Changes?

1) Musharraf standing down as President of Pakistan was a pretty big change that had knock-on effects in the way that the Pakistani Army dealt with the Taleban inside Pakistan. The agreements and accommodations he reached with Taleban leaders were over-ruled and anti-Taleban operations commenced in Swat, Buner and South Warizistan

2) Increase in drone strikes against Al-Qaeda and Taleban targets under Barack Obama, which even the Taleban have been forced to admit hurt them

3) Replacement of ISAF Commander with McChrystal replacing McKiernan

4) 40,000 additional troops for ISAF

5) Growing competence and capability of the Afghan Security Forces

What has Julian Assange told us that anyone following what is happening out there did not already know? - Very little if anything hence they are evaluations and summations of rumours and reports covering the period 2004 to 2009. Evaluations, rumours, opinions and reports that cannot be checked, yet, possibly because of the way they have appeared, everyone instantly regards them as being the gospel truth (Psst - They were written by the same people who told you all about the WMD in Iraq).

What relevance do they have to the situation on the ground out in Afghanistan now - absolutely none.

Reported in the Guianard in the UK as reports of attempted cover-ups of Afghan civilian deaths at the hands of ISAF troops.

Now apply some logic - Attempted cover-up = Unsuccessful cover-up = Nothing actually covered-up at all.

Relating to the 92,000 "documents" over a six year period 144 incidents of Afghan civilians being killed by ISAF troops that is an average of two incidents a month over that six year period. Now get onto what the Guianard and most here do not focus on when it comes to the documents leaked by Julian Assange - The vast majority of Afghan civilians killed have been killed by the Taleban - no news there particulary if you are an Afghan citizen - they could have told Julian Assange and WikiLeaks that at any point in time since 1996, maybe even before.

Since April 1978 Afghanistan has been riven with conflict. Between 27th April 1978 and 7th October 2001 those conflicts killed, depending on whose figures you take, somewhere between 1,500,000 and 2,100,000 Afghan citizens.

Very roughly that equates to an average of Afghan citizens dying at a rate of between 186 and 260 per day over a twenty-two-and-a-half year period.

Worst estimates of civilian deaths since the US intervened in the civil war on the side of the Northern Alliance puts the figure at just over 33,000 which works out very roughly at Afghan civilians dying at an average rate of 11 per day (3 of them being killed inadvertantly or in error by Pro-Government Forces while 8 of them are killed deliberately or indiscriminately by Anti-Government Forces).

So if I had been an Afghan citizen old enough and lucky enough to have survived the period April 1978 to October 2001, since October 2001 I have seen my chances of not dying a violent death improve roughly somewhere between 16 and 24 fold. I would regard that as a dramatic improvement.

Why the turn round? Because since the arrival in Afghanistan of foreign troops for the first time since 27th April 1978 there is an armed force operating in the country tasked with the protection of the general population. A reduction in civilian deaths of 94% or 96% is not to be sniffed at. To ISAF and the ASF I'd say, "Good job boys keep at it".