In its quarterly report to Congress, the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar) observed that in the second quarter of this year, the Taliban gained new territory and now control 19 of the country’s approximately 400 governing districts.
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The recent us military casualties come after President Barack Obama ended the USA combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, marking the beginning the train, assist, and advise (TAA) role for American troops. Their injuries were sustained from small arms fire and shrapnel, he added.
The US has been training and equipping Afghan security forces in order to withdraw American troops from the country, but the Afghans remain short of personnel and hardware.
Citing U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the report said the loss of territory to the Taliban was because Afghan forces were redeployed from lower-priority areas to “conduct offensive operations, gain and maintain the initiative, exploit opportunities, and consolidate tactical gains”.
The American special operators were accompanying Afghan special forces this week in southern Nangarhar Province, where the Afghans began a major operation that aimed to route the militants from the country, said Nicholson, the top American commander in Afghanistan.
He did not say exactly when the injuries happened.
The other two wounded have been returned to duty in Afghanistan, he said.
He said the number of Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan has declined from an estimated 3,000 at the start of this year to between 1,000 and 1,500.
Gen. Nicholson has recently made an effort to tie the Afghan ISIS affiliate with the group’s de facto capital in Raqqa, Syria, and last week’s attack in Kabul appear to back up those points.
“They believed they were going to be able to seize and hold terrain, and they failed to do so”, Gen Nicholson told a Pentagon briefing via video link, according to Reuters.
Just one month into 2016, the U.S. had released nearly 130 weapons in Afghanistan, the most since 2013, according to U.S. Air Forces Central Command statistics. He did not specify how numerous strikes were against the Islamic State group.
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The fight against ISIL-Khorasan is critical, Nicholson said. Despite help from coalition airstrikes, the Afghan forces have reportedly suffered from high attrition rates, including a high number of casualties, which results in the force losing a third of its troops annually. Nicholson said the I.S. fighters were “retreating south into the mountains of southern Nangarhar as we speak”.
