WASHINGTON: Secret documents reveal US losing war in Afghanistan, MilitaryGeneral hide failures from the American public.
Hundreds of pages of official documents, obtained by *The Washington Postlink*,show that the United States is losing the war in Afghanistan because itnever had clear objectives, says a report published on Monday.
“Some US officials wanted to use the war to turn Afghanistan into ademocracy. Others wanted to transform Afghan culture and elevate women’srights. Still others wanted to reshape the regional balance of power amongPakistan, India, Iran and Russia,” the Post observed.
The Post spent months investigating this report, which is based on 2,000pages of unpublished documents, 600 interviews and thousands of previouslyclassified memos dictated by former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The confidential documents — obtained through lengthy litigation — revealthat top US officials misled the American public about the war inAfghanistan in order to conceal the likelihood of failure in the nearly20-year effort.
The documents also show how US military commanders struggled to define whothey were fighting and why. The answered questions included: “Was Al Qaedathe enemy, or the Taliban? Was Pakistan a friend or an adversary? Whatabout the Islamic State and the bewildering array of foreign jihadists, letalone the warlords on the CIA’s payroll?”
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The 40-page report by Marin Strmecki, a civilian adviser to Mr Rumsfeld,identified corruption and incompetence as the main reasons or the “enormouspopular discontent” against the Afghan government.
The documents were part of a lengthy government report titled “LessonsLearned” that examined “the root failures” of the war effort throughinterviews with more than 600 people.
The interviews show US officials acknowledging that “their warfightingstrategies were fatally flawed, and that Washington wasted enormous sums ofmoney — almost a trillion dollars — trying to remake Afghanistan into amodern nation”.
“Several of those interviewed described explicit and sustained efforts bythe US government to deliberately mislead the public,” the Post reported.“They said it was common at military headquarters in Kabul — and at theWhite House — to distort statistics to make it appear the United States waswinning the war when that was not the case.”
