WASHINGTON — The United States has spent about $65 billion to build Afghanistan’s army and police forces, and until this month the American-led coalition regularly shared details on how the money was being put to use and on the Afghan forces’ progress.
But as of this month, ask a question as seemingly straightforward as the number of Afghan soldiers and police officers in uniform, and the military coalition offers a singularly unrevealing answer: The information is now considered classified.
The American outlay for weapons and gear for Afghan forces? Classified. The cost of teaching Afghan soldiers to read and write? Even that is now a secret.
The military command’s explanation for making the change is that such information could endanger American and Afghan lives, even though the data had been released every quarter over the past six years, and Afghan officials do not consider the information secret.
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In the latest report, that information has been reduced to a few top-line spending figures, such as how much has been spent on the transportation for the army ($11.5 billion) or the total spent on police training and operations ($3.5 billion).
Where the inspector general once offered breakdowns of what that money had bought, its report now includes boilerplate saying that details “can be found in Appendix E of this report” — that is, the classified section of the report, which even many of the people who work in Congress cannot view, and is completely off limits to the general public.
A version of this article appears in print on January 29, 2015, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Suddenly Goes Quiet on Effort to Bolster Afghan Forces. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
