US officials have loudly criticized the Taliban for not complying with an agreed-to reduction in violence since signing a peace deal in Afghanistan. Data, however, suggests that the US isn’t doing much better, and airstrikes have been remarkably steady around the peace process.
The latest data shows that in February, immediately ahead of the signing of the deal, US forces dropped 360 weapons, the second highest February on record since 2009. It was down only slightly from January, representing it being a longer month.
Airstrikes in Iraq and Syria were relatively low, far down from the 2019 levels. This makes sense, as the war is effectively over, and US strikes in Iraq are now mostly against Iraqi Shi’ite militias, and then only sparingly.
It’s not clear who the US is attacking in Afghanistan, as there generally aren’t reports of single strikes anymore. There was talk that the US was supporting the Taliban in anti-ISIS operations, but that ‘s surely not to the full extent of the US airstrike rate in 2019.
The Taliban didn’t read the fine print where only the U.S. and Kabul were supposed to attack during peace negotiations like the Saudis do in Yemen.
Or, the Taliban did read the fine print but weren’t supposed to…
What sense does this make? We sit down with all the parties to end the killing and we come up with an agreement apparently another one that Trump doesn’t like even though he’s the “deal maker”. It worked well in Israel, Iraq and Syria right?