Sunday, July 26 5pm EST.
WikiLeaks today released over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan.
The Afghan War Diary an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military. They include the number of persons internally stated to be killed, wounded, or detained during each action, together with the precise geographical location of each event, and the military units involved and major weapon systems used.
The Afghan War Diary is the most significant archive about the reality of war to have ever been released during the course of a war. The deaths of tens of thousands is normally only a statistic but the archive reveals the locations and the key events behind each most of these deaths. We hope its release will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the war in Afghanistan and provide the raw ingredients necessary to change its course.
Most entries have been written by soldiers and intelligence officers listening to reports radioed in from front line deployments. However the reports also contain related information from Marines intelligence, US Embassies, and reports about corruption and development activity across Afghanistan.
Each report consists of the time and precise geographic location of an event that the US Army considers significant. It includes several additional standardized fields: The broad type of the event (combat, non-combat, propaganda, etc.); the category of the event as classified by US Forces, how many were detained, wounded, and killed from civilian, allied, host nation, and enemy forces; the name of the reporting unit and a number of other fields, the most significant of which is the summary - an English language description of the events that are covered in the report.
The Diary is available on the web and can be viewed in chronological order and by by over 100 categories assigned by the US Forces such as: "escalation of force", "friendly-fire", "development meeting", etc. The reports can also be viewed by our "severity" measure-the total number of people killed, injured or detained. All incidents have been placed onto a map of Afghanistan and can be viewed on Google Earth limited to a particular window of time or place. In this way the unfolding of the last six years of war may be seen.
The material shows that cover-ups start on the ground. When reporting their own activities US Units are inclined to classify civilian kills as insurgent kills, downplay the number of people killed or otherwise make excuses for themselves. The reports, when made about other US Military units are more likely to be truthful, but still down play criticism. Conversely, when reporting on the actions of non-US ISAF forces the reports tend to be frank or critical and when reporting on the Taliban or other rebel groups, bad behavior is described in comprehensive detail. The behavior of the Afghan Army and Afghan authorities are also frequently described.
The reports come from US Army with the exception most Special Forces activities. The reports do not generally cover top-secret operations or European and other ISAF Forces operations. However when a combined operation involving regular Army units occurs, details of Army partners are often revealed. For example a number of bloody operations carried out by Task Force 373, a secret US Special Forces assassination unit, are exposed in the Diary -- including a raid that lead to the death of seven children.
This archive shows the vast range of small tragedies that are almost never reported by the press but which account for the overwhelming majority of deaths and injuries.
We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.
Additional information from our media partners:
Der Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,708314,00.html
The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/afghanistan-the-war-logs
The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html
Showing posts with label wikileaks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wikileaks. Show all posts
Friday, August 13, 2010
Wikileaks - the information and some implications
Amy Goodman is co-host of the award-winning radio/television/satellite program Democracy Now and recipient of numerous awards herself. She hosts the program on July 26, 2010 which involves a roundtable discussion with five guests concerning the 90,000 government classified documents released by WikiLeaks. The documents are from the years 2004 to 2010. I include Amy's introduction of the subject and then draw excerpts from the roundtable discussion.
The guests for the discussion are:
Stephen Grey, independent journalist based in London. He has been reporting from Afghanistan for the past few years. He is author of Operation Snakebite: The Explosive True Story of an Afghan Desert Siege. He recently interviewed Julian Assange for Channel 4.
Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower.
Rick Rowley, independent journalist with Big Noise Films He just returned from a six-week trip to Afghanistan, where he was embedded with a Marine division in Marjah.
Matthew Hoh, former Marine Corps captain in Iraq and former State Department official in Afghanistan. He is the first-known US official to resign in protest over the Afghan war.
Gareth Porter, investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s one the biggest leaks in US military history. More than 90,000 internal records from US military actions in Afghanistan over the past six years have been published by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The documents provide a devastating portrait of the war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, how a secret black ops special forces unit hunts down targets for assassination or detention without trial, how Taliban attacks have soared, and how Pakistan is fueling the insurgency. WikiLeaks made the files available this week to the New York Times, The Guardian of London and the German weekly Der Spiegel, who agreed simultaneously to publish their reports on Sunday.
The documents, most of them classified as secret, give a blow-by-blow account of the war in Afghanistan between January 2004 and December of 2009. The findings include detailed reports on 144 attacks on civilians by coalition forces, ranging from the shootings of individuals to massive air strikes, resulting in hundreds of casualties; how a secret black ops special forces unit named Task Force 373 hunts down targets for assassination or detention without trial. The so-called "kill or capture" list of senior Taliban and al-Qaeda figures includes more than 2,000 names and is known as JPEL, the Joint Prioritized Effects List. The files also reveal how coalition forces are increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada.
The records reveal there has a been a steep rise in Taliban attacks on coalition troops and that the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles. In addition, the Taliban have caused growing carnage with a massive escalation on their roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.
And the files reveal NATO commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fueling the insurgency. According to the New York Times, the records suggest Pakistan allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.
[....]
DANIEL ELLSBERG: I’m very impressed by the release. It is the first release in thirty-nine years or forty years, since I first gave the Pentagon Papers to the Senate, of the scale of the Pentagon Papers, and not the first as it should have been. I would—how many times in those years should there have been the release of thousands of pages showing our being lied into war in Iraq, as in Vietnam, and the nature of the war in Afghanistan? I hope there will be—I hope this will inspire, despite the charges brought against Manning [the alleged source] under the UC, under the Universal Code of Military Justice, which is not civilian law, it’s not First Amendment law. It’s the military law, so he’s in deep water here, as I think he expected....that realize that there is great deception going on, that there is, in Manning’s reported words, horrific material, almost criminal, as he put it, which deserve to be in the public domain....
AMY GOODMAN: Stephen Grey, just to clarify, Dan Ellsberg is talking about Private First Class Bradley Manning....
[....]
AMY GOODMAN: ....Rick, your observations of what this six years of document release means based on what you’ve seen in Afghanistan?
RICK ROWLEY: Well, I mean, what these documents show—prove—is that the US military has been whitewashing the war in Afghanistan for years and that most of the media has been along for the ride. They’ve systematically covered up civilian casualties. They’ve covered up the successful attacks by the Taliban and their significance. And they’ve covered up the violent criminality of the security forces that we’ve created there, security forces that are preying on Afghan civilians. I mean, the picture that emerges from these documents is, on the one hand, of an insurgency that is resilient and adapting and that is winning the war on the ground, and, on the other hand, of an Afghan state that we’ve constructed there that looks less like a government and looks more like a patchwork of warlords and criminal gangs that’s extorting the local population and that has become more hated in many parts of the country than the Taliban who they replaced.
A third interesting thing that these documents do is they put flesh on a process that we’ve been tracking, along with reporters like Jeremy Scahill, for some time, of a transition to what some people call a special forces war, an entirely covert and classified war that’s conducted with drone strikes and midnight raids and targeted assassinations, where everything is classified, there are no media embeds, and there’s very little accountability. I mean, I think that is the trajectory that this war is taking right now.
