Afghanistan: 92,000 Papers, No Answers

The public has long since turned against a war in Afghanistan that is no more explicable after the publication of 92,000 new documents than it was before. Their publication represents a watershed nonetheless.

There won’t be any secret war in Afghanistan. As in Iraq, what is reported militarily and politically from Afghanistan spreads across the globe, for the most part correctly assessed and understood.

That’s why the world knows that there is a good chance the international community’s plan for Afghanistan will fail. The country apparently cannot be pacified. Life there will continue to be governed by power, hunger and displacement, as it has been for the past several decades.

The blame for this misery rests only partially with a global community that has, under the leadership of the United States, invested its political, military, and more importantly its humanitarian capital, in Afghanistan. More than 40 nations have been motivated by sincere interest to bring peace and development to Afghanistan. The messages emerging from the rubble of the World Trade Center were that no nation should ever again be allowed to become a center for terrorism, that no crumbling nation should ever again develop into an epicenter of discontent.

The international community has come to realize that it has bitten off more than it can chew. It will have to continue living with crumbling nations and it will be unable to push through its concept of stability everywhere. That’s called being realistic.

The Afghan tale of woe and the frustration of an international community working for a lasting peace may be read in the 91,713 documents published by WikiLeaks. Nearly 92,000 authentic reports from the Afghan and Pakistani fronts; 92,000 episodes of war, skirmishes, drone attacks, smugglers, drug dealers, agents and double agents, political opportunists, two-bit racketeers and big time gang leaders.

New Details

In total, this report paints a depressing picture of a war-ridden region with indistinct enemies, changing loyalties and fuzzy war goals. There is a strong impression that the goal of the Taliban — and the goal of the general populace — is to fight. Above all, there is the impression that the 46 nations invested in this inhospitable area will lose nothing because there is nothing to win.

The journalists at Britain’s Guardian, America’s New York Times and Germany’s Der Spiegel deserve credit for processing and assessing this information. The achievement was the processing of such a vast number of documents in which there was very little sensational news. Generally, the documents deal with things that were already known. But there are numerous new details to be processed concerning Pakistan, the danger of antiaircraft missiles and the extent of targeted killings by American special units.

What’s sensational is the extent of resignation that can be inferred from the documents. The sheer number of reports citing failures shows that over many years no one has been able to change the basic dynamics of the conflict. Regardless of what efforts are made by foreign powers, the country never functioned according to their own rules. But even that’s no longer news.

That is why it is wrong to compare the Afghanistan documents to the Pentagon Papers. Those documents, published by the New York Times in 1971, suggested that the Johnson administration systematically lied about the extent of the engagement in Vietnam, and the real political goals behind it. Those revelations resulted in massive protests and fueled anti-war sentiment.

Many Papers, Few Answers

The Afghanistan papers won’t result in any such demonstrations. The majority has already turned against this war on which not even 92,000 new documents can shed any light. Still, their publication represents a turning point in the age of the all-seeing and all-knowing machine called the Internet.

The Internet is becoming a dangerous factor in war because secrecy is critical to success on the battlefield. Whoever breaks that secrecy and is able to disseminate such large volumes of documents can influence war. Whether this is a positive or a negative development is debatable, but it can’t be ignored.

These papers have the potential to destroy final hopes for military and political success in Afghanistan. In the United States, they will mainly fuel anti-war sentiment among the public, and just four months prior to congressional elections and six months before Congress gets an updated evaluation on the progress of what is being called the final Afghanistan strategy. No president can explain to the voters how he intends to counter 92,000 documents of frustration with a message of hope.

But these papers don’t explain Afghanistan’s real quandary. The United States and its 46-nation coalition cannot really understand: Why is Afghanistan always denied any kind of peaceful orderliness? So many papers, so few answers.