Wikileaks : Secret Afghanistan War logs

[Masterchief]

LOL The Afghan agents must be scared of ISI all the time..I don't think we should care about negative PR.The fact of matter is that ISI is working for Pakistan's National Interests.It certainly is following Army's policy.

oh really, how many denials you guys will have it seems that top websites, milatry experts and every one is wrong, but it is no surprise to me ISI is playing double games in pakistan

 

[Masterchief]

The ISI: America’s favourite scapegoat

First, a freelance reporter brings down America’s top general in Afghanistan with a damning article in the iconic pop-culture Rolling Stone magazine. Now, thousands of classified military documents are published on to the Internet through a website called WikiLeaks allegedly through a US soldier who had a change in conscience.

Both stories have the makings of a future Hollywood film. But most importantly, both stories reveal an Afghan War that is going very wrong. Sadly, coverage in the US, of arguably the two biggest scoops of the year, can only be described as constrained. Most media moguls chose to shy away from the real story.

Michael Hastings article, “the Runaway General” did not turn in to a larger discussion of a failing war like he intended, but became a mission to prove no general is above the civilian leadership in the US.

And now in the WikiLeaks story, instead of focusing on the many war crimes, cover-ups and evidence of an occupation mentality in Afghanistan, most American news networks and publications have seized the opportunity to either berate WikiLeaks for divulging secret information or to point fingers at Pakistan by pulling headlines like, “Pakistan Aids Insurgency in Afghanistan,” and editorials like “Pakistan’s double game.”

And those were just the christening headings given by the New York Times, one of the three news organizations and the only US publication that was given a two-week jump-start to analyse the 92,000 leaked US intelligence reports from the war in Afghanistan between 2004 and 2009.

The Guardian, one of the two European papers that was also given early access to the classified documents decided to headline, “Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation“.

In a press conference in London, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks said, “I am often asked this question: what is the most single damning revelation, what is the thing that is easily capturable, the single event, the single personality, the single mass killing? But that is not the real story of this material, the real story of the material is that it is war. It is one damn thing, after the other.”

The WikiLeaks founder himself focused on the number of civilian casualties cited in the documents and said there is evidence of “war crimes” throughout the reports.

Click for an excerpt of the press conference.

Much in line with Assange’s tragic narrative, the leaked documents depict a disturbing fudging of facts and unreported killing of hundreds of civilians. Two incidents in particular have been highlighted by the Guardian.

One involves a group of US marines, who went on a shooting rampage after coming under attack near Jalalabad in 2007. They recorded false information about the incident, in which they actually killed 19 unarmed civilians and wounded another 50.

In another case the same year, documents detail how US special forces dropped six 2,000lb bombs on a compound where they believed a “high-value individual” was hiding, after “ensuring there were no innocent Afghans in the surrounding area”. A senior US commander reported that 150 Taliban had been killed. Locals, however, reported that up to 300 civilians had died.

But the NYT chose not to run with these stories as their lead, instead they pulled out the ISI card, in their Editorial “Pakistan’s Double Game”.

“…the most alarming of the reports were the ones that described the cynical collusion between Pakistan’s military intelligence service and the Taliban. Despite the billions of dollars the United States has sent in aid to Pakistan since Sept. 11, they offer powerful new evidence that crucial elements of Islamabad’s power structure have been actively helping to direct and support the forces attacking the American-led military coalition…..Americans are increasingly weary of this costly war. If Mr. Obama cannot persuade Islamabad to cut its ties to, and then aggressively fight, the extremists in Pakistan, there is no hope of defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan.”

Here’s a bit of the Guardian coverage that takes some of the weight off the ISI:

“At least 180 files contain allegations of dirty tricks by the powerful agency with accounts of undercover agents training suicide bombers, bundles of money slipping across the border and covert support for a range of sensational plots including the assassination of President Hamid Karzai, attacks on Nato warplanes and even poisoning western troops’ beer supply. But for all their eye-popping details, the intelligence files, which are mostly collated by junior officers relying on informants and Afghan officials, fail to provide a convincing smoking gun for ISI complicity. Most of the reports are vague, filled with incongruent detail, or crudely fabricated. The same characters – famous Taliban commanders, well-known ISI officials – and scenarios repeatedly pop up. And few of the events predicted in the reports subsequently occurred. A retired senior American officer said ground-level reports were considered to be a mixture of “rumours, bullshit and second-hand information” and were weeded out as they passed up the chain of command.”

