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Unrelenting
Bloodshed
S.
Binodkumar Singh
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management
On February
8, 2017, six employees of the International Committee
of the Red Cross (ICRC) were shot dead by terrorists of
the Islamic State (IS, formerly, Islamic State of Iraq
and al Sham, also Daesh) in the Qoshtapa District of Jawzjan
Province. After the killing, ICRC suspended its operations
in Afghanistan on February 9, 2017.
On February
7, 2017, at least 22 people were killed while more than
41 were injured in a suicide attack outside Afghanistan’s
Supreme Court complex in the national capital, Kabul.
Later, in a post on Twitter on February 8, 2017,
Daesh claimed responsibility for the attack.
On January
10, 2017, at least 38 people were killed and another 72
were wounded in two back to back explosions in Kabul city.
Kabul Police officials disclosed that the majority of
those killed or wounded were civilians. The Taliban claimed
responsibility for the explosions.
On January
10, 2017, in a separate incident in Kandahar Province,
as many as 13 civilians were killed, including five United
Arab Emirates (UAE) diplomats, in an explosion at the
residence of the Kandahar Provincial Governor while he
was hosting a dinner for visiting diplomats and dignitaries.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
Civilian
continue to bear the brunt of terrorism in Afghanistan.
According to partial data compiled by the South Asia
Terrorism Portal (SATP) at least 121 civilians have
already been killed in Afghanistan since the beginning
of 2017 (data till February 12).
The United
Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which
began systematically documenting civilian casualties on
January 1, 2009, has recorded 70,188 civilian casualties
(24,841 dead and 45,347 injured) up to December 31, 2016.
Through 2016, UNAMA recorded 11,418 civilian casualties
(3,498 civilians dead and 7,920 injured) as against 11,002
civilian casualties (3,545 civilians dead and 7,457 injured)
in 2015. More disturbingly, the conflict severely impacted
Afghan children in 2016. UNAMA recorded 3,512 child casualties
(923 deaths and 2,589 injured), a 24 percent increase
over 2015, and the highest number of child casualties
recorded by UNAMA in a single year. The disproportionate
rise in child casualties across Afghanistan in 2016 resulted
mainly from a 66 per cent increase in civilian casualties
from explosive remnants of war – most of these casualties
were children.
The battle
between the Security Forces (SFs) and the Taliban to establish
effective control over areas across Afghanistan intensified
further through 2016. According to the United States (US)
Department of Defense (DoD), from January 1, 2016, through
November 12, 2016, as many as 6,785 Afghan National Defense
and Security Forces (ANDSF) service members were killed
and an additional 11,777 members were wounded. The DoD
reported that the majority of ANDSF casualties continue
to be the result of direct-fire attacks, with IED explosions
and mine strikes accounting for much lower levels of casualties.
ANDSF includes the Afghan National Army (ANA), Afghan
Air Force (AAF), and Afghan National Police (ANP).
In contrast,
fatalities among the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) Forces continued to decline, with 16 fatalities
in 2016, as against 27 in 2015 and 75 in 2014. A total
of 3,528 NATO personnel, including 2,392 US troopers,
have been killed so far, since 2001. The increase in fatalities
among ANDSF, on the one hand, and simultaneous decline
in NATO fatalities, on the other, is primarily because
NATO Forces have ceased operating as combat Forces (barring
a few specific operations) since the beginning of 2015,
and ANDSF has taken up the lead in fighting the terrorists.
Though
there is no specific data on the number of terrorists
killed in Afghanistan, according to partial data compiled
by SATP, at least 11,469 terrorists were killed through
2016, as against 10,628 such fatalities in 2015. Most
of the terrorists killed belonged to the Taliban.
