Asia-Pacific

UN report reveals up to 12,000 Taliban deaths in a year

Insurgency will continue to be resilient as long as it receives illicit funding, which last year amounted to $155m, says report

Afghan security forces clear and inspect the site of a car bomb blast at a police checkpoint near the Kabul Education University in Kabul on Saturday. At least 10 people were killed in the explosion that struck near the site where Afghan elders are set to vote on a long-term security agreement with the United States. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
Afghan security forces clear and inspect the site of a car bomb blast at a police checkpoint near the Kabul Education University in Kabul on Saturday. At least 10 people were killed in the explosion that struck near the site where Afghan elders are set to vote on a long-term security agreement with the United States. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
Jon Boone
Mon Nov 18 2013 - 01:00

As many as 12,000 Taliban fighters may have been killed in Afghanistan in the past year, according to a UN report which warns that despite the successes of the Afghan military, the insurgency will remain resilient as long as it enjoys a wide range of illicit income streams.

According to Afghan government sources and “Taliban internal statistics” quoted in a special report to the UN security council, between 10,000 and 12,000 rebels are thought to have been killed.

In the same period, more than 2,000 Afghan soldiers and police have died.

The US-led Nato alliance has long refused to publish information about the number of Taliban fighters it believes have died on the battlefield.

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The report, by the committee in charge of the UN’s list of senior members of the Taliban subject to international sanctions, says Afghanistan’s army and police have performed well in the past 12 months, even succeeding in taking back some Taliban-controlled territory.

A Taliban effort to overrun towns in 2013 had not “led to significant gains for the Taliban, who have neither managed to seize population centres nor gain popular support”, the report says.

But with violence in the country soaring to levels “not seen since 2010”, the report gives little hope of a respite in fighting as the country prepares for the end of the Nato combat mission next year.

The Taliban remains a powerful and well-funded force, the report says, with the movement raising $155 million in 2012 from illegal opium production.

Although the amount of protection money that insurgents receive from security companies employed to guard Nato supply convoys has fallen as foreign forces close bases, the report says 2014 is expected to be a bumper year as the alliance ships huge amounts of equipment out of the country.

It also warns that the Taliban is skimming profit off illegally mined gemstones.

Afghanistan has an estimated $1 trillion worth of mineral reserves, which it is hoped will eventually help to pay for the country’s 352,000-strong security force.

The report says Kabul needs to do much more to prevent high-grade industrial explosives reaching the hands of Taliban bomb-makers, whose weapons are becoming "increasingly sophisticated and technically advanced" and now account for 80 per cent of army and police casualties. – (Guardian service)