The publication of several thousand classified documents about the war in Afghanistan, by Wikileaks, is given extensive coverage in The Guardian. Read the lead story here, an editorial here, the main link page is here. On Wikileaks, the background is here, and the files can be accessed (or downloaded in their entirety) here.

Some of the comments going around (especially on The Guardian‘s website) seem to suggest that there is nothing new here. There have certainly been reports of black forces operations, unmanned drones directed from bases in Nevada, the civilian casualties, the attacks on NATO and the funding and direction from Pakistan and Iran. But what this site provides is detail and evidence. With work, maybe the casualties will become not simply numbers in body counts, but people, with lives, families and stories.

A lot of work is needed to analyse these, and having the raw data available will mean this is done by a range of people – the sort of thing possible with the way media and the web are changing. The Guardian has made an interesting start here. Juan Cole has some discussion here.