According
to US Force-Afghanistan (USFOR-A), as of November 26,
2016, the ANDSF assigned force strength was 322,585, including
174,950 of ANA and 147,635 of ANP. Meanwhile, according
to US DoD, as of December 2016, the Resolute Support Mission
(RSM) launched on January 1, 2015, to train, advise and
assist the mission in Afghanistan, consisted of 13,332
U.S. and Coalition personnel. Of that number, 6,941 were
U.S. forces and 6,391 were from 26 NATO allies and 12
non-NATO partners.
The office
of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction
(SIGAR), in its latest Quarterly Report released on January
30, 2017, offered bleak progress statistics about Afghanistan.
An estimated 57.2 per cent of the country’s 407 Districts
are under Afghan Government control or influence as of
November 15, 2016, a 6.2 percent decrease from the 63.4
percent reported in the preceding quarter in late August
2016, and a nearly 15 percent decrease since November
2015. Further, Afghanistan's largest independent news
agency, Pajhwok Afghan News, on February 7, 2017,
reported that as many as 704 people were killed and 563
others wounded in 137 attacks in January 2017 in 24 of
the 34 Provinces of the country, showing a 10 per cent
spike in attacks and a 17 percent rise in causalities
compared to December 2016. Terrorists, SFs and civilians,
including women and children, were among the casualties,
but Pajhwok could not find the exact figures for
each category. The Global Terrorism Index 2016
put Afghanistan at the second highest impact from terrorism,
measuring 9.44 out of 10, after Iraq at 9.96 out of 10.
At this
time, even though the Afghan Taliban has declared that
it has no intention of participating in peace talks with
the Afghan Government, despite international efforts,
an attempt is being made to bring the rebels to the talks
table. The first round of official peace talks between
the Afghan Taliban and the Afghan Government had taken
place in the intervening night of July 7 and July 8, 2015,
in Murree in Pakistan, with an agreement to meet again
on August 15 and 16, 2015, in the Qatar capital, Doha.
Before, the second round of talks could take place, the
Afghan Government disclosed, on July 29, 2015, “The Government...
based on credible information, confirms that Mullah Mohammad
Omar, leader of the Taliban, died in April 2013 in Pakistan."
Subsequent disclosures indicated that Omar died while
he was under treatment in Karachi. Soon, the Taliban split
into two factions – one led by Pakistan’s nominee, Mullah
Akhtar Mansoor and another by Mullah Mohammad Rasool.
The next round of talks failed to materialize. Mansoor
was killed in a US air strike on May 21, 2016, in Pakistan,
near the Afghan border. He was succeeded by Mawlawi Haibatullah
Akhundzada, but the possibility of talks ended at this
stage.
Significantly,
Tadamichi Yamamoto, head of UNAMA, in his quarterly briefing
to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in New York
on December 19, 2016, urged the Taliban to enter into
direct talks with the Government, without preconditions,
to prevent further bloodshed in the country. However,
responding to the renewed call for talks by Yamamoto on
December 23, 2016, Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid,
declared, “Our fight is for independence, and as long
as foreign occupation forces are present here (in Afghanistan)
any talk about peace and reconciliation is meaningless.”
Further, on January 25, 2017, the Taliban group issued
an open letter claiming, “The Afghans, as a nation ravaged
by war for thirty eight long years, sincerely want to
bring this war to an end. However they know – despite
whatever reasons for previous wars – that the principle
cause for the ongoing conflict is the presence of foreign
occupying forces in our independent country.”
The fifth
meeting of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG)
of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and China
on the Afghan peace and reconciliation process had been
held in Islamabad, Pakistan, on May 18, 2016. The QCG
reiterated that violence served no purpose and that peace
negotiations remained the only option for a political
settlement, and member countries resolved to use their
respective leverages and influence to secure an Afghan-led,
Afghan-owned peace and reconciliation process. Separately,
the third session of the trilateral "working group"
of Russia, China and Pakistan on Afghanistan held in Moscow
on December 27, 2016, discussed the current situation
of Afghanistan decided to work towards delisting the Afghan
Taliban from the world body’s sanctions list in a move
purportedly aimed at launching peaceful dialogue between
Afghanistan’s Government and the insurgent groups.