[....]
AMY GOODMAN: Matthew Hoh, you’re the highest-level ranking government official to quit over the war in Afghanistan. You were speaking this weekend in Las Vegas at Netroots Nation. Your response to this massive document release?
MATTHEW HOH: That was just an excellent summary we just heard by Mr. Rowley. I think the thing to take away from this is the lack of attention paid to the war by the American public, the lack of involvement by the American media in this war for the last seven, eight years, and, most damningly, the lack of oversight by our Congress on this war. [....]
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Gareth Porter. Can you talk about the documents that refer to Pakistan aiding the insurgency, the Pakistani ISI, the spy services, working with the forces in Afghanistan who are killing US soldiers?
GARETH PORTER: Yes. This is perhaps the closest thing to a major story that—in terms of news value that comes out of the collection of documents that have just been leaked. And this is a story that is extremely important politically, in terms of US politics and US policy, because of the Obama administration’s admission that it is vital that Pakistan assist the United States in preventing the Afghan Taliban from having the sort of safe havens in Pakistan that they’ve had in the past. Now, you know, what these documents are indicating is that there’s lots of evidence that Pakistan’s intelligence service, ISI, has indeed been meeting with the Taliban commanders. And although, you know, the American intelligence people were not there on the ground, nor Afghan intelligence people, not there on the ground at those meetings, the supposition was obviously that what’s going on here is that Pakistan’s intelligence is working closely with the Taliban in terms of planning their strategy, and indeed even specific operations....
AMY GOODMAN: .... Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just promised Pakistan another $500 million in aid. Gareth?
GARETH PORTER: .... They’ve [Pakistan government] changed their policy significantly in terms of dealing with the Pakistani Taliban, but they have not changed their policy with regard to the Afghan Taliban....
[....]
AMY GOODMAN: .... Let me ask the question to Rick Rowley about Task Force 373, about the whole issue of this special forces war.
RICK ROWLEY: .... When we abandon the nation-building project, which everyone recognizes is an abject failure, the new form, paradigm, the war is going to take is drone strikes and special forces raids and midnight assassinations and capturing and abducting people. I mean, this—if you look at the press releases every day, every week, that NATO and ISAF put out, you can see that the majority of the kinetic action, the military calls it, the majority of the people killed and captured, are done by special forces. So there is no real information about them at all. It’s all entirely secret.... So, I mean, it’s absolutely true that there are two parallel wars going on: there’s the war for hearts and minds, which is increasingly just a distraction, that the media have access to, where they have a very restricted rules of engagement, where they don’t use as many air strikes; and then there’s a special forces war, where it’s, you know, all systems go, where there aren’t the same restrictions, where they routinely kill people who don’t represent the same kind of—don’t reach the same kind of threat level that they would have to in the conventional war....
AMY GOODMAN: Stephen Grey, you were just getting into Task Force 373.
STEPHEN GREY: ... 373 is involved in what they call decapitation operations. They believe that there is a—the Taliban as an organization can be defeated by removing its head and that getting rid of all these leaders will destabilize and help them to win. But it’s actually a very conventional way of viewing things, and it goes completely counter to the idea of actually having a peace settlement, because if you remove the leadership of an organization, you have no one to negotiate with, and you end up with a sort of constantly rejuvenated rebellion, which I think is what it is, of more and more extreme people....
[....]
DANIEL ELLSBERG:
[....]
....But as your previous speakers have been saying, we’re more and more conducting a war, and not only in Afghanistan, but it was earlier true in Iraq under General McChrystal, a war of death squads, of selective assassination.... What I would like to see leaked—I don’t know if it’s in these documents or not—is the following bottom line. What was their estimate in December of the order of battle or the strength of all the various groups that we are fighting there in Afghanistan? After the $300 billion that we’ve spent, how does that compare with a year earlier? And how does it compare with the estimate now? I would like to see a leak to Congress, in the first place, and to the public, of what their estimate is now in June, July of 2010, after we put more troops in there? Is it really smaller? I will make a strong guess that their official estimate, which we should know, of the Taliban forces in their various forms, all different kinds of them, that we’re facing is larger now than it was six months ago and larger than it was a year ago. And I’ll predict that after the next $100 billion we’ve spent over there, it will be larger next year and the year after.
[....]
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back to Gareth Porter in Washington, DC. Talk more about the significance, what you think is most important to highlight here, as we go through these hundreds of thousands of pages of top-secret documents, classified documents.
GARETH PORTER:
[....]
... I think what we have here [in WikiLeaks] is a new institution that is undoubtedly the most important antiwar institution that has been created so far and that I have no doubt is frightening the US military and intelligence establishment, as well as the Obama administration, very strongly. And I think that’s for very good reason. I think they understand that this represents a potentially powerful weapon for the future against war crimes as well as other illegal actions by the United States.
[....]
The guests for the discussion are:
Stephen Grey, independent journalist based in London. He has been reporting from Afghanistan for the past few years. He is author of Operation Snakebite: The Explosive True Story of an Afghan Desert Siege. He recently interviewed Julian Assange for Channel 4.
Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower.
Rick Rowley, independent journalist with Big Noise Films He just returned from a six-week trip to Afghanistan, where he was embedded with a Marine division in Marjah.
Matthew Hoh, former Marine Corps captain in Iraq and former State Department official in Afghanistan. He is the first-known US official to resign in protest over the Afghan war.
Gareth Porter, investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s one the biggest leaks in US military history. More than 90,000 internal records from US military actions in Afghanistan over the past six years have been published by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The documents provide a devastating portrait of the war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, how a secret black ops special forces unit hunts down targets for assassination or detention without trial, how Taliban attacks have soared, and how Pakistan is fueling the insurgency. WikiLeaks made the files available this week to the New York Times, The Guardian of London and the German weekly Der Spiegel, who agreed simultaneously to publish their reports on Sunday.
The documents, most of them classified as secret, give a blow-by-blow account of the war in Afghanistan between January 2004 and December of 2009. The findings include detailed reports on 144 attacks on civilians by coalition forces, ranging from the shootings of individuals to massive air strikes, resulting in hundreds of casualties; how a secret black ops special forces unit named Task Force 373 hunts down targets for assassination or detention without trial. The so-called "kill or capture" list of senior Taliban and al-Qaeda figures includes more than 2,000 names and is known as JPEL, the Joint Prioritized Effects List. The files also reveal how coalition forces are increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada.
The records reveal there has a been a steep rise in Taliban attacks on coalition troops and that the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles. In addition, the Taliban have caused growing carnage with a massive escalation on their roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.
And the files reveal NATO commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fueling the insurgency. According to the New York Times, the records suggest Pakistan allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.
[....]
