The Afghanistan war logs series of reports on the war in Afghanistan published by the Guardian is based on the US military's internal logs of the conflict between January 2004 and December 2009. The material, largely classified by the US as secret, was obtained by the whistleblower website Wikileaks, which has published the full archive. The Guardian, along with the New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel, was given access to the logs before publication to verify their authenticity and assess their significance.
A team of investigative reporters, regional specialists and database experts spent weeks combing the data for matters of public interest. After establishing the meaning of more than 400 abbreviations and military acronyms they were able to authenticate the logs by comparing them with other records and cross-checking with other sources. They were able to dismiss some of the more lurid intelligence reports as unfounded and establish that some aspects of the coalition's recording of civilian casualties is unreliable.
But taken together, the logs provide a revealing and important picture of how the war is being conducted: the continuing escalation of the conflict; the weakness of much coalition intelligence; and the gap between the polished account of the war offered for public consumption and the messy reality experienced by commanders on the ground. This is one side's raw, immediate first hand account of the conflict as it happened.
Although the material has a relatively low level of secrecy classification, the Guardian has taken care not to publish information that could identify intelligence sources, expose unknown intelligence-gathering techniques or place coalition forces in danger. For that reason we have not made available the full database. Instead we have published a selection of the logs relating to significant events in the paper and a number more on the web. The website has a glossary tool which makes them easier to read.
The Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel agreed to publish their reports simultaneously, at the same time as Wikileaks released the full database online. The Guardian has no direct knowledge of the original source of the material.
