Having long insisted that data on control of Afghan territory was “the metric that’s most telling in a counterinsurgency,”
the Pentagon has informed the US Special Inspector General for
Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) that they will no longer be keeping
track of that at all, and won’t be providing that data to SIGAR.
SIGAR John Sipko was critical of the move, saying that the Pentagon was providing even less information for the American taxpayers to “gauge whether their investment in Afghanistan is a success.”
Pentagon officials, however, say that they now view the data to be “of
limited value” for decision making. The move is likely more about the
Trump Administration’s general policy of opaqueness, however.
Officials are hesitant to provide the public with any specific
information about US wars worldwide now, and with recent figures on
territory controlled in Afghanistan creepy dangerously close to 50%, it
is likely the Pentagon has decided to avoid media coverage of the point
where the Taliban controls more than half of the country by just not
telling anybody when it happens.
US Military Stops Keeping Track of How Much of Afghanistan Is Taliban Controlled
Officials now say data is of limited value
Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.
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