WikiLeaks Effects are Mostly Political

WikiLeaks Effects are Mostly Political
Ivan Eland | August 03, 2010

The 92,000 classified U.S. government documents leaked to WikiLeaks.org didn't reveal many new shocking truths about the U.S. military quagmire in Afghanistan. The facts on the ground have been well known publicly for some time -- that the Taliban adversary is getting stronger and is being actively assisted by a faux ally (Pakistan) to whom the United States is shoveling billions, the Afghan government is corrupt, and the U.S. has killed civilians.

The Obama administration is trying to spin its way out of this significant public relations problem by saying that the period of the documents, from 2004 until December 2009, was mostly during the Bush administration and before a surge and a move to a counterinsurgency strategy by the incoming administration. However, only one of the outcomes the documents mentioned has since changed -- the United States has tried to reduce the number of civilian casualties to attempt to win the "hearts and minds" of the Afghan people.

Yet, after almost nine years of U.S. occupation, even reducing civilian casualties will not likely make the United States more popular in Afghanistan. One of the principal problems with counterinsurgency warfare -- and one of the main reasons why guerrilla tactics are the most successful form of war in human history -- is that local populations rarely give foreign occupiers, even relatively benevolent ones, the benefit of the doubt. (Remember that British forces in the American colonies -- whom the British government allowed to be tried in a colonial court for defending themselves against attack by a colonial mob during the "Boston Massacre" -- were still deeply hated.)

Furthermore, in Afghanistan, the United States is less likely to be able to turn significant portions of a more zealous opposition, as it did in Iraq, by paying part of it to switch sides. (In Iraq, this gambit was not a bad short-term strategy to reduce the violence, but it hasn't solved the long-term problem of large-scale carnage returning because of the deep ethno-sectarian rivalries within that country; a similar long-term dynamic could afflict the ethnically diverse Afghanistan.)

Although most of the Taliban may not be won over with money, they might be enticed into a settlement that would allow them to rule their Pashtun homeland in southern Afghanistan. To obtain this outcome, the United States would have to give up its attempt to strengthen the historically weak Afghan central government, allow the resumption of more traditional decentralized governance, and totally withdraw its forces from the country.

Unfortunately, the cockroaches are getting bolder, and trying to shoot out the lightbulbs as they appear....