New York Times: U.S. Military Stops Counting How Much of Afghanistan Is Controlled by Taliban
KABUL, Afghanistan — The American military command in Afghanistan has halted regular assessments of how many people and districts the government and insurgents there control, it emerged on Wednesday — eliminating what has long been an important public measure of progress in the war.
The military said the assessments had “limited decision-making value” for commanders. As recently as November 2017, the previous American commander in Afghanistan had called them “the metric that’s most telling in a counterinsurgency.”
The decision to end the assessments, which have been produced in various forms since at least 2010, was published in the latest quarterly report by the American special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction.
“We’re troubled by it,” the inspector general, John F. Sopko, said in an interview. “It’s like turning off the scoreboard at a football game and saying scoring a touchdown or field goal isn’t important.”
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WNU Editor: The Long War Journal keeps an up-to-date assessment on what the Taliban are controlling in Afghanistan .... Mapping Taliban Control in Afghanistan (Long War Journal).
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The last time the command released this information, in January, it showed that Afghan government control was stagnant or slipping. It said the share of the population under Afghan government control or influence — a figure that was largely unchanged from May 2017 to July 2018 at about 65 percent — had dropped in October 2018 to 63.5 percent. The government's control or influence of districts fell nearly 2 percentage points, to 53.8 percent.
Taliban control nothing, they are there and are fighting but control zip city. More bogus journalism from those with agendas. It is basically a stalemate.
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