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SIGAR reports spike in insider attacks against ANDSF members
A new quarterly report by Washington’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has documented a staggering 82 percent increase in insider attacks on Afghan government security forces in the first quarter of this year, resulting in 115 personnel killed and 39 wounded.
SIGAR reported this week that the overall Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) casualties were also substantially higher than during the same period last year.
SIGAR is not allowed to include full ANDSF casualty data because U.S. forces in Afghanistan keep it classified at the request of the Afghan government.
The report stated that the ANDSF suffered a total of 31 insider attacks between January 1 and April 1, and the number of casualties they caused were more than double compared to the same period in 2020.
SIGAR’s report comes as the US and NATO forces started to withdraw from Afghanistan as decided by US President Joe Biden last month.
In addition to the estimated 2,500 U.S. troops and the 7,000 NATO and allied forces, over 12,500 US Defense Department contractors will also withdraw. The are U.S citizens and third-country nationals.
SIGAR stated it is unclear who, if anyone, will replace contractor personnel or perform their work after their withdrawal.
“Without continued contractor support, none of the Afghan Air Force’s (AFF) airframes can be sustained as combat effective for more than a few months, depending on the stock of equipment parts in-country, the maintenance capability on each airframe, and when contractor support is withdrawn,” SIGAR said, citing U.S. military assessments.
According to SIGAR, DOD contractors provide for and maintain ANDSF ground vehicles and train local technicians. Although the ANDSF has “dramatically improved its share of the work, it is still falling well below benchmarks for its share of the maintenance work orders they — rather than contractors — are supposed to perform,” SIGAR reported.
Special Inspector General John F Sopko meanwhile stated that under the new posture that will follow the troops’ withdrawal, SIGAR and its oversight mission will “assume even more important for the United States”.
He said as the largest oversight presence in Afghanistan and the only one with statutory whole-of-government authority, SIGAR will be the only government agency capable of overseeing the billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars already appropriated that will continue to flow into the country despite the absence of U.S. military – including U.S. defense contractor – boots on the ground.
Sopko said SIGAR is well-prepared for this enhanced role and stands ready to assume any new responsibilities assigned to it by Congress and the Administration.
He pointed out that while the Biden Administration conducted its review of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, the Office of Management and Budget requested the data that underpins the reporting in SIGAR’s quarterly reports concerning U.S. funds appropriated for Afghanistan since 2002.
“This recognition of the quarterly report’s function as the most authoritative source for information about U.S. spending in Afghanistan came as the report continues to expand its coverage of U.S. appropriations,” he said.
He also stated that U.S. officials have indicated that they intend to condition U.S. assistance to Afghanistan on the actions of the Afghan government and possibly the Taliban.
“As U.S. policy on Afghanistan continues to evolve, my colleagues and I will work with Congress, the Administration, and other stakeholders to guard against the waste, fraud,
and abuse of U.S. funds devoted to that country’s reconstruction,” he said.
The Embassy of Japan in Afghanistan announced on Friday that the country has allocated $19.5 million in humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.
In a statement, the Japanese Embassy said it hopes the aid will help bring positive change to the lives of vulnerable Afghans.
According to the statement, the assistance will cover the basic humanitarian needs of vulnerable communities in Afghanistan.
The embassy added that the aid will be delivered through United Nations agencies, international organizations, and Japanese non-governmental organizations operating in Afghanistan.
Japan’s total assistance to Afghanistan since August 2021 has reached more than $549 million.
Security forces at the Islam Qala border in Herat province prevented hundreds of young Afghans from illegally entering Iran.
Officials from the 207 Al-Farooq Army Corps said that around 530 people attempted over the past two days to illegally enter Iranian territory through areas of Kohsan district in Herat, but border forces detained them and transferred them back to their original areas.
Meanwhile, officials in the local administration of Herat said that due to severe cold along the illegal migration route to Iran, three Afghan migrants have lost their lives in the Kohsan district of the province, and a shepherd has also died there for the same reason.
Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi, spokesperson for the Herat governor’s office, said that some statistics and images shared on social media regarding the incident are not reliable.
According to him, further investigations are underway to determine whether any individuals have died on the other side of the border.
President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program, the Associated Press reported.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.
Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.
Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.
Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.
While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.
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