WHERE would we be without the internet? All the gritty detail of a near decade-long war is laid bare online, tens of thousands of once secret US military reports made public by a website specially designed to leak classified information. And in this same virtual realm, the top US commander fired back with an angry response to the revelations - via a blunt message on Twitter.
''Appalled by classified docs leak to WikiLeaks & decision to post. It changes nothing on Afghanistan strategy or our relationship w/Pakistan,'' wrote Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs.
Despite his brash declaration, such a massive leak does mark a change. This is an age where information is power. The disclosure this week tipped the balance away from officialdom - briefly at least - where control is an art perfected by countless checks, gatekeepers and systems. Unseen civilian casualties came to light, along with suspected use of heat-seeking missiles against coalition forces. Pakistan's perfidy again seemed plain.
The disclosure of the ''Kabul war diary'' - as WikiLeaks dubbed the reports - has once more charged the debate over Afghanistan. Supporters of the conflict have labelled the disclosure as treachery or belittled WikiLeaks for revealing nothing new, while at the same time claiming the documents endanger the troops.
Opponents have leapt to decry the cover-ups and blatant official spin the documents expose, while embracing as unvarnished truth single and often uncorroborated reports made in the field.
But due to its sheer size - amounting to more than 90,000 intelligence snippets, military contact reports and diplomatic cables - the full ramifications of this leak are only slowly becoming clear. Plenty of unanswered questions are swirling around in the aftermath.
For the Western public, the reports offer a fresh angle on this grinding and frustrating war. So far this appears to have merely amplified popular discontent with the conflict, rather than generating calls for a dramatic change of course or withdrawal. US President Barack Obama has even sought to use the leak - which covers 2004 to 2009, mostly the period when the Bush administration was in office - to justify his decision last year to throw an extra 30,000 American troops into the fray.
''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,'' he said this week.
''For seven years, we failed to implement a strategy adequate to the challenge in this region, the region from which the 9/11 attacks were waged and other attacks against the United States and our friends and allies have been planned. That's why we've substantially increased our commitment there, insisted upon greater accountability from our partners in Afghanistan and Pakistan, developed a new strategy that can work, and put in place a team, including one of our finest generals, to execute that plan.''
This is the positive spin. Obama was forced to send a new commander to Afghanistan because last month the former top general, Stanley McChrystal, derided the President in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.
And while the media focus this week has understandably been to sift the documents for anything new, over time the reports will build a much better sense of past difficulties faced and mistakes made by both the international community and the government in Kabul. As that fine detail gradually emerges, officials fear the disclosures could become a catalyst for wider public anger.
There are detailed reports, for example, about the Afghan army fighting Afghan police - so called ''green-on-green'' incidents between the same outfits to which the West hopes eventually to hand over responsibility for security in the country.
One report from October 2006 tells of foreign forces responding to a commotion at the Panjwayi bazaar in Kandahar province in the nation's south. Police were seen hassling a local vendor, trying to ''take/steal a propane cylinder'' from a stall. ''The vendor got upset so the [Afghan National Police] murdered him.'' Another man was injured in the fight. A group of Afghan soldiers who happened to be across the street then fired on the police, taking them into custody and searching their compound. They found rockets, mines and detailed maps of the district.
In another report, the Afghan army had set an ambush along the road to Gardez, not far from the Tora Bora redoubt of Osama bin Laden. But the police were not warned of the operation. The army fired on a police vehicle driving along the road, injuring the driver and killing a passenger.
What the documents make clear is the relentless battle to hold Afghanistan together. In a few picked at random, the reports show the persistent threat posed by insurgents - ''5 or 6 pop shots fired'' in one brief note - and helicopters forced to dodge a constant barrage of small-arms fire. ''Auto dispensed flares and manoeuvred away … no damage or injuries reported.''
In other documents, the infamous Taliban night letters that warn local villagers against collaborating with foreigners are transcribed and sent back to base. ''Noses and ears will be cut off from any women seen going to and from the school,'' is the grisly Taliban promise. A later threat is made to cut off a principal's head after he is accused of being an American spy.
