A veil of secrecy fuels doubts on Afghan war
By Liz Goodwin GLOBE STAFF MAY 12, 2018
WASHINGTON — It is challenging enough that the war in Afghanistan has gone on for almost 17 years. But now the Trump administration is raising hackles in Congress by cloaking in official secrecy an unusual amount of data about the longest armed conflict in American history, including, until very recently, the dwindling size of the beleaguered Afghan military.
Information contained in a recently issued government report provides a window into what the Pentagon has been keeping secret since last year: The Afghan army has shrunk by 11 percent and insurgents have gained territory, raising questions about whether the Pentagon has been concealing a strategy gone awry.
President Trump, who called the war “a complete waste” as a candidate, announced his plan for keeping up the fight last August, saying he shared the American people’s “frustration” with seemingly endless conflict, but was committed to sending more troops to the area without a timetable for withdrawal. But just as the Pentagon began sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan, it also began classifying key war metrics it had previously made public. That included ways of measuring the success or failure of America’s mission: training and funding the Afghan military so it can beat back the Taliban and other insurgents.
The latest report by John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction — who objected strongly to the new program of secrecy and pried some of the data out of US military leaders in Afghanistan — contained some worrisome figures.
Afghan troops shrank by about 36,000, to 296,409 from January 2017 to January 2018. Taliban and other insurgents increased their territory from 11 percent to 14.5 percent of the country over the same period. Multiple terror attacks in April killed dozens in Kabul, with the Islamic State claiming credit.
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