
Digital National Security Archive
Documenting the making of U.S. foreign and national security policy
Documenting the making of U.S. foreign and national security policy
The Afghanistan War and the United States, 1998-2017
Covering the key periods of the 20-year U.S. war in Afghanistan, this timely collection provides researchers with a trove of revealing primary documents, chiefly from the Bush and Obama years. Largely the product of decades of Freedom of Information Act requests and appeals, these records obtained from the State Department, CENTCOM, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other agencies detail many of the problems that bedeviled the American-led occupation, including reconstruction efforts, diplomatic relations with the Afghan government, Pakistan's double-sided games, Taliban-al Qaeda relations, corruption, and narcotics.
This timely collection is unrivaled in its scope and the quality of its primary sources exploring one of the pivotal issues of our era. Covering 35 years of key developments and controversy, it details U.S. policymaking from the 1987 Montreal Protocol on protecting the ozone layer to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and 2015 Paris climate change treaty targeting global warming as a result of greenhouse gas emissions. Records include top-level White House, State Department, Treasury, and EPA documents, CIA analyses, and U.N. reports on the key negotiations.
Targeting Iraq, Part II: War and Occupation, 2004-2011
Comprised of some 2,200 documents dating primarily from the conclusion in 2004 of the Coalition Provisional Authority’s administration of Iraq, thus restoring Baghdad’s titular sovereignty, through the 2011 U.S. military withdrawal, this collection covers efforts to reestablish Iraqi security and stability and restore a functioning economy and system of governance following decades of regional conflict, sanctions, invasion, and occupation. Topics include U.S. efforts to suppress violence arising from resistance to its presence in Iraq and from competition for power and monetary advantage, and Washington’s attempts to influence Iraq’s political and economic decision-making including leadership choices, the adoption of a new constitution, privatization, and oil legislation. The documents address military strategy, as well as political and human rights issues such as prisoner abuse, contracting and contractor malfeasance, misspent resources, corruption, and the divergence between American objectives on one side and Iraqi realities and the outlook of its people on the other.