What’s in the Lead Inspector General’s Quarterly Report on Afghanistan?

On Nov. 17, Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller announced a drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Under the new change, the 5,000 troops previously scheduled to stay until the end of November will be halved and 2,500 will remain in Afghanistan by Jan. 15, 2021. In his announcement, Miller said, “This is consistent with our established plans and strategic objectives, supported by the American people, and does not equate to a change in policy or objectives.”

The same day, the Pentagon’s Office of the Inspector General publicly released its statutorily mandated quarterly report on U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, painting a grim picture of the state of play in the country. The report, titled “Operation Freedom’s Sentinel (OFS) Lead Inspector General Report to the United States Congress,” covers developments in Afghanistan from July 1 to Sept. 30 of this year. It draws a stark contrast to the acting secretary’s announcement—the Taliban continue to attack the most important U.S. ally in the region, the Afghan government.

The inspector general provides an interesting status update on the conflict in light of Miller’s comments that the accelerated drawdown is “consistent with our established plans and strategic objectives.” For instance, Lead Inspector General Sean O’Donnell’s opening message notes that while the Taliban is not attacking “U.S. forces and interests in Afghanistan, it is difficult to discern the extent to which [the Taliban] is meeting the requirement that Afghanistan not serve as a haven for terrorists who threaten the United States.” The report also quotes U.S. Special Representative for Afghan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad, who warned that there are “‘distressingly high levels of violence’ that could threaten the peace agreement.”

The report’s main section, titled “The Quarter in Review,” highlights security, diplomatic, political and humanitarian actions this past quarter. Its second section details the lead inspector general and partner agencies’ oversight activities, including “audits, inspections, and evaluations.” These oversight actions include one audit that found “military services did not safeguard pharmaceuticals at facilities supporting OFS” and another that found the State Department “spent $8.4 million for meals neither needed nor provided at U.S. Government dining facilities in Kabul.” The oversight actions are important, but the biggest takeaway in the report comes from “The Quarter in Review”: The conflict in Afghanistan is alive regardless of the U.S. drawdown.

So what’s actually in the report? This post, broken into four sections, summarizes the report’s critical updates on the ongoing peace talks with the Taliban, increased Taliban attacks against the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) and the coronavirus pandemic’s effect on Afghanistan. The last section details reporting on the most recent month of the conflict that didn’t make it into the report because it fell outside the time frame covered by this edition of the inspector general’s report.

The Afghan Peace Negotiations

The peace negotiations between representatives of the Afghan and U.S. governments and the Taliban are ongoing. The talks were scheduled to begin on March 10 but were delayed because of a dispute over “when and how both sides should release prisoners.” Over the summer and early fall, the Afghan government released 5,000 prisoners with ties to the Taliban and the Taliban released 1,000 prisoners with links to the Afghan government.

The negotiations began on Sept. 12 in Doha, Qatar, and initially concerned procedural rules but were hampered over a disagreement concerning which previous bilateral negotiations would serve as the basis for the talks.

What were the two sides choosing between for their negotiating baseline? The report notes that the negotiators struggled to pick between “two separate two-party agreements announced in February, one between the United States and the Taliban, and the other between the United States and the Afghan government.” One consistent issue was the Taliban’s “assertion that its agreement with the United States did not mean it was required to end hostilities with the Afghan government.” In other words, the Taliban “only recognized a ceasefire with the United States,” not the Afghan government. This assertion prevented the Taliban delegation from engaging in discussions about a cease-fire with the Afghan government. The Taliban also made it clear that they would back out of the talks “if Taliban leaders decided the United States was not adhering to the U.S.-Taliban agreement.”

The two sides’ separate agreements with the U.S. also meant that they recognized different end goals for the negotiations. The Afghan government’s team, led by Masoum Stanekzai, reportedly tried to compromise by “jointly referencing” each agreement as a basis for the Afghan peace negotiations. However, one key distinction in the U.S.-Taliban agreement that the inspector general paraphrases is that “a permanent ceasefire will be an item on the agenda” of the negotiations (emphasis added). According to the report, the U.S.-Afghan declaration notes “that a comprehensive and sustainable peace agreement will include a permanent ceasefire and a political settlement” (emphasis added). In other words, the Taliban and Afghan government would not even agree that a successful peace agreement achieved in Doha would include an end to fighting.

