Sunday, June 19, 2011

90% of captured Taliban were civilians

Official US military data shows that almost 90 percent of the over 4,000 suspected “Taliban” captured by US forces in Afghanistan in the second half of 2010 were civilians who were released within days.


In December 2010, commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan General David Petraeus claimed in an interview that a total of 4,100 Taliban rank and file had been captured and 2,000 others had been killed in the space of six months.

The claim followed another set of misleading figures that had been released three months earlier and which said US Special Operations Forces had captured 1,355 rank and file Taliban militants, killed 1,031, while having killed or captured 365 middle or high-ranking Taliban members through May and July of the same year.

The figures were apparently released for media publicity and intended to restore US reputation over its losses in Afghanistan, IPS reported.

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