DANIEL ELLSBERG: I’m very impressed by the release. It is the first release in thirty-nine years or forty years, since I first gave the Pentagon Papers to the Senate, of the scale of the Pentagon Papers, and not the first as it should have been. I would—how many times in those years should there have been the release of thousands of pages showing our being lied into war in Iraq, as in Vietnam, and the nature of the war in Afghanistan? I hope there will be—I hope this will inspire, despite the charges brought against Manning [the alleged source] under the UC, under the Universal Code of Military Justice, which is not civilian law, it’s not First Amendment law. It’s the military law, so he’s in deep water here, as I think he expected....that realize that there is great deception going on, that there is, in Manning’s reported words, horrific material, almost criminal, as he put it, which deserve to be in the public domain....
AMY GOODMAN: Stephen Grey, just to clarify, Dan Ellsberg is talking about Private First Class Bradley Manning....
[....]
AMY GOODMAN: ....Rick, your observations of what this six years of document release means based on what you’ve seen in Afghanistan?
RICK ROWLEY: Well, I mean, what these documents show—prove—is that the US military has been whitewashing the war in Afghanistan for years and that most of the media has been along for the ride. They’ve systematically covered up civilian casualties. They’ve covered up the successful attacks by the Taliban and their significance. And they’ve covered up the violent criminality of the security forces that we’ve created there, security forces that are preying on Afghan civilians. I mean, the picture that emerges from these documents is, on the one hand, of an insurgency that is resilient and adapting and that is winning the war on the ground, and, on the other hand, of an Afghan state that we’ve constructed there that looks less like a government and looks more like a patchwork of warlords and criminal gangs that’s extorting the local population and that has become more hated in many parts of the country than the Taliban who they replaced.
A third interesting thing that these documents do is they put flesh on a process that we’ve been tracking, along with reporters like Jeremy Scahill, for some time, of a transition to what some people call a special forces war, an entirely covert and classified war that’s conducted with drone strikes and midnight raids and targeted assassinations, where everything is classified, there are no media embeds, and there’s very little accountability. I mean, I think that is the trajectory that this war is taking right now.
[....]
AMY GOODMAN: Matthew Hoh, you’re the highest-level ranking government official to quit over the war in Afghanistan. You were speaking this weekend in Las Vegas at Netroots Nation. Your response to this massive document release?
MATTHEW HOH: That was just an excellent summary we just heard by Mr. Rowley. I think the thing to take away from this is the lack of attention paid to the war by the American public, the lack of involvement by the American media in this war for the last seven, eight years, and, most damningly, the lack of oversight by our Congress on this war. [....]
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Gareth Porter. Can you talk about the documents that refer to Pakistan aiding the insurgency, the Pakistani ISI, the spy services, working with the forces in Afghanistan who are killing US soldiers?
GARETH PORTER: Yes. This is perhaps the closest thing to a major story that—in terms of news value that comes out of the collection of documents that have just been leaked. And this is a story that is extremely important politically, in terms of US politics and US policy, because of the Obama administration’s admission that it is vital that Pakistan assist the United States in preventing the Afghan Taliban from having the sort of safe havens in Pakistan that they’ve had in the past. Now, you know, what these documents are indicating is that there’s lots of evidence that Pakistan’s intelligence service, ISI, has indeed been meeting with the Taliban commanders. And although, you know, the American intelligence people were not there on the ground, nor Afghan intelligence people, not there on the ground at those meetings, the supposition was obviously that what’s going on here is that Pakistan’s intelligence is working closely with the Taliban in terms of planning their strategy, and indeed even specific operations....
AMY GOODMAN: .... Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just promised Pakistan another $500 million in aid. Gareth?
GARETH PORTER: .... They’ve [Pakistan government] changed their policy significantly in terms of dealing with the Pakistani Taliban, but they have not changed their policy with regard to the Afghan Taliban....
[....]
AMY GOODMAN: .... Let me ask the question to Rick Rowley about Task Force 373, about the whole issue of this special forces war.
RICK ROWLEY: .... When we abandon the nation-building project, which everyone recognizes is an abject failure, the new form, paradigm, the war is going to take is drone strikes and special forces raids and midnight assassinations and capturing and abducting people. I mean, this—if you look at the press releases every day, every week, that NATO and ISAF put out, you can see that the majority of the kinetic action, the military calls it, the majority of the people killed and captured, are done by special forces. So there is no real information about them at all. It’s all entirely secret.... So, I mean, it’s absolutely true that there are two parallel wars going on: there’s the war for hearts and minds, which is increasingly just a distraction, that the media have access to, where they have a very restricted rules of engagement, where they don’t use as many air strikes; and then there’s a special forces war, where it’s, you know, all systems go, where there aren’t the same restrictions, where they routinely kill people who don’t represent the same kind of—don’t reach the same kind of threat level that they would have to in the conventional war....
AMY GOODMAN: Stephen Grey, you were just getting into Task Force 373.
STEPHEN GREY: ... 373 is involved in what they call decapitation operations. They believe that there is a—the Taliban as an organization can be defeated by removing its head and that getting rid of all these leaders will destabilize and help them to win. But it’s actually a very conventional way of viewing things, and it goes completely counter to the idea of actually having a peace settlement, because if you remove the leadership of an organization, you have no one to negotiate with, and you end up with a sort of constantly rejuvenated rebellion, which I think is what it is, of more and more extreme people....
[....]
DANIEL ELLSBERG:
[....]
....But as your previous speakers have been saying, we’re more and more conducting a war, and not only in Afghanistan, but it was earlier true in Iraq under General McChrystal, a war of death squads, of selective assassination.... What I would like to see leaked—I don’t know if it’s in these documents or not—is the following bottom line. What was their estimate in December of the order of battle or the strength of all the various groups that we are fighting there in Afghanistan? After the $300 billion that we’ve spent, how does that compare with a year earlier? And how does it compare with the estimate now? I would like to see a leak to Congress, in the first place, and to the public, of what their estimate is now in June, July of 2010, after we put more troops in there? Is it really smaller? I will make a strong guess that their official estimate, which we should know, of the Taliban forces in their various forms, all different kinds of them, that we’re facing is larger now than it was six months ago and larger than it was a year ago. And I’ll predict that after the next $100 billion we’ve spent over there, it will be larger next year and the year after.
[....]
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back to Gareth Porter in Washington, DC. Talk more about the significance, what you think is most important to highlight here, as we go through these hundreds of thousands of pages of top-secret documents, classified documents.
GARETH PORTER:
[....]
... I think what we have here [in WikiLeaks] is a new institution that is undoubtedly the most important antiwar institution that has been created so far and that I have no doubt is frightening the US military and intelligence establishment, as well as the Obama administration, very strongly. And I think that’s for very good reason. I think they understand that this represents a potentially powerful weapon for the future against war crimes as well as other illegal actions by the United States.
[....]
Wikileaks revelations won't end the war
Noam Chomsky's article comes from the magazine In These Times. I take excerpts from the article. Chomsky's agrees that the wikileaks documents may help to raise questions about the U.S. role in Afghanistan and challenge Obama's and the media echo chamber's justifications for it. However, in his view, while documents like those released by WikiLeaks may help to increase opposition to the war/occupation in Afghanistan, it will take a riled and mobilized American citizenry to bring it to an end.