As talks
with the Afghan Taliban hit a roadblock amidst a surge
in violence, the Afghan Government signed a peace agreement
on September 22, 2016, with the Hezb-e-Islami (HeI) led
by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, paving the way for the armed group's
commander to make a political comeback despite allegations
of war crimes during the 1990s. Once branded the "butcher
of Kabul", Hekmatyar was a prominent anti-Soviet
commander who stands accused of killing thousands of people
when his fighters fired on civilian areas of the capital
city during the 1992-1996 civil war. The draft
of the peace agreement had been signed on May 18, 2016,
by HeI representatives and High Peace Council (HPC) officials.
While the
Taliban has regained significant ground, it has now entered
into a fratricidal turf war with its own splinters. Several
deadly clashes have taken place across the country, particularly
in western provinces, following the announcement
of the death of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad
Omar. In the latest incident of infighting among the Taliban
factions, on January 8, 2017, at least ten Taliban cadres
were killed in Bakwa District in a landmine explosion
orchestrated by a rival group in Farah Province. Indeed,
the Islamic State (IS or Daesh) faction, which made inroads
into Afghanistan subsequent to the June 2014 release of
Daesh’s ‘world domination map’, has benefited
from Taliban infighting, taking recruits from Afghan Taliban
and al-Qaeda defectors. But, the U.S. military and its
Afghan partners have managed to push back Daesh’s presence
in the country from nearly a dozen Districts to just two
or three. Brigadier General Charles Cleveland, spokesman
of US Army in Afghanistan, thus asserted, on December
22, 2016, “A year ago, U.S. commanders estimated the strength
of the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan at between
1,500 and 3,000 members. Today, it is about 1,000. We
think we've significantly reduced that presence."
Afghanistan’s
principal problem, however, remains Pakistan. Exposing
Islamabad’s role, Afghanistan's Permanent Representative
to the UN, Mahmoud Saikal, stated, on January 11, 2017,
"The cycle of violence and insecurity in Afghanistan,
and our part of the world is inextricably linked to the
presence of sanctuaries and safe-havens in the region,
from which extremist groups are sustained and enjoy an
incessant flow of political, financial, material and logistical
support for the continuation of their malicious activities.”
Endorsing Afghanistan’s view that terrorists are able
to strike whenever they want to because of the existence
of terrorist safe havens inside Pakistan, US Defense Secretary
General James Mattis declared, on January 12, 2017, “Sanctuaries
and freedom of movement for the Afghan Taliban and associated
militant networks inside Pakistani territory is a key
operational issue faced by the Afghan security forces.”
Further, on February 9, 2017, General John Nicholson,
commander of the US forces and the NATO-led RSM in Afghanistan
added, “The Taliban and Haqqani network are the greatest
threats to security in Afghanistan. Their senior leaders
remain insulated from pressure and enjoy freedom of action
within Pakistan safe havens.”
No end
is presently visible for Afghanistan’s crisis. Reaffirming
US support to the Afghan Government and SFs on January
5, 2017, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook noted, “Afghanistan
is still dangerous and challenges there remain. We will
continue to provide the kind of support we can to bolster
the Afghan security forces.”
Afghan
Forces are reeling under circumstances created by the
withdrawal
of an overwhelming proportion of NATO Forces, though the
small remaining contingents continue to provide active
support. There is, however, far greater recognition today
of Pakistan’s enduring mischief in Afghanistan, and a
growing willingness among engaged powers to impose costs
on Islamabad for its malfeasance. With the change of regime
in Washington, there is an expectation that this will
translated into effective policy. It remains to be seen
whether this will exercise sufficient pressure on Islamabad
to act against the Taliban. Absent a conclusive defeat
inflicted on the Taliban, there is little hope of peace
in this war wracked nation.
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