While U.S. President Donald Trump claims that the end of the war in Afghanistan is near, without making any real decision to do so, a recent report shows that more than 2,000 people died from combat during the U.S. 'reconstruction' of the Asian nation.
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The reconstruction and stabilization missions carried out by the United States on Afghan territory have caused more than 2,200 deaths and more than 2,900 injuries from 17 April 2002 to 31 December 2018, according to a report by the Special General Inspectorate for the Reconstruction of Afghanistan (SIGAR).
Also, of the total number of deaths, 1,578 were Afghans, 284 were U.S citizens, another 100 were military personnel from international coalition countries and 124 were third-country nationals.
According to SIGAR, another 1,182 people were kidnaped or are missing, most of whom are also Afghan nationals (1,004 people).
These figures are in addition to casualties in actual fighting with the Taliban and other militant groups, in re-supply missions or attacks on the Afghan government and military forces, and others not related to "reconstruction" activities.
In his triumphalist State of the Union speech on February 4, Trump spoke of ending the longest war in U.S. history and said that the U.S. military has made progress in Afghanistan and peace negotiations with the Taliban militant group are underway. But facts point to another direction.
The U.S. still has approximately 13,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and has not made any decision to return them to the U.S.
The U.S. pretext for starting a war against Afghanistan was to capture and kill the leader of the Islamist group al-Qaeda, responsible for the attack on the Twin Towers in New York, on September 11, 2001, where almost 3,000 people died.
However, although the terrorist Bin Laden was found in Pakistan and killed in the year 2011, U.S. troops and their NATO allies maintained the lost fight against the resurgence of the Taliban.