This article is permanently archived at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/6280/
Why WikiLeaks Won’t Stop the War
By Noam Chomsky
http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/6280
August 3, 2010
The War Log...released on the Internet by the organization WikiLeaks--documents a grim struggle becoming grimmer, from the U.S. perspective. And for the Afghans, a mounting horror.
While the documents are generally viewed as providing support against the continued war and occupation of Afghanistan by U.S. troops, Chomsky has another view. The War Logs, however valuable, may contribute to the unfortunate and prevailing doctrine that wars are wrong only if they aren't successful--rather like the Nazis felt after Stalingrad.
Last month came the fiasco of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, forced to retire as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and replaced by his superior, Gen. David H. Petraeus.
A plausible consequence is a relaxation of the rules of engagement so that it becomes easier to kill civilians, and an extension of the war well into the future as Petraeus uses his clout in Congress to achieve this result.
President Obama's principal justification of the continued Afghanistan intervention makes little sense. [....] The official goal is to protect ourselves from al-Qaida, a virtual organization, with no specific base -- a "network of networks" and "leaderless resistance," as it's been called in the professional literature. Now, even more so than before, al-Qaida consists of relatively independent factions, loosely associated throughout the world.
The CIA estimates that 50 to 100 al-Qaeda activists may now be in Afghanistan, and there is no indication that the Taliban want to repeat the mistake of offering sanctuary to al-Qaeda.
[....]
In February, in the first exercise of Obama's new strategy, U.S. Marines conquered Marja, a minor district in Helmand province, the main center of the insurgency, but failed to oust the Taliban permanently.
[....]
According to Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of the Marine expeditionary brigade in Helmand Province. `Most people here identify themselves as Taliban. [....]
Chomsky compares the situation being faced by the U.S. military forces to what U.S. forces confronted in Vietman in 1969.
[....] In 1969, Douglas Pike, the leading U.S. government scholar on Vietnam, lamented that the enemy--the National Liberation Front--was the only "truly mass-based political party in South Vietnam." Pike then recommended that the only way to overcome the NLF's political force was
by using our comparative advantage, violence--with horrifying results.
Chomsky also refers to other comparable unwinnable situation, for example to the Russians in Afghanistan during the 1980s, where they won every battle but lost the war.
[....]
After the Marja triumph, the U.S.-led forces were expected to assault the major city of Kandahar, where, according to a U.S. Army poll in April, the military operation is opposed by 95 percent of the population, and 5 out of 6 regard the Taliban as "our Afghan brothers"--again, echoes of earlier conquests. The Kandahar plans were delayed, part of the background for McChrystal's leavetaking.
Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that U.S. authorities are concerned that public support for the war in Afghanistan may erode even further.
In May, WikiLeaks released a March CIA memorandum about how to sustain Western Europe's support for the war. The memorandum's subtitle: "Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough."
[....]
Democratic societies rely not on force but on propaganda, engineering consent by "necessary illusion" and "emotionally potent oversimplication," to quote Obama's favorite philosopher, Reinhold Niebuhr.
The battle to control the internal enemy, then, remains highly pertinent--indeed, the future of the war in Afghanistan may hinge on it.
© The New York Times Syndicate
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy. He writes a monthly column for The New York Times News Service/Syndicate.
This article is permanently archived at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/6280/
Why WikiLeaks Won’t Stop the War
By Noam Chomsky
http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/6280
August 3, 2010
The War Log...released on the Internet by the organization WikiLeaks--documents a grim struggle becoming grimmer, from the U.S. perspective. And for the Afghans, a mounting horror.
While the documents are generally viewed as providing support against the continued war and occupation of Afghanistan by U.S. troops, Chomsky has another view. The War Logs, however valuable, may contribute to the unfortunate and prevailing doctrine that wars are wrong only if they aren't successful--rather like the Nazis felt after Stalingrad.
Last month came the fiasco of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, forced to retire as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and replaced by his superior, Gen. David H. Petraeus.
A plausible consequence is a relaxation of the rules of engagement so that it becomes easier to kill civilians, and an extension of the war well into the future as Petraeus uses his clout in Congress to achieve this result.
President Obama's principal justification of the continued Afghanistan intervention makes little sense. [....] The official goal is to protect ourselves from al-Qaida, a virtual organization, with no specific base -- a "network of networks" and "leaderless resistance," as it's been called in the professional literature. Now, even more so than before, al-Qaida consists of relatively independent factions, loosely associated throughout the world.
The CIA estimates that 50 to 100 al-Qaeda activists may now be in Afghanistan, and there is no indication that the Taliban want to repeat the mistake of offering sanctuary to al-Qaeda.
[....]
In February, in the first exercise of Obama's new strategy, U.S. Marines conquered Marja, a minor district in Helmand province, the main center of the insurgency, but failed to oust the Taliban permanently.
[....]
According to Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of the Marine expeditionary brigade in Helmand Province. `Most people here identify themselves as Taliban. [....]
Chomsky compares the situation being faced by the U.S. military forces to what U.S. forces confronted in Vietman in 1969.
[....] In 1969, Douglas Pike, the leading U.S. government scholar on Vietnam, lamented that the enemy--the National Liberation Front--was the only "truly mass-based political party in South Vietnam." Pike then recommended that the only way to overcome the NLF's political force was
by using our comparative advantage, violence--with horrifying results.
Chomsky also refers to other comparable unwinnable situation, for example to the Russians in Afghanistan during the 1980s, where they won every battle but lost the war.
[....]
After the Marja triumph, the U.S.-led forces were expected to assault the major city of Kandahar, where, according to a U.S. Army poll in April, the military operation is opposed by 95 percent of the population, and 5 out of 6 regard the Taliban as "our Afghan brothers"--again, echoes of earlier conquests. The Kandahar plans were delayed, part of the background for McChrystal's leavetaking.
Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that U.S. authorities are concerned that public support for the war in Afghanistan may erode even further.
In May, WikiLeaks released a March CIA memorandum about how to sustain Western Europe's support for the war. The memorandum's subtitle: "Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough."
[....]
Democratic societies rely not on force but on propaganda, engineering consent by "necessary illusion" and "emotionally potent oversimplication," to quote Obama's favorite philosopher, Reinhold Niebuhr.
The battle to control the internal enemy, then, remains highly pertinent--indeed, the future of the war in Afghanistan may hinge on it.
© The New York Times Syndicate
Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy. He writes a monthly column for The New York Times News Service/Syndicate.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Released documents by Wikileaks evidence of a failed mission in Afghanistan
Phyllis Bennis is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. and of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. Her most recent book is Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer. In the article below she comments on the controversy and impact of the 90,000 or so classified government documents released last week.
She thinks that the documents, recording operations and other events from the years 2004 through 2009, represent the most detailed source of information on the Afghan war/occupation yet available. The Obama administration does not contest the accuracy or truth of the documents. Contrary to the administration, Bennis does not think the occupations compromise US military operations in Afghanistan. Why? They are historical and edited to take out names.
