WASHINGTON: Afghanistan remains dangerously unstable even as the United States accelerates the withdrawal of its troops from there, says a mandatory official report to Congress.

In a chapter focusing on the Afghan drug trade, the reports points out that Afghanistan’s opium cultivation supports the equivalent of about 411,000 jobs, exceeding the overall size of the Afghan national security forces (ANSF). The trade in illicit drugs generates about $3 billion of revenue a year.

The report expresses concern about the capability of the Afghan forces and criticises the UN-backed International Security Assistance Force for abruptly classifying details of the country’s military capabilities.

For years, office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), which prepared the report, used the ISAF data as a primary metric to assess the effectiveness of the Afghan national forces.

Congress requires SIGAR to submit an annual report to justify US aid to Afghanistan. The United States has already spent $61.5 billion to build, train, equip, and sustain Afghan forces.

The report points out that Afghan security forces face high rates of attrition and combat casualties. Between September 2013 and August 2014, more than 36,000 Afghan army personnel were dropped from rolls. Between March 2012 and August 2014 more than 2,850 troops were killed in action with another 14,600 wounded.

“ISAF’s classification of the report summary deprives the American people of an essential tool to measure the success or failure of the single most costly feature of the Afghanistan reconstruction effort,” says John F. Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

Commenting on the SIGAR report, a US media outlet notes that it raises the “disturbing possibility that the United States is trying to paper over significant and lingering problems with the Afghan forces.”

“The need to carefully monitor the development of the Afghan National Security Forces was brought painfully to light in August, when an Afghan soldier shot and killed a US Army major general—the highest-ranking US military officer to die in Afghanistan,” warns Inspector General Sopko.

The report informs Congress that the insurgents use a booming drug trade to raise money for their fight and despite international efforts to curb it; this illicit trade has continued to soar.

Citing statistics from the UN Office of Drugs and Crime, SIGAR report that about 209,000 hectares of land were under poppy cultivation in 2013, an increase of 36 per cent from the previous year. The size of the crop has doubled since 1999, when the Taliban ruled the country and opium was grown on 91,000 hectares.

The report points out that insurgency is stronger in the areas where poppy cultivation is also high, such as south, southeast and east.

There were a total of 15,968 attacks for the nine months ending Aug. 15, which equals 61 a day. This is the second-highest level since 2011 after the fall of the Taliban.SIGAR reports that nine Pakistani nationals were arrested in Afghanistan for theft on April 16, 2014, and nearly $260,000 in US government property was recovered.

Seven Maersk containers were stolen in transit from Pakistan to Bagram Air Field. The truck drivers were arrested just outside the base and the containers were temporarily taken into the custody of the Bagram police department.

A subsequent inventory of the containers accounted for all items and confirmed their combined value to be nearly $260,000.

Published in Dawn, November 1st , 2014