Afghanistan: "Taliban advance, Italians on the front line" Milex report, 7,5 billion dollars spent. “Very critical” situation.
In an Afghanistan where the Taliban are far from defeated, but on the contrary are gaining ground every day, the situation in the west of the country where the Italian military is deployed is "very critical": who, to face the "insurgency ", Are" back on the front line ". This is what we read in the report "Afghanistan, sixteen years later", drawn up by the Milex Observatory, which mainly deals with military spending. And those supported by the various countries for the war in Afghanistan amount so far to 900 billion dollars, of which 7,5 has been paid out by Italy. In a year, from November 2015 to November 2016, the percentage of territory torn or contended by the Taliban to Kabul's government would have passed from 28 to 43 per cent. Several districts have also been regained in the four western provinces under the control of the Italian military command, Farah, Badghis, Herat and Ghor, where they continue to fight. And the response of the Italian soldiers, "ordered by NATO - writes Milex - was the return to the front line, three years after retreating to the base in Herat". And therefore, "since the beginning of 2017, small contingents called" Expeditionary Advisory Packages "have returned to the front, not to fight but to support locally (no longer remotely as happened in recent years) the counter-offensives of the Afghan Army . Special forces also take part in these activities (the Rangers of the 4th Alpini in support of the Afghan commandos) and A-129 Mangusta attack helicopters, to protect Italian personnel ”. The Italians - continues the report - are currently about a thousand and constitute the second foreign contingent, after the American one. Cost of what is defined as "the longest and most expensive military campaign in the history of Italy", since November 2001 and taking into account only the "official expenses", 7 and a half billion dollars, out of a total of 900 of the entire international coalition and "against 260 million invested in civil cooperation initiatives". The number of civilian victims of the conflict is high: about 35.000, according to a “very underestimated” figure and which does not take into account the “indirect victims, due to the precarious living conditions linked to the conflict” calculated at 360 by the American Brown University. According to the UN mission Unama "in the last seven years (2009-2016) the number of children killed has tripled and that of injured children has tripled". The Milex report then challenges the progress that would have been made by the population in the 16 years of presence of foreign troops: "apart from a slight decline in illiteracy (from 68% to 62%) and a very modest improvement in the condition of women (limited to major urban areas) ", Afghanistan" still has the highest infant mortality rate in the world today, among the lowest life expectancies on the planet and is still one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the world ". The drug business "has flourished since 2001" and the fact that people want to escape from this country is demonstrated by the fact that "among the asylum seekers in Europe in recent years, Afghans are the most numerous after the Syrians".
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