She also points out that the information is not new for policy makers, the military, or those who have followed the Afghanistan situation in the US or Pakistan and Afghanistan. The documents do indicate, Bennis finds, that military operations have not accomplished much, US forces are relying more on special forces and drone attacks as time passes, the documents provide evidence of civilian casualties not reported in the press, and there are "continuing links between Pakistani' top military intelligence agency, the ISI, and the top leadership of the Taliban."
The Wikileaks Afghan War Diary: More Evidence of a Failed Mission
The leaks just fill in details of what we already knew: that the Afghan War is too costly to continue.
By Phyllis Bennis
Source: IPS; Found at http://www/zcommunications.org
Friday, July 30, 2010
Phyllis Bennis's ZSpace Page
I wrote an assessment of last week’s meeting in Kabul on Friday, before news had, ahem, leaked of Wikileaks' extraordinary new trove of documents, the Pentagon Papers: Afghanistan. I think the earlier piece is still useful.
But first, a couple of quick thoughts on the Wikileaks documents. There will be much more to come, as we find the time to dig through the reports.
This set of documents is unquestionably an important first history of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Of course, mistakes will be found — but these are reports of military leaders to others in the military. This is where they tell the truth. It's significant that the Obama administration has carefully avoided claiming the reports aren't accurate. Instead, they're claiming that disclosure of the reports somehow endangers U.S. troops while at the same time disparaging the documents as having no new information. There's no way these reports will endanger the troops — Afghans and Pakistanis clearly know far better than we do what U.S./NATO forces are actually doing in their countries.
What the leaks will do is stoke even greater global anger around the world, as evidence comes to those who didn’t know firsthand what the U.S./NATO occupation means for Afghans and Pakistanis. That will certainly mean rising anger toward U.S. policy and Americans as a whole. But more importantly, it will spur enormous antiwar activity in places like Europe, Canada, Australia, and Turkey. And that means greater pressure on those governments now providing troops for the war in Afghanistan — and on the Obama administration to end the war.
There is no evidence yet of a new smoking gun among the documents. But taken as a whole, the documents provide a collective arsenal of evidence of a brutal war that never did have a chance to succeed — and evidence of two administrations of a government determined to mislead its own people and the rest of the world.
The documents indicate significant shifts in the nature of how the war is being fought, with documentation of escalating Special Forces operations and drone attacks. The Pentagon's "nation-building" efforts are failing in places like Marja, last spring’s poster-city of a U.S.-backed government-in-a-box.The handpicked mayor-in-a-box, who spent most of the last 15 years living in Germany, is so unpopular that he has to be ferried into town on military helicopters for occasional meetings and then quickly whisked away.
So perhaps it isn't surprising that the new documents describe activities like those of Task Force 373, a death-squad that goes after identified individuals on a kill-or-capture list. No trial, of course. And if drones are called in to do more of the dirty work so U.S. troops are not at risk, and more Afghan or Pakistani civilians are killed as a result — well, that’s just part of the cost of war.
The documents include evidence of civilian deaths never reported in the press, many of them probably never even mentioned or asked about in the virtually nonexistent congressional oversight of the years documented in these reports. They detail massive levels of corruption, extortion, and constant violence inflicted on Afghan civilians by the U.S.-backed, U.S.-trained and U.S.-funded militias known as the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police.
And they demonstrate, again, the continuing links between Pakistan’s top military intelligence agency, the ISI, and the top leadership of the Taliban — despite claims by Secretary of State Clinton and others in the Obama administration that Pakistan is a reliable U.S. ally that just needs to work a little harder on going after terrorists. Ironically, the Obama administration’s answer to the documents repeats the effort to blur the very distinct organizations known as the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban into a generic presence in Pakistan known as “the terrorists” or “the Taliban.”
The Wikileaks documents provide a treasure trove of evidence — of what we already knew. This war has already failed. Every death, of civilian and soldier, is needless. The cost of this occupation and this war — in Afghan blood, in U.S. and NATO military blood, in billions of dollars needed for jobs at home and real reconstruction in Afghanistan and elsewhere — is too high.
We need to stop the funding now, bring the troops and contractors home, support regional diplomacy, and begin the long effort of repaying our huge debt to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Loading comments...
She thinks that the documents, recording operations and other events from the years 2004 through 2009, represent the most detailed source of information on the Afghan war/occupation yet available. The Obama administration does not contest the accuracy or truth of the documents. Contrary to the administration, Bennis does not think the occupations compromise US military operations in Afghanistan. Why? They are historical and edited to take out names.
She also points out that the information is not new for policy makers, the military, or those who have followed the Afghanistan situation in the US or Pakistan and Afghanistan. The documents do indicate, Bennis finds, that military operations have not accomplished much, US forces are relying more on special forces and drone attacks as time passes, the documents provide evidence of civilian casualties not reported in the press, and there are "continuing links between Pakistani' top military intelligence agency, the ISI, and the top leadership of the Taliban."
The Wikileaks Afghan War Diary: More Evidence of a Failed Mission
The leaks just fill in details of what we already knew: that the Afghan War is too costly to continue.
By Phyllis Bennis
Source: IPS; Found at http://www/zcommunications.org
Friday, July 30, 2010
Phyllis Bennis's ZSpace Page
I wrote an assessment of last week’s meeting in Kabul on Friday, before news had, ahem, leaked of Wikileaks' extraordinary new trove of documents, the Pentagon Papers: Afghanistan. I think the earlier piece is still useful.
But first, a couple of quick thoughts on the Wikileaks documents. There will be much more to come, as we find the time to dig through the reports.
This set of documents is unquestionably an important first history of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Of course, mistakes will be found — but these are reports of military leaders to others in the military. This is where they tell the truth. It's significant that the Obama administration has carefully avoided claiming the reports aren't accurate. Instead, they're claiming that disclosure of the reports somehow endangers U.S. troops while at the same time disparaging the documents as having no new information. There's no way these reports will endanger the troops — Afghans and Pakistanis clearly know far better than we do what U.S./NATO forces are actually doing in their countries.
What the leaks will do is stoke even greater global anger around the world, as evidence comes to those who didn’t know firsthand what the U.S./NATO occupation means for Afghans and Pakistanis. That will certainly mean rising anger toward U.S. policy and Americans as a whole. But more importantly, it will spur enormous antiwar activity in places like Europe, Canada, Australia, and Turkey. And that means greater pressure on those governments now providing troops for the war in Afghanistan — and on the Obama administration to end the war.
There is no evidence yet of a new smoking gun among the documents. But taken as a whole, the documents provide a collective arsenal of evidence of a brutal war that never did have a chance to succeed — and evidence of two administrations of a government determined to mislead its own people and the rest of the world.
