KABUL - The United States dropped 7,423 munitions in Afghanistan in 2019, the highest number recorded in any year over the last one decade, according to US Air Force data.
US aircraft in 2018 dropped 7,362 bombs and other munitions, which had previously been the most munitions dropped in a year since 2009, when 4,147 weapons were released.
“The US has been very explicitly using stepped-up attacks on the Taliban as a form of leverage-seeking,” Laurel Miller, former U.S. acting Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said as quoted by Stars and Stipes, adding that the Taliban also sees violence as its main form of leverage.
After cancelling months of peace talks with the Taliban over a deadly attack in Kabul, US President Donald Trump in September said that the Taliban had “never been hit harder than it is being hit right now.”
However, talks between the sides resumed last month, with focus on a reduction in violence. (1TV NEWS)