Photo by: Ahmad Jamshid
** FILE ** Afghans push a damaged car from the scene of a militant attack by a suicide car bomber and Taliban militants disguised in burqas in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Wednesday, May 2, 2012. (AP Photo/Ahmad Jamshid)

From the Washington Times, By Associated Press, March 5, 2013 – WASHINGTON — The U.S.-led military command in Afghanistan said   Tuesday it will no longer  publish figures on Taliban attacks, a  week after acknowledging that its report of a 7 percent decline in attacks last year was actually no decline at all.

A spokesman for the  International  Security Assistance Force, or  ISAF, Jamie Graybeal, said  Tuesday that its  reporting on the number of  attacks will grow increasingly inaccurate as Afghan  forces move further  into the  battlefield lead.

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“Because (Afghan forces) are now conducting an  increasing number of   successful unilateral operations, often beyond the  view of ISAF,  we  have determined that our databases will become  increasingly inaccurate  in  reflecting the entirety of enemy initiated  attacks,” Graybeal  said  in a written statement.

“Additionally, we  have come to realize that a simple tally of  (attacks) is  not the most  complete measure of the campaign’s progress,”  Graybeal  said.  “At a time  when more than 80 percent of the (attacks)  are happening in  areas where  less than 20 percent of Afghans live, this  single facet of the  campaign  is not particularly accurate in  describing the complete effect of the  insurgency’s violence on the  people of Afghanistan.”

The Taliban  have been pushed out of  many population centers and have  failed to  regain territory they held before  the surge of U.S. troops  in 2010. But  they are expected to test Afghan forces  as U.S. and allied  troops  withdraw over the coming two years. All foreign  combat forces  are to be  gone by Dec. 31, 2014.

Coalition officials, including Obama  administration officials, had   previously cited the reported 2012 drop in  Taliban attacks as among a  number of signs  that the insurgency was in  decline and that the Afghans  could take on more of  the fighting burden.

Last  Tuesday, on his final day as defense secretary, Leon Panetta   indicated,  after The Associated Press revealed that ISAF  had  incorrectly reported  Taliban  attack figures for 2012, that he was  disappointed about the  error.

The error came to light after ISAF  removed from its website  a set of  statistics that included its tally of “enemy  initiated  attacks,” which  it had said declined by 7 percent over 2011 levels.  When  the AP  inquired about the missing figures, ISAF  said they had been  removed  because they contained errors. It blamed the  mistake on a  failure to  include Afghan-provided attack figures.

Graybeal said Tuesdsay that the  corrected 2012 figures will not be published.

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