The second area of disagreement that the report identifies is “the school of Islamic jurisprudence that would be used to resolve disputes between the two sides.” The Taliban’s negotiating team—led by Abdul Hakim, the chief justice of the Taliban court system—wanted the Sunni Hanafi school to govern the “legal basis for the negotiations.” The inspector general, citing press reports, notes that this is the most widespread Sunni school of jurisprudence and is listed in Afghanistan’s constitution “as the source of law for its courts in cases where neither the Afghanistan constitution nor its laws is sufficient.” But the Afghan government team—which the report identifies as representative of the “Broad Afghan Political Specturum”—was concerned that relying on the Hanafi school could lead to discrimination “against the country’s significant non-Sunni religious minorities.”

The report also explains “significant substantive issues” that remain aside from procedural disputes. Paraphrasing a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report, the inspector general says that “the Afghan government was not prepared to give up its current republic structure to implement the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic law and government.” According to the report, “the two sides agreed to continue the procedural discussions concurrently with the main negotiations.”

Implications of the U.S. Drawdown and Increased Attacks on Afghan Forces

The previous drawdown schedule, created under then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, would have mandated that the U.S. maintain fewer than 5,000 military personnel in Afghanistan by the end of November, with a full military withdrawal by May 21, 2021. This drawdown schedule was part of the United States’s “obligations” in the February agreement with the Taliban.

The report notes that this plan found support among a constituency that the Pentagon is unlikely eager to please: terrorist groups. The groups are reportedly “[s]upportive” of this withdrawal schedule because they “anticipate [a] reduction in counterterrorism pressure.” The inspector general acknowledges that al-Qaeda leaders supported the February agreement, publicly calling it a “historic victory.” A DIA assessment, paraphrased in the report, also notes that “al-Qaeda leaders support the agreement because it does not require the Taliban to publicly renounce al-Qaeda and the deal includes a timeline for the United States and coalition forces to withdraw—accomplishing one of al-Qaeda’s main goals.” The DIA also notes that the local Islamic State affiliate has “bolster[ed] its messaging and recruiting efforts” in light of the U.S.-Taliban agreement.

A subsection of the report titled “Taliban Focuses Violence on Afghan Forces as U.S. Drawdown Continues” lays out the most significant effect of the U.S.-Taliban agreement. The inspector general explains: “Instead of targeting coalition forces, the Taliban increased its attacks on the ANDSF and Afghan government officials.” It was this trend that caused Ambassador Kalilzhad, in the words of the report, “to state that there is no military solution, and warn that ‘distressingly high’ levels of violence could threaten the peace agreement.”

While there were no U.S. combat deaths this past quarter, fighting increased between the Taliban and Afghan government forces. The report also says that, in the previous quarter, U.S. airstrikes decreased by 80 percent “after the February U.S.-Taliban agreement.” However, the U.S. military has “stated that [they] can and will conduct strikes against the Taliban to defend the ANDSF.” The U.S. military has not released “an unclassified estimate of attacks initiated by the Taliban compared to other militant groups.” Although the Pentagon reported a Taliban rocket attack against a coalition base in Helmand, “media reporting indicated that a Taliban faction opposing the U.S.-Taliban agreement may have carried out the attack.”

The inspector general also notes that 228 people were killed in 54 insider attacks against Afghan government forces—incidents in which someone with an allegiance to the Taliban or other terrorist groups wearing a government uniform turns on fellow soldiers or officers—from May 1 to Oct. 31. While the U.S. military reported “no high-profile attacks in Kabul this quarter,” the inspector general notes that the NATO definition for “high-profile attacks” includes only those involving “a car bomb or suicide bomber[,]” which “potentially undercounts attacks.” As an example of a high-profile attack that didn’t fulfill the NATO definition, t

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