The documents indicate significant shifts in the nature of how the war is being fought, with documentation of escalating Special Forces operations and drone attacks. The Pentagon's "nation-building" efforts are failing in places like Marja, last spring’s poster-city of a U.S.-backed government-in-a-box.The handpicked mayor-in-a-box, who spent most of the last 15 years living in Germany, is so unpopular that he has to be ferried into town on military helicopters for occasional meetings and then quickly whisked away.
So perhaps it isn't surprising that the new documents describe activities like those of Task Force 373, a death-squad that goes after identified individuals on a kill-or-capture list. No trial, of course. And if drones are called in to do more of the dirty work so U.S. troops are not at risk, and more Afghan or Pakistani civilians are killed as a result — well, that’s just part of the cost of war.
The documents include evidence of civilian deaths never reported in the press, many of them probably never even mentioned or asked about in the virtually nonexistent congressional oversight of the years documented in these reports. They detail massive levels of corruption, extortion, and constant violence inflicted on Afghan civilians by the U.S.-backed, U.S.-trained and U.S.-funded militias known as the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police.
And they demonstrate, again, the continuing links between Pakistan’s top military intelligence agency, the ISI, and the top leadership of the Taliban — despite claims by Secretary of State Clinton and others in the Obama administration that Pakistan is a reliable U.S. ally that just needs to work a little harder on going after terrorists. Ironically, the Obama administration’s answer to the documents repeats the effort to blur the very distinct organizations known as the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban into a generic presence in Pakistan known as “the terrorists” or “the Taliban.”
The Wikileaks documents provide a treasure trove of evidence — of what we already knew. This war has already failed. Every death, of civilian and soldier, is needless. The cost of this occupation and this war — in Afghan blood, in U.S. and NATO military blood, in billions of dollars needed for jobs at home and real reconstruction in Afghanistan and elsewhere — is too high.
We need to stop the funding now, bring the troops and contractors home, support regional diplomacy, and begin the long effort of repaying our huge debt to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. Loading comments...
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
The Wikileaks documents are a big deal
In the following article, Joshua Holland responds to Andrew Exum's recent op-ed in the New York Times. Exum sees little new information in the 92,000 or so "military field reports lead by the whistle-blower site Wikileaks." He is dismissive of their impact on US Afghanistan policy or on pubic opinion. Holland writes that the information in the documents may not be new to people who study or have followed closely the occupation and war in Afghanistan.
But it is new (news) for most Americans and the documents help to confirm that the war has been ineffectually waged, civilian and military casualties have continued to be high, and the ISI in Pakistan have been undercutting US war efforts in Afghanistan, etc. Additionally, the documents may have the effect of increasing the number in US Congress who are willing to speak up against additional funding for the Afghanistan occupation/war, and perhaps even vote against the funding.
As the Wikileak documents get media attention, they plant seeds of opposition and reinforce opposition among a war-weary and economically strapped US citizenry.
Why Wikileak's Doc-Dump Is Such a Big Deal (Even if There’s Nothing New Within)
Posted by Joshua Holland on @ 9:19 am
Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy
URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/27/why-wikileaks-doc-dump-is-such-a-big-deal-even-if-theres-nothing-new-within/
There is a tendency among People Who Pay Close Attention To Things to think other Americans are also paying attention — to decent information — and are therefore somewhat in the know.
That leads to people trying to get away with ridiculous claims, such as this:
ANYONE who has spent the past two days reading through the 92,000 military field reports and other documents made public by the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks may be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. I’m a researcher who studies Afghanistan and have no regular access to classified information, yet I have seen nothing in the documents that has either surprised me or told me anything of significance. I suspect that’s the case even for someone who reads only a third of the articles on Afghanistan in his local newspaper.
That paragraph was from an op-ed piece by Andrew Exum, a fellow with the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) — a pro-Afghanistan war think-tank — in The New York Times. Exum’s message seems to be, ‘move along, folks, there’s nothing to see here.’ Understandable — CNAS, according to a WaPo report last year, “may emerge as Washington’s go-to think tank on military affairs” in the Obama era. CNAS staff have “filled key posts in the new administration (such as former CNAS president Michele Flournoy, who is now undersecretary of defense for policy), and its top people include John Nagl, who helped draft the Army’s counterinsurgency manual, and David Kilcullen, a former adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus.”
And his suspicion that everyone already knows this stuff is bullshit. In 1997, the government conducted a huge survey on American adults’ civic participation. Almost a third of the public couldn’t say what “job or political office” Al Gore held — after he had spent five years serving as vice-president. Around a third didn’t know which party held the majority in Congress at the time. Perhaps most shockingly, at least to political buffs like myself, was that 49 percent of Americans surveyed didn’t know “which party is more conservative at the national level.” That’s domestic politics — a subject that Americans tend to have a better grasp on than foreign affairs. Two years after the attacks of 9/11, 70 percent of the public believed in a conspiracy theory which held that Saddam Hussein had had a connection to the attacks.
I haven’t gone through those 92,000 field reports myself. And I have no problem buying that there’s nothing in the pile that would surprise anyone who not only reads the entirety of their hometown paper’s foreign coverage but also reads those stories all the way through to the 17th paragraph, where the real news — the ugly news of American war-making — tends to be buried. What is that — one percent of the population? I’d guess that’s overstating it.
So, this document dump pushes what a few war-nerds may have grasped from a thousand stories on page B-6 onto the front page, revealing not a series of “unfortunate incidents” but a pattern of disregard for civilian casualties that disproves a central tenet of our COIN strategy — that war can be fought in a kinder, gentler, more progressive way thus helping win the hearts and minds of the local population.
Here’s a report from the Times’ news section that completely contradicts Exum’s ‘ho-hum’ narrative:
The disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents increased pressure on President Obama to defend his military strategy as Congress prepares to deliberate financing of the Afghanistan war.
The disclosures, with their detailed account of a war faring even more poorly than two administrations had portrayed, landed at a crucial moment. Because of difficulties on the ground and mounting casualties in the war, the debate over the American presence in Afghanistan has begun earlier than expected. Inside the administration, more officials are privately questioning the policy.
In Congress, House leaders were rushing to hold a vote on a critical war-financing bill as early as Tuesday, fearing that the disclosures could stoke Democratic opposition to the measure. A Senate panel is also set to hold a hearing on Tuesday on Mr. Obama’s choice to head the military’s Central Command, Gen. James N. Mattis, who would oversee military operations in Afghanistan.
Administration officials acknowledged that the documents, released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks, will make it harder for Mr. Obama as he tries to hang on to public and Congressional support until the end of the year, when he has scheduled a review of the war effort.
Exum isn’t alone arguing that ‘there’s no there there,’ but I don’t think that’s going to cut it. Recent history certainly suggests it won’t:
The [Pentagon] papers revealed that the U.S. had deliberately expanded its war with carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corpsattacks, none of which had been reported by media in the US. The revelations widened the credibility gap between the US government and the people, allegedly hurting President Richard Nixon’s war effort.
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer with AlterNet.
