Taliban attacks report incorrect

Before the election, the US-led coalition in Afghanistan reported that the number of attacks by the Taliban on UN forces was in decline, indicating that the taliban was being defeated. Now that the election is over, the coalition people who track those sort of things have found some data they forgot to factor in to the formula says the Associated Press;

“During a quality control check, ISAF recently became aware that some data was incorrectly entered into the database that is used for tracking security-related incidents across Afghanistan,” said Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition known officially as the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF.

Graybeal said a subsequent audit determined that portions of the data from unilateral Afghan military operations were “not properly reflected” in the trends ISAF had reported in its monthly updates on security and violence.

Yet another thing that was “not properly reflected” running up to the election. This is my shocked face.

Graybeal said that even though the number of 2012 Taliban attacks was unchanged from 2011, “our assessment of the fundamentals of campaign progress has not changed. The enemy is increasingly separated from the population and the ANSF are currently in the lead for the vast majority of partnered operations.”

Yeah, we’re going to believe you now. Right.

In other disingenuous news, NATO is also reporting a decline in “insider attacks” by way of USAToday;

The decline in insider attacks comes as overall fatalities U.S. forces has decreased sharply. This year, three U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan, down from 39 during the same period last year. The number of U.S. forces has been declining as Afghan forces take a lead role in security operations.

The insider attacks have dropped largely as a result of “substantial” changes in tactics by Afghan and U.S. forces, Gurganus said in an interview from Afghanistan.

Among the changes he cited:

Coalition forces improved security tactics to enhance troop protection.
Afghan commanders increased supervision and oversight of their troops.
Afghans enhanced screening of recruits and took counterintelligence steps to screen for potential attackers.

Yeah, and US troops were allowed to arm themselves around their supposed allies. Funny how that put a cork in the bottle, ain’t it? Another way to cause a decline in the number of these attacks is the way they classify them. We here at TAH know that some attacks on US troops weren’t reported as “insider attacks”, that unless someone was killed, ISAF didn’t even report it last year. So it’s impossible for us to track these things from way over here because of data that was “not properly reflected”.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Terror War