The reports also shed light on the plight of Afghans displaced by the fighting and hint at the overflow of refugees that has become such a vexed issue in Australian politics. In May 2007, the American embassy in Kabul reported that Iran had deported some 52,000 Afghans living and working across the border. ''There are serious concerns about where and how they will be absorbed by communities in Afghanistan,'' the report says, speculating the deportation was designed to put pressure on Kabul.
At almost the same time, more than 200,000 Afghans were moving back across the border from Pakistan. While many had help from the United Nations, it was apparent that not all the refugees were willing. ''Pakistan began the process of physically closing two Afghan refugee camps by bulldozing several buildings,'' reported the American embassy in Islamabad.
MOSTLY, the reports are the view afforded when you lie flat on the ground and stare through the weeds. This is Afghanistan in thousands of small pieces, a shattered picture long-time CIA official Robert Baer finds depressing.
''The quality of the intelligence is just awful. Basically, we don't know who the enemy is,'' he tells The Age. ''In the country you're occupying, you should have a pretty good picture of what's going on.''
Baer, who has long experience in the Middle East and also worked in Afghanistan, believes much of the information looks to be the result of walk-in informers - ''intelligence pedlars'' - looking for a cash payment or some other reward for passing on gossip. In one report from 2005, a ''fairly reliable'' official contact gave coalition forces a letter supposedly written by Taliban leader Mullah Omar. By patching together vague references and fleeting sightings, a secret commando unit went on the hunt for 70 insurgent commanders.
''It's scary that they are using this intelligence to make raids,'' Baer says. While there were a number of successes, reports show these ''capture/kill'' operations also went badly awry, with civilian lives lost as a result.
The ramifications of the leak go much further than exposing the past failings in the war. For Afghan and foreign allies, such an unprecedented breach of national secrets puts strain on their trust in America. That faith will need to be rebuilt, from the informer on the ground all the way to the top levels of government.
Baer is sceptical of the many claims Pakistan is intimately bound to the Taliban. Certainly there is some involvement, he says, but the evidence remains scratchy. ''I want proof,'' he says, ''names, dates. I don't see that here.'' As to claims Pakistan's former spy chief Hamid Gul is the arch villain behind the Taliban, Baer simply laughs. In his retirement, Gul has become a television commentator, a prominent critic of the US and a relentless self-promoter.
Baer sees the release of the documents not so much as a policy setback as an intelligence setback. ''Anyone who is considering betraying the Taliban would have to think twice,'' he says.
Indeed, WikiLeaks has been criticised for releasing material that includes the names and in some cases the telephone numbers of informers. But the Australian founder of the website, Julian Assange, is unapologetic. ''We contacted the White House as a group before we released this material and asked them to help assist in going through it to make sure that no innocent names came out, and the White House did not accept that request,'' he told the ABC this week.
As with Obama's comments, this too is the positive spin. Assange admits WikiLeaks chose to release the documents before going through them entirely. That the US administration refused to assist is no excuse for publishing material that put lives in danger. And on this score, some allege the leaks will benefit a bitter enemy with insight into the day-to-day operations of its opponent. James Brown - a former Australian army captain who served in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2009 - is one who fears the leak will cost soldiers' lives.
''I don't think WikiLeaks or the papers are actually qualified to make a judgment on what they can release and what they can't,'' he says. His concern centres on the inadvertent disclosure of coalition tactics. The reports give details about battle formations, such as how far convoys can travel or the way troops work in teams.
The volume of the material - and the fact the reports are in English - is no impediment to the Taliban scouring the documents, says Brown.
''In some sense it's almost easier for them. If you can search by location and date, say look up Tagab Valley, there's a lot of information.''
This battle for information is where the political debate over Afghanistan in the West has settled - showing progress in a long war, or signs of fatigue.
Curiously, Australia has produced two of the most prominent champions on either side of the debate: Assange, the ascetic computer hacker turned WikiLeaks founder, and David Kilcullen, the former army officer and fervent advocate of counter-insurgency warfare.
The WikiLeaks disclosure will not end the fight, but it will hasten all sides. Link
