actors.” An estimated 20-25% of the fighters are foreigners.
The opposition fighter figure is never exactly a clear number, but the trend has definitely been toward growth, with NATO estimates of 25,000 to 30,000 in 2010 growing to 35,000 by mid-2012. The foreign fighters in the country are a significant factor, including a large number of Pakistanis and Uzbeks.
This growth is in spite of ever-increasing efforts to control the Afghan-Pakistan border, as well as claims of massive death tolls by the Afghan government in attacks against both Taliban and ISIS forces.
The increase in opposition fighters makes sense, however, in the context of the growing percentage of the country under opposition control, with recent reports suggesting that only 63.4% of Afghanistan can rightly be called under control anymore.
This is crazy. All groups must be some kind of “opposigion” to someone or se why fight? What is the difference in Afghanistan any more? Or is this some other magic group we cell in love with?
OMG, a quarter of the Taliban are foreign terrorists! Send in the Marines!
Wars in Afghanistan have been justified by scaremongering about the presence of foreigners since before the Victorians fretted about the Russians. A particularly patent example of this has been the many reports of Chechens in Afghanistan. (See “Chechens in Afghanistan 1: A Battlefield Myth That Will Not Die”, Christian Bleuer
Afghan Analysts Network).
This latest unpublished report by “experts” quoting unnamed “senior officials” of some unnamed country, follows in this tradition. No institution in Afghanistan has the kind of intelligence needed to come up with the kind of estimates of foreign fighters that the report is based on. The US military has hard time even estimating the number of Afghan Government troops. (“U.S. watchdog questions money spent on tens of thousands of Afghan ‘ghost’ soldiers”, Reuters, 10/7/16).
However many there really are, does anyone honestly believe that Arabs, Pakistanis and Central Asians are making any difference in Afghanistan? As the Brits, the Russians, and now the Americans have proved, foreigners in Afghanistan are fish out of water and fail at almost everything they attempt there.