But it is new (news) for most Americans and the documents help to confirm that the war has been ineffectually waged, civilian and military casualties have continued to be high, and the ISI in Pakistan have been undercutting US war efforts in Afghanistan, etc. Additionally, the documents may have the effect of increasing the number in US Congress who are willing to speak up against additional funding for the Afghanistan occupation/war, and perhaps even vote against the funding.
As the Wikileak documents get media attention, they plant seeds of opposition and reinforce opposition among a war-weary and economically strapped US citizenry.
Why Wikileak's Doc-Dump Is Such a Big Deal (Even if There’s Nothing New Within)
Posted by Joshua Holland on @ 9:19 am
Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy
URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/07/27/why-wikileaks-doc-dump-is-such-a-big-deal-even-if-theres-nothing-new-within/
There is a tendency among People Who Pay Close Attention To Things to think other Americans are also paying attention — to decent information — and are therefore somewhat in the know.
That leads to people trying to get away with ridiculous claims, such as this:
ANYONE who has spent the past two days reading through the 92,000 military field reports and other documents made public by the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks may be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. I’m a researcher who studies Afghanistan and have no regular access to classified information, yet I have seen nothing in the documents that has either surprised me or told me anything of significance. I suspect that’s the case even for someone who reads only a third of the articles on Afghanistan in his local newspaper.
That paragraph was from an op-ed piece by Andrew Exum, a fellow with the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) — a pro-Afghanistan war think-tank — in The New York Times. Exum’s message seems to be, ‘move along, folks, there’s nothing to see here.’ Understandable — CNAS, according to a WaPo report last year, “may emerge as Washington’s go-to think tank on military affairs” in the Obama era. CNAS staff have “filled key posts in the new administration (such as former CNAS president Michele Flournoy, who is now undersecretary of defense for policy), and its top people include John Nagl, who helped draft the Army’s counterinsurgency manual, and David Kilcullen, a former adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus.”
And his suspicion that everyone already knows this stuff is bullshit. In 1997, the government conducted a huge survey on American adults’ civic participation. Almost a third of the public couldn’t say what “job or political office” Al Gore held — after he had spent five years serving as vice-president. Around a third didn’t know which party held the majority in Congress at the time. Perhaps most shockingly, at least to political buffs like myself, was that 49 percent of Americans surveyed didn’t know “which party is more conservative at the national level.” That’s domestic politics — a subject that Americans tend to have a better grasp on than foreign affairs. Two years after the attacks of 9/11, 70 percent of the public believed in a conspiracy theory which held that Saddam Hussein had had a connection to the attacks.
I haven’t gone through those 92,000 field reports myself. And I have no problem buying that there’s nothing in the pile that would surprise anyone who not only reads the entirety of their hometown paper’s foreign coverage but also reads those stories all the way through to the 17th paragraph, where the real news — the ugly news of American war-making — tends to be buried. What is that — one percent of the population? I’d guess that’s overstating it.
So, this document dump pushes what a few war-nerds may have grasped from a thousand stories on page B-6 onto the front page, revealing not a series of “unfortunate incidents” but a pattern of disregard for civilian casualties that disproves a central tenet of our COIN strategy — that war can be fought in a kinder, gentler, more progressive way thus helping win the hearts and minds of the local population.
Here’s a report from the Times’ news section that completely contradicts Exum’s ‘ho-hum’ narrative:
The disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents increased pressure on President Obama to defend his military strategy as Congress prepares to deliberate financing of the Afghanistan war.
The disclosures, with their detailed account of a war faring even more poorly than two administrations had portrayed, landed at a crucial moment. Because of difficulties on the ground and mounting casualties in the war, the debate over the American presence in Afghanistan has begun earlier than expected. Inside the administration, more officials are privately questioning the policy.
In Congress, House leaders were rushing to hold a vote on a critical war-financing bill as early as Tuesday, fearing that the disclosures could stoke Democratic opposition to the measure. A Senate panel is also set to hold a hearing on Tuesday on Mr. Obama’s choice to head the military’s Central Command, Gen. James N. Mattis, who would oversee military operations in Afghanistan.
Administration officials acknowledged that the documents, released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks, will make it harder for Mr. Obama as he tries to hang on to public and Congressional support until the end of the year, when he has scheduled a review of the war effort.
Exum isn’t alone arguing that ‘there’s no there there,’ but I don’t think that’s going to cut it. Recent history certainly suggests it won’t:
The [Pentagon] papers revealed that the U.S. had deliberately expanded its war with carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corpsattacks, none of which had been reported by media in the US. The revelations widened the credibility gap between the US government and the people, allegedly hurting President Richard Nixon’s war effort.
Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer with AlterNet.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Aljazeera adds details on Wikileak's Afghan war revelations
Aljazeera
UPDATED ON:Monday, July 26, 2010 17:10 Mecca time, 14:10 GMT
VIDEO
Pakistani agents 'aiding Taliban'
Pakistan has rejected the reports that its intelligence service gave support to the Taliban [AFP]
US officials believe that the intelligence agency of ally Pakistan, which receives billions of dollars in aid from Washington, has been secretly supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan, leaked records say.
Wikileaks, the online whistleblower organisation, published more than 90,000 secret US military documentson Sunday, revealing an unedited account of the nearly nine-year-old war in Afghanistan.
The unverified files say that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, the country's spy service, has been holding strategy sessions with Taliban leaders to aid their efforts in Afghanistan.
An ISI spokesman denied the allegations, saying they were "far-fetched and unsubstantiated," but said the agency would be examining the files.
Wikileaks' documents, which cover a period from January 2004 to December 2009, include descriptions of a covert US special operations unit formed to target high-level al-Qaeda and Taliban figures. They say more than 2,000 leaders are on a "kill or capture" list, but missions to hunt them down have led to unreported civilian deaths.
Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, said he expected the leaked records would "shape a [new] understanding of the past six years".
"The real story of this material is that it's war, it's one damn thing after another," Assange said at a news conference in London on Monday. "It is the continuous small events, the continuous death of children, insurgents, allied forces, the maimed people."
Taliban dealings
The New York Times in the United States, Britain's Guardian newspaper and the German weekly Der Spiegel were all given about a month's advanced access to the dosier, with each jointly unveiling their findings on Sunday.
According to the Times report, the documents suggest Pakistan "allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Talibanin secret strategy sessions to organise networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders".
IN DEPTH
Reports reveal Afghan war details
Ex-spy chief denies Taliban links
Excerpts: A less encouraging story
Video: Ability of Afghan forces questioned
Focus: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the US, called the release of the files "irresponsible" and said it consisted of "unprocessed" reports from the field.
"The documents circulated by WikiLeaks do not reflect the current on-ground realities," Haqqani said in a statement.
"The United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan are strategic partners and are jointly endeavouring to defeat al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies militarily and politically," he said.
The US government also condemned the records' disclosure, saying they could threaten national security and endanger the lives of its forces.
"The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organisations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk," James Jones, the US national security adviser, said.
"These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies."
