U.N. Says Afghan Taliban’s Reach Is Widest Since 2001 - nytimes

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Talibaninsurgency has spread through more ofAfghanistan than at any point since 2001, according to data compiled by the United Nations as well as interviews with numerous local officials in areas under threat.

In addition, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan over the past two weeks has evacuated four of its 13 provincial offices around the country — the most it has ever done for security reasons — according to local officials in the affected areas.

The data, compiled in early September — even before the latest surge in violence in northern Afghanistan — showed that United Nations security officials had already rated the threat level in about half of the country’s administrative districts as either “high” or “extreme,” more than at any time since the American invasion ousted the Taliban in 2001.

That assessment, which has not been publicly released but is routinely shared by the United Nations with countries in the international coalition, appears at odds with the assessment of its American commander, Gen. John F. Campbell, in his testimony to Congress in Washington last week.

The United Nations mission data showed that it considered 186 of Afghanistan’s 376 districts to have a threat level considered high or extreme. United Nations personnel would not normally be allowed to travel to or through any district with a threat level that high. Districts with extreme threat levels either have no government presence at all, or a government presence reduced to only the district capital; there were 38 such districts scattered through 14 of the country’s 34 provinces.

In all, 27 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces had some districts where the threat level was rated high or extreme.- Read More at nytimes

Afghan Taliban’s Reach Is Widest Since 2001, U.N. Says

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