I can understand why the US is trying to deflect off the greater tragedy that the leaked reports reveal – a failing war that has had its fair share of civilian causalities – especially at a time when the American public is increasingly growing wary of the distant war as they tighten their belts in a weak jobless economy. But I wish they chose a scapegoat other than the Pakistani ISI.

The truth is the ISI is doing what spy agencies do. Their actions are no different from the CIA. The only difference is that the ISI acts in what it perceives to be Pakistan’s interest, while the CIA acts in what it perceives to be America’s interest.

Now what is American interest? Wiping out the Taliban.

What is Pakistan’s interest? Surviving.

Here’s the bitter impending truth that Pakistan and the ISI have to deal with. When the US and Nato forces eventually leave Afghanistan, it will not be because all of the Taliban have been wiped out. It will simply be because they just aren’t worth the fight anymore. Most analysts agree that the Taliban are much stronger than they were in 2001. Fighting the allied forces the last nine years has left the tribal warriors better equipped, trained, united and organised. If anything, before bidding farewell to Afghanistan, the US will have captured some big guns among the ranks. The Taliban and their many foot soldiers and commanders will still be around. Karzai’s government, his bureaucracy, police force and Afghan army are not ready (and from the looks of it will never be ready) to deal with the Taliban. The ISI fears the dust from departing US boots would have barely settled before Afghanistan is back in Taliban hands.

And Pakistan will be left with yet another hostile neighbor. So is it really in Pakistan’s interest to alienate and declare an all-out war with the Taliban? By keeping its ties with the saner elements of the Taliban, the ISI is simply trying to prevent a painful déjà vu from the ’80s coupled with the possibility of very bitter enemy, on its eastern border.

The sad thing is the US understands these realities; in fact many elements within the US establishment are for talks with the “good” Taliban. And that is a course the Obama administration has been toying with since it put its new Afghan policy into motion in 2009. The leaked documents only cover incidents up until January 2009, which is before the new Obama policy was put in place. In fact, in an interview with ABC news last year, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State emphasized the need to sort out the real enemy. She said,”not every Taliban is Al Qaeda.”

So why put pressure on ISI, when they might just be doing what the US wants them to do in the first place–divide and conquer the Taliban?

Because when push comes to shove, and things start looking bleak in Afghanistan, especially to the American public, the US immediately points its finger at its “ostensible” ally.

Pakistan has become America’s favorite scapegoat.

The Dawn Blog Blog Archive The ISI: America?s favourite scapegoat

ISI was the reasons you guys lost two ware and lost kargil due to mismanagement by nawaz sharif, ISI is responsible for thousands of death in india and pakistan, and stop supporting it just because you are a pakistani by your long and boring article it seems whether a top website was wrong and you are correct , give us some proofs guy, the whole world knows the reports are authentic

 

[gubbi]