Assange, however, defended his organisation's decision to release the classified files, saying Wikileaks "tried hard to make sure this material does not put innocents at harm", adding that all the documents were at least seven months old.
Rejecting US government claims, he said: "We are familiar with groups whose abuse we expose attempting to criticise the messenger, to distract from the power of the message ... we don't see any difference in the White House's response in this case to the other groups that we have exposed."
'Grimmer picture'
According to the records, the US has tried to cover up the fact that the Taliban have heat-seeking surface-to-air "stinger" missiles.
The documents also show that the Taliban's widening use of roadside bombs have killed more than 2,000 civilians.
The documents reveal new details about Afghan civilian deaths [EPA]
Eric Schmitt, one of the New York Times reporters who worked on analysing the files over the last month, told Al Jazeera that the documents gave an unvarnished view of the war, a "very fine grain, down on the ground level detail that hasn't been revealed before ... whether it's in firefights or drone activities, secret operations performed by commandos of the CIA".
He said they painted "a much grimmer picture and portrayal than either the Bush or Obama administrations have allowed so far".
Included in the many revelations of the leaked documents were also reports that the CIA expanded paramilitary operations in Afghanistan and ran the Afghan spy agency from 2001-2008.
Pakistan's ISI had helped establish the Taliban's government in the 1990s, when Afghanistan was wracked by infighting following the withdrawal of Soviet troops.
The country's leadership reversed course after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, agreeing to assist the US against the Taliban, which the US accused of sheltering Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader.
But US officials and analysts have persistently questioned whether all of Pakistan's security apparatus is on the same page, with some believing that Islamabad's main interest is to ensure continued influence in Afghanistan.
Iraq video
Wikileaks has become one of the biggest and most controversial sources of classified government information, even publishing a document showing that US intelligence had plans to shut it down.
In April, Wikileaks released video footage from a helicopter cockpit showing a deadly 2007 aerial strike in the Iraqi capital that killed 12 civilians, including two journalists from the Reuters news agency.
Army Specialist Bradley Manning, 22, was charged this month with misconduct and putting national security at risk for allegedly leaking the classified video, and has now been implicated in the release of the Afghan documents as well.
Sunday's released records consist largely of classified reports and assessments from junior officers in the field that analysts use to advise policymakers.
The leak is expected to put further pressure on Barack Obama, the US president, to get results in Afghanistan as he send thousands of additional troops to bolster forces already in the country.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
UPDATED ON:Monday, July 26, 2010 17:10 Mecca time, 14:10 GMT
VIDEO
Pakistani agents 'aiding Taliban'
Pakistan has rejected the reports that its intelligence service gave support to the Taliban [AFP]
US officials believe that the intelligence agency of ally Pakistan, which receives billions of dollars in aid from Washington, has been secretly supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan, leaked records say.
Wikileaks, the online whistleblower organisation, published more than 90,000 secret US military documentson Sunday, revealing an unedited account of the nearly nine-year-old war in Afghanistan.
The unverified files say that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, the country's spy service, has been holding strategy sessions with Taliban leaders to aid their efforts in Afghanistan.
An ISI spokesman denied the allegations, saying they were "far-fetched and unsubstantiated," but said the agency would be examining the files.
Wikileaks' documents, which cover a period from January 2004 to December 2009, include descriptions of a covert US special operations unit formed to target high-level al-Qaeda and Taliban figures. They say more than 2,000 leaders are on a "kill or capture" list, but missions to hunt them down have led to unreported civilian deaths.
Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, said he expected the leaked records would "shape a [new] understanding of the past six years".
"The real story of this material is that it's war, it's one damn thing after another," Assange said at a news conference in London on Monday. "It is the continuous small events, the continuous death of children, insurgents, allied forces, the maimed people."
Taliban dealings
The New York Times in the United States, Britain's Guardian newspaper and the German weekly Der Spiegel were all given about a month's advanced access to the dosier, with each jointly unveiling their findings on Sunday.
According to the Times report, the documents suggest Pakistan "allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Talibanin secret strategy sessions to organise networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders".
IN DEPTH
Reports reveal Afghan war details
Ex-spy chief denies Taliban links
Excerpts: A less encouraging story
Video: Ability of Afghan forces questioned
Focus: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the US, called the release of the files "irresponsible" and said it consisted of "unprocessed" reports from the field.
"The documents circulated by WikiLeaks do not reflect the current on-ground realities," Haqqani said in a statement.
"The United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan are strategic partners and are jointly endeavouring to defeat al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies militarily and politically," he said.
The US government also condemned the records' disclosure, saying they could threaten national security and endanger the lives of its forces.
"The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organisations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk," James Jones, the US national security adviser, said.
"These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies."
Assange, however, defended his organisation's decision to release the classified files, saying Wikileaks "tried hard to make sure this material does not put innocents at harm", adding that all the documents were at least seven months old.
Rejecting US government claims, he said: "We are familiar with groups whose abuse we expose attempting to criticise the messenger, to distract from the power of the message ... we don't see any difference in the White House's response in this case to the other groups that we have exposed."
'Grimmer picture'
According to the records, the US has tried to cover up the fact that the Taliban have heat-seeking surface-to-air "stinger" missiles.
The documents also show that the Taliban's widening use of roadside bombs have killed more than 2,000 civilians.
The documents reveal new details about Afghan civilian deaths [EPA]
Eric Schmitt, one of the New York Times reporters who worked on analysing the files over the last month, told Al Jazeera that the documents gave an unvarnished view of the war, a "very fine grain, down on the ground level detail that hasn't been revealed before ... whether it's in firefights or drone activities, secret operations performed by commandos of the CIA".
He said they painted "a much grimmer picture and portrayal than either the Bush or Obama administrations have allowed so far".
Included in the many revelations of the leaked documents were also reports that the CIA expanded paramilitary operations in Afghanistan and ran the Afghan spy agency from 2001-2008.
Pakistan's ISI had helped establish the Taliban's government in the 1990s, when Afghanistan was wracked by infighting following the withdrawal of Soviet troops.
The country's leadership reversed course after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, agreeing to assist the US against the Taliban, which the US accused of sheltering Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader.
But US officials and analysts have persistently questioned whether all of Pakistan's security apparatus is on the same page, with some believing that Islamabad's main interest is to ensure continued influence in Afghanistan.
Iraq video
Wikileaks has become one of the biggest and most controversial sources of classified government information, even publishing a document showing that US intelligence had plans to shut it down.
In April, Wikileaks released video footage from a helicopter cockpit showing a deadly 2007 aerial strike in the Iraqi capital that killed 12 civilians, including two journalists from the Reuters news agency.
Army Specialist Bradley Manning, 22, was charged this month with misconduct and putting national security at risk for allegedly leaking the classified video, and has now been implicated in the release of the Afghan documents as well.
Sunday's released records consist largely of classified reports and assessments from junior officers in the field that analysts use to advise policymakers.
The leak is expected to put further pressure on Barack Obama, the US president, to get results in Afghanistan as he send thousands of additional troops to bolster forces already in the country.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
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