Afghanistan war logs: Recriminations fly over alleged support for Taliban
Leaked documents reveal hand of Pakistan's spy agency behind insurgency, say
officials in Afghanistan and India
Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan deteriorated sharply today as officials from both countries traded angry accusations over the leaked US military documents suggesting Pakistan's spy service is entwined with the Taliban.
Waheed Omar, a spokesman for the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, was blunt in his finger-pointing. Referring to Pakistan, he said: "The war on terrorism will not succeed unless we address the root causes
the role forces behind the borders of Afghanistan play in destabilising activity here in Afghanistan."
He added: "We will not be able to defeat terrorism in the villages of Afghanistan unless we pay attention to the places where terrorism has been nurtured, where terrorists are kept, where they are given sanctuary, where they are given ideal motives to carry out their attacks in Afghanistan."
An official with Pakistan's spy agency, the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), questioned the reliability of Afghan intelligence-gathering. "The majority of these [documents] are preliminary reports and they are mostly from Afghan intelligence, so you can imagine their credibility," the official said.
Adding to this toxic diplomatic, military and intelligence mix, Pakistan's traditional rival India joined Afghanistan in saying the leaks confirmed what Delhi had been saying for years about Islamabad's behaviour in Afghanistan.
The testy exchanges come after a short period in which relations between the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan had been improving.
The Obama administration, on first learning about the contents of the leaked documents, feared they would end up having this impact on Afghanistan-Pakistan relations.
At the White House briefing today, Barack Obama's spokesman, Robert Gibbs, described the leaks as
"posing a very real and potential threat to those who are working hard to keep us safe".
Gibbs offered only qualified support for Pakistan, saying Obama had made it clear last year that
Pakistan would not be receiving a blank cheque and had to make progress in taking on insurgents. There had been Pakistani military operations in the Swat valley and South Waziristan,
but he added that more were expected.
Reflecting the outrage of many who voiced, in newspapers and websites in the US, concern about the risk posed by the leaks,
Professor Ross Baker, a political science specialist at Rutgers University, said: "Giving aid and comfort to the enemy, which Wikileaks does in the release of this material, is treasonable by any definition. Revelation of these documents will likely result in US battle casualties as it gives our enemy, the Taliban, useful information about the manner in which Nato forces communicate and use tactics.
The divulging of this information is more damaging than the Pentagon Papers ever were."
Mirroring similar criticism in the US about the alleged role of Pakistan, Lieutenant-Colonel Tony Shaffer, a former intelligence officer and now an analyst at the Centre for Advanced Defence Studies, drew an analogy with the second world war, saying the ISI/Taliban relationship was akin to the British working with the Nazis leaking information about Normandy.
The ISI has in the past worked with the Taliban, seeing it as a bulwark against any Indian attempts to increase its influence in Afghanistan.
Pakistan rejected the allegations in the US military documents as false, with the ISI official suggesting the leaked material was only preliminary reports.
"Only once something is corroborated from multiple sources does it become a credible piece of information," the ISI official said.
Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman, Abdul Basit, called the leaks
"far-fetched and skewed".
Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief extensively cited in the documents as meeting and aiding the Taliban, described the material as "a pack of lies, a fairytale". He denied having any contact with the Taliban, though he was happy to voice his moral support for them.
Gul, who officially retired from the ISI in 1991 but is frequently accused of still playing an active role, dismissed the idea of a 74-year-old sitting in a small house in Rawalpindi masterminding operations against the US. "I'm just the whipping boy," he said.
Indian officials said the documents "confirmed what India has been telling for a long time".
Bahukutumbi Raman, former head of the counter-terrorism division of India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, said the real question would be whether America would now act "against Pakistan".
"There has been plenty of evidence for years but it has never resulted in any concrete action," he said. "There'll probably be a debate but that'll be all."
Iran, which the documents also accused of interfering in Afghanistan,
did not comment today. The official news agency IRNA reported the
leaks without mentioning the alleged role of Iran.
The German government said it planned to investigate the documents amid concern that the information disclosed might put its troops in danger.
Foreign minister Guido Westerwelle called for the information to be closely scrutinised. "All of it must of course be carefully examined, to see what possible new revelations there might be," he said.
The German government has shown little alarm over the release of the documents, although commentators said the files did much to highlight the "naivety" with which German troops had entered the conflict in Afghanistan and would do further damage to the already very jaded public view of the mission.