The leak of classified reports about the war in Afghanistan has been dismissed by Washington as documenting a period that is over. Wish it were so, postulates Graham Usher The Obama administration is trying to limit the damage caused by the leak of 75,000 military reports that show in grim relief America's losing war in Afghanistan, while raising tart questions about its current strategy. The files -- released by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeak -- tell us little that is not already known about Afghanistan. Graft is rampant throughout a government that barely functions beyond Kabul. Civilians are killed in error or callousness by insurgent and occupier alike. And the CIA runs "Afghanistan's" spy agency as a subsidiary and sends death squads to hunt down insurgents or alleged Al-Qaeda fugitives throughout the land and sometimes across the border into Pakistan. The reports span the years 2004-2009, the era of George W Bush's mock "nation building" enterprise in Afghanistan that all US officials now concede was a disaster. That has been superseded by Obama's new "counterinsurgency" strategy, they say. It was launched with some brio last December and resourced with 30,000 more United States soldiers and 33.5 billion more US dollars. In other words, the reports are history, said Obama, in his sole public response to the leaked archive on 27 July. "The fact is these documents don't reveal any issues that haven't already informed our public debate on Afghanistan. Indeed, they point to the same challenges that led me to conduct an extensive review of our policy last fall." Yet the leaks not only survey a failed past policy. They signal why Obama's new strategy is also unlikely to succeed. Obama's war plan rests on two planks. One is to augment, train and mentor the Afghan military and police forces so that they can eventually turn the war against the Taliban and let US and NATO soldiers go home. The other is to work in partnership with the Pakistan army to close down Afghan Taliban and other sanctuaries inside Pakistan that supply arms, men and logistics to the insurgency. The reports expose the Afghan army and police forces as venal, violent and loathed by the people they are meant to protect. This is hardly news. Many are commanded by Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara warlords who fought the mainly Pashtun Taliban prior to the US-led occupation. For them "policing" is either booty or the prosecution of a civil war by other means. It hasn't changed under Obama, despite more officers and a Congressional bill topping $25 billion. On 30 July the New York Times ran a report showing how the Taliban had set up a shadow government in Baghlan in northern Afghanistan, a province where, even during its rule, it barely had a foothold. This had little to do with ideological fealty. The Taliban's rise grew on the popular revulsion to a corrupt judiciary, scant government services and a local "security" force that was predatory, sectarian and despised, especially among the Pashtuns. The same shift in favour of the Taliban is happening in the Pashtun south and east, only more so. Likewise the reports show the Pakistan army -- especially its Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) -- playing both ends during the nine-year war. It accommodated certain post-9/11 US demands, usually the killing, capturing or "rendering" of Al-Qaeda suspects into CIA custody. But it also supplied shelter, passage and arms to the Afghan Taliban and other pro-Pakistani, insurgents like the Haqqani network. The reason is known to every analyst in Pakistan. The army and the ISI want the Taliban back in some form of government in Kabul to keep the "enemy" India at bay and ensure that a future Afghan polity is as friendly to Islamabad as the current one is to India, Iran and Russia. That's still the army strategy, despite a US military $2.5 billion aid package this year urging it to act otherwise. It's true the ISI has granted the CIA more latitude to kill more people by drones inside Pakistan, including Pakistan Taliban militants the army itself is fighting in the border areas. But it has made no real move against the Afghan Taliban or its sanctuaries. There is only one way that stance may change, says Pakistan analyst Ahmed Rashid. "Policy towards Pakistan's military can't move forward unless there's a role for Pakistan in Afghanistan, which can only come about through an acceptance of reconciliation." Reconciliation is Afghan President Karzai's policy of trying to reach a negotiated deal with the Taliban based on power-sharing in Kabul. The Afghan Taliban has signalled acceptance of it if the US becomes party to the talks. The Pakistan army says it is ready to help shepherd Haqqani and the Afghan Taliban to the table. Many NATO countries accept that talks with the Taliban are inevitable. But the US opposes them. While paying lip service to "President Karzai's efforts to negotiate with the Taliban", it has vetoed any talks with Afghan Taliban leaders like Mullah Omar and doubts the Pakistani army has the wherewithal to deliver Haqqani (a force Washington believes is more beholden to Al-Qaeda than the ISI). Nor does it want a role for regional states in Kabul, not only from Pakistan but also from Iran and Russia. Instead Obama and his generals believe their current strategy can, if not defeat the Taliban, then so weaken it that it accepts a final settlement on America's terms. This is not only unlikely. It risks bequeathing Afghanistan another civil war where its neighbours arm local proxies to fill the void left by the US and NATO's slow but inevitable retreat, says Rashid. There is more continuity between WikiLeaks and the Obama era than the president thinks. In both you seek in vain for an American policy for dealing with the insurgency or addressing the regional conflicts that sustain it.
