Julian Assange, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks, may have done the world a favour by revealing American war secrets in Afghanistan and bringing to light many unsavoury aspects of the nine-year conflict. The revelations could further build up public opinion against the already unpopular war and help bring it to an end.

Assange, worried that he may be arrested if he travelled to the US but still defiant, has threatened to reveal more. It has whetted the appetite for further disclosures because WikiLeaks, devoted to exposing secrets worldwide, is said to be in possession of another 15,000 classified documents after having revealed around 77,000. According to the Australian whistleblower, the remaining war diaries containing quality intelligence information were withheld for the removal of informants’ names in what Assange described as a “harm minimisation” process.

This is a favour by him to the Americans and their paid informants, whether Afghans, Pakistanis or others, because those spying for the US and collaborating with it against their own people will remain hidden from the public eye and escape the revenge of the militants. It is another matter, though, that the Afghan Taliban and their allies have their own effective intelligence network, and many of these informants will be eventually exposed and meet their fate, or may have met it already.

In fact, it has been reported that some of the already revealed documents contain names of Afghan informants or potential Taliban defectors, or reveal the identity of their fathers and villages. For such people to remain unexposed is difficult in close-knit Afghan and Pakhtun tribal societies unless the person moves to some faraway place to avoid harm. In that case, the person’s utility of gathering intelligence in a specific area is diminished. However, there has been no report yet that any life has been endangered following the WikiLeaks revelations, despite a statement by the Afghan Taliban that they were studying the material on the website to find out the identities of the informants.

WikiLeaks, known for its anti-war views, calls itself the intelligence agency of the people. It says it is a public service committed to protecting anyone wishing to share information that is in people’s interest. Its Afghan War Diaries follow other revelations made by WikiLeaks, but those were insignificant compared to the documents that have shaken up the US government and military, embarrassing those seeking to keep the lid on the ugly side of a war that has exposed the limits of the powers of America and its mighty Nato allies.

The classified documents could help explain how a supposedly “good” war in Afghanistan, compared to the “bad” one in Iraq, has gone from bad to worse. The war diaries, despite being old because they cover the period from January 2004 to December 2009 and based on raw and unverified reports recorded by American soldiers, intelligence agents, embassy staff and others, also point to the nexus between the Afghan Taliban and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Iranian assistance to the Taliban, the corruption of Afghan government officials and US attempts to cover up or play down civilian casualties during its military operations.

One wished there were also leaks about the earlier period of the Afghan war, from October 7, 2001—when the US invaded Afghanistan to destroy Al-Qaeda to avenge the 9/11 attacks and topple the Taliban regime for its harbouring of Osama bin Laden and his men—to December 2003. Such leaks would inform us about the failure of the US military to capture or kill bin Laden in his Tora Bora lair in December 2001 because it outsourced the mission to undependable, anti-Taliban Afghan warlords, and instead bombed unverifiable targets in forested mountains from the air.

That was the only realistic chance for the US during those past nine years to get bin Laden and corner most of his fighters in one known hideout. Leaks from that period could also throw light on the shortcomings of the US civil and military leadership in identifying the reasons for the gradual regrouping of the vanquished Taliban fighters and their subsequent resurgence.

And, hopefully, there will be WikiLeaks about the period from January 2010 onwards when President Barack Obama’s new war strategy for Afghanistan, perfected after months of deliberations, was put to test on the ground under the command of Gen Stanley McChrystal with the launching of the big offensive involving 25,000 troops against a few hundred Taliban fighters in the small farming sub-district of Marja in Helmand province.

Those fresh leaks could provide us the US Army’s insight on the causes of the failure of the Marja campaign and its adverse effects on the planned Kandahar offensive, which had to be delayed and reworked for a host of reasons, including the fear of another loss, the opposition by Afghan tribal elders and lawmakers and the sudden change of military command from the disgraced Gen McChrystal to Gen David Petraeus.

Leaks from that period would also put us wise about the massacre of Taliban prisoners in Kunduz, during their transportation to Mazar-e-Sharif in airless containers, and, finally, in the Qala-i-Jangi fort at the hands of Uzbek warlord Abdul Rasheed Dostum working in close cooperation with the US army. The US warplanes had bombed the fort holding the Taliban prisoners after their uprising in which an American Special Forces soldier was killed. The leaks could also disclose the huge amounts of money paid by the US to the Northern Alliance commanders, Taliban defectors and former Mujahideen leaders to buy their allegiance in the fight against the Taliban.

The US government and military officials are putting a brave face following the WikiLeaks revelations and claiming that the leaks didn’t compromise national security or cause any real harm to its Afghan military campaign. However, there was definitely a security lapse as no government or military would want its secrets and strategies to be exposed. A US army intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, has already been arrested and is being interrogated for allegedly passing on the classified Afghan war documents to WikiLeaks. Its owner, Assange, could himself face charges for causing security breach and the website carrying WikiLeaks may find it difficult to stay online.

WikiLeaks could cause further outrage among US government functionaries by revealing the remaining 15,000 Afghan War Diaries, releasing the video of the 2009 firefight in Garani village in south-western Afghanistan in which US troops allegedly killed 100 civilians, mostly children and women, and the reportedly 500,000 event reports from the Iraq War from 2004-2009.

The top US soldier Admiral Mike Mullen has said Assange may already have blood on his hands as the WikiLeaks revelations could endanger the lives of American soldiers and their Afghan allies. The WikiLeaks founder described the charge against him as “hypothetical blood” by pointing out that the US civil and military leaders had “real blood” on their hands in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also argued that they could be charged for committing war crimes.

The situation is developing into a fascinating struggle between a superpower and a lone warrior, though the latter is being assisted by anti-war campaigners and elements within the US military establishment leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks. It is all an inside job because only insiders have access to this kind of secret military information.

Governments and armies wage wars in the name of country and nation, but are unwilling to share information with people concerning the state of the war and the true costs and casualties. Every effort is made to hide facts, civilian deaths are downplayed and those killed are normally dubbed as enemy combatants. Former US defence secretary Robert McNamara, in his 1995 book The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, admitted that “we were wrong, totally wrong.” But that was too late and by then Vietnam had been ravaged by years of an unjust US-imposed war and thousands of American soldiers had died. The same is the case with the Afghan war, but the Americans should admit now instead of years later, that it is unnecessary and unwinnable. WikiLeaks revelations should make it easier for the US to arrive at such a decision.

The writer is resident editor of The News in Peshawar. Email: rahim yusufzai@yahoo.com