Julian Assange must be feeling pretty good about himself right now, after releasing over 90,000 pages of classified military documents regarding the War in Afghanistan. My own look into the documents shows that the collection itself is relatively unbiased, reporting incidents caused by both the U.S. military, the Taliban, and Afghan police and soliders. Yet, Assange again would have us believe that there is more bad than good in this leak. In an interview with the Guardian, he particularly focuses on the top-secret, Taliban-hunting Task Force 373, and some the friendly-fire incidents they have been involved with. And exposing such cover-ups (my understanding is that it was never admitted that the incident was friendly-fire) is what Julian Assange is all about.
However, there is much more in this release than reports about top-secret assassination units. Rather, some of them confirm what many commentators have said all along: that now is not the time to leave Afghanistan. I’m not entirely sure if calls for the U.S. to withdrawal from Afghanistan is an effect Assange hoped that releasing these documents would have. However, now that the cat is out of the bag, I think the truth is more likely to have the opposite effect.
Indeed the problems in Afghanistan are great, and it’s more than just the Taliban using heat-seeking missiles. Several reports outline problems between Afghan military troops, and between the Afghan military and the Afghan police, that show they need more training:
- Such as Afghan police shooting each other because of arguments.
- Or getting high on opium, and getting into an argument that results in a border policeman dead.
- Skirmishes between police and the army.
- Or an attack killing 23 people at a possibly peaceful demonstration.
- Or, police improperly using their guns.
- And, finally, corruption:
Incident Report: Brutal Police ChiefThis report began with an account of Afghan soldiers and police officers harassing and beating local civilians for refusing to cooperate in a search. It then related the story of a district police commander who forced himself on a 16-year-old girl. When a civilian complained, the report continued, “The district commander ordered his bodyguard to open fire on the AC [Afghan civilian]. The bodyguard refused, at which time the district commander shot [the bodyguard] in front of the AC.”
Then there is the insurgency, which is still clearly a thorn in the side of the U.S.:
There’s also the new, foreign, insurgency. Everyone knows about the ISI’s assistance to the Taliban, of course. It’s their worst kept secret. But Iran, apparently not wanting to be outdone, has embarked on its own mission.
Finally, warlordism appears to remain rampant in parts of the country:
NOV. 22, 2009 | KANDAHAR PROVINCE Incident Report: Illegal Checkpoint
A private security convoy, ferrying fuel from Kandahar to Oruzgan, was stopped by what was thought to be 100 insurgents armed with assault rifles and PK machine guns, a report said.
It turned out the convoy had been halted by “the local Chief of Police,” who was “demanding $2000-$3000 per truck” as a kind of toll. The chief, said the report, from NATO headquarters in Southern Afghanistan, “states he needs the money to run his operation.”
The chief was not actually a police chief. He was Matiullah Khan, a warlord and an American-backed ally of President Karzai who was arguably Oruzgan’s most powerful man. He had a contract, the Ministry of Interior said, to protect the road so NATO’s supply convoys could drive on it, but he had apparently decided to extort money from the convoys himself.
Late in the day, Mr. Matiullah, after many interventions, changed his mind. The report said that friendly forces “report that the COMPASS convoy is moving again and did not pay the fee required.”
Every report cited above happened in 2009, and after President Obama took office.
Now, I will admit that there is a chance that the surge of troops, who are only beginning to enter the country, may have an opportunity to make great progress on all of these things before Obama’s goal of beginning a withdrawal next year. However, when you think logically about it, the Iraq surge took about a year to a year and a half before it produced measurable results. With the surge having only started in June, that means, it could take until 2012 before we see much progress with the Afghan surge.
Though, when you take into account that the terrain of Afghanistan is much different than Iraq, and that is problems are two-fold (insurgents and warlords), it really is up in the air how long it will take for the military to complete the job. And the newly released documents make it much harder for Obama to claim that the problems facing Afghanistan simply need a little mopping up, since the situation it present is much messier.
That is perhaps why Vice President Joe Biden last week seemed to change his tune about what will happen when the withdrawal date comes along (emph. mine):
Vice President Joe Biden said Sunday that next year’s drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan could be as small as a few thousand troops, but added that the numbers were less important than that the war effort be transitioned from U.S. to local control. [...]
[...] Biden confirmed reports in a recent book by journalist Jonathan Alter that he had indicated that a large number of troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan in summer 2011. But the vice president insisted that he was trying to explain that President Obama had not been outmaneuvered by the military, which opposed a deadline for troop withdrawal.
“The military signed on” to Obama’s Afghanistan policy, Biden said. “Everybody signed on to not a deadline, but a transition, a beginning of a transition.”
If you believe that, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you. I do think it’s possible to “begin a transition” with a lot less troops, but it is impossible to gain control of the situation on the ground if you don’t have enough troops there. I think that, sometime last week, the administration gave up on its attempts to stop the WikiLeaks release, and resigned itself to a smaller withdrawal of troops, because it knew it wouldn’t be able to successfully combat the truth that reports like those cited above would create.
If that is the case, then Julian Assange has succeeded where Republicans and even hawkish Democrats could not: keeping the War in Afghanistan going until the job is done.
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