Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was reported as saying at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week that 45,000 Afghan security forces have died since September 2014.
As the security crisis continues, SIGAR also noted the US has dramatically increased air attacks, dropping 6,823 bombs in the first 11 months of 2018.
"This year's figure was already 56 percent higher than the total number of munitions released in 2017 [4,361], and is more than five times the total released in 2016," SIGAR said in its report.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which has documented civilian casualties in Afghanistan since 2009, said in its latest October report there were 8,050 civilian casualties during the first nine months of the year, including 313 deaths and 336 injuries caused by US and Afghan air attacks.
The Taliban, which was removed from power by the US-led forces in 2001, has waged a bloody armed rebellion to defeat the Western-backed government in Kabul for nearly 18 years.
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