Pentagon: Leaked Afghan reports are not top-secret

(CNN) -- Pentagon officials studying leaked documents about the war in Afghanistan have not yet found anything top secret among them, a Defense Department spokesman told CNN Tuesday.
"From what we have seen so far the documents are at the 'secret' level," Col. David Lapan said. That's not a very high level of classification.
Lapan emphasized that the Pentagon has not yet looked at all the more than 75,000 documents published on the WikiLeaks.org website on Sunday.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered the Foreign Ministry and National Security Council to study the vast cache of documents as well, Karzai's office said Tuesday.
Journalists and other observers around the world spent Monday poring over the papers which the whistle-blower website says exhaustively chronicle the twists, turns and horror of the 9-year-old war in Afghanistan.
The documents, which date from between 2004 and January 2010, are divided into more than 100 categories. Tens of thousands of pages of reports document attacks on U.S. troops and their responses, relations between Americans in the field and their Afghan allies, intramural squabbles among Afghan civilians and security forces, and concerns about neighboring Pakistan's ties to the Taliban.
The "direct fire" category accounts for the largest number -- at 16,293 reports -- while "graffiti," "mugging," "narcotics" and "threat" each account for one. And WikiLeaks has another 15,000 documents that it plans to publish after editing out names to protect people, according to the website's founder and editor in chief, Julian Assange.
He said on CNN's "Larry King Live" that the first-hand accounts represent "the cut and thrust of the entire war over the past six years," through the military's own raw data -- numbers of casualties, threat reports and notes from meetings between Afghan leaders and U.S. commanders.
"We see the who, the where, the what, the when and the how of each one of these attacks," Assange said. That includes, he said, possible evidence of war crimes by both U.S. troops and the Taliban, the Islamic militia that has been battling U.S. troops since 2001.
Assange said some events listed in the reports are "very suspicious," such as reports of skirmishes in which "a lot of people are killed, but no people taken prisoner and no people left wounded."
"In the end, it will take a court to really look at the full range of evidence to decide if a crime has occurred," he said. But earlier, he noted, "This material does not leave anyone smelling like roses, especially the Taliban."
CNN has not independently confirmed the authenticity of the documents, but neither the White House nor the Pentagon has denied they are what WikiLeaks claims they are.
The White House Monday condemned the release of the documents as "a breach of federal law," but simultaneously dismissed them as old news.
"I don't think that what is being reported hasn't in many ways been publicly discussed -- whether by you or by representatives of the U.S. government -- for quite some time," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters. But he said an investigation into the source of the leak had begun by last week.
"There is no doubt that this is a concerning development in operational security," he said.
The reports tend to be filled with jargon, like this one that describes a border incident from September 4, 2005:
"The Pakistan LNO [liaison officer] reports that ANA [Afghan National Army] troops are massing and threatening the PAKMIL [Pakistani military] 12km NE of FB Lwara [Firebase Lwara, a U.S. military base] ..."
And that's not even the entire first sentence.
Assange said WikiLeaks withheld some documents that dealt with activity by U.S. Special Forces and the CIA, "and most of the activity of other non-U.S. groups."
But he said the documents reveal the "squalor" of war, uncovering how a number of small incidents have added up to huge numbers of civilian deaths.
"What we haven't seen previously is all those individual deaths," he said. "We've seen just the number. And like Stalin said, 'One man's death is a tragedy, a million dead is a statistic.' So, we've seen the statistic."
The release of the documents is being called the biggest intelligence leak in history, drawing comparison to the disclosure of the Vietnam-era "Pentagon Papers."
"There hasn't been an unauthorized disclosure of this magnitude in 39 years," said Daniel Ellsberg, the onetime Pentagon official who leaked that multiple-volume secret history of the conflict.
Others disagreed with the comparison. Bruce Riedel, an analyst at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at
the Brookings Institution, noted that the Pentagon Papers were part of a document prepared for U.S. leaders that analyzed how the United States got into Vietnam, "which assessed successes and failures in a comprehensive way."
"This is really the raw material of the war -- unassessed, raw, fragmentary data that I think in each case, you have to be very careful how much of a larger picture you can conclude from these fragments and snippets," Riedel said.
And CNN Terrorism Analyst Peter Bergen said the Pentagon Papers revealed "a huge disconnect between what the American government was saying officially and internally."
"Here, all sorts of American government officials are saying the war is not going very well. No one is disagreeing with that," Bergen said.
But Ellsberg said the documents, "low-level as they are," raise the question of whether the United States has a winning strategy in Afghanistan and whether it should continue to pursue the war.
"They do give us the sense of the pattern of failure, of stalemate, and why we're stalemated -- civilian casualties that recruit for the Taliban ... and raise the question of what we're doing there," he said.
The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001 after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. The attacks were carried out by the Islamic terrorist network al Qaeda, which operated from bases in Afghanistan with the approval of the Taliban, the fundamentalist movement that ruled most of the country at the time.
The invasion swiftly toppled the Taliban, but al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar escaped and remain at large. Meanwhile, the Taliban regrouped along the rugged border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is now battling its own Taliban insurgency as well.
Gary Berntsen, who led a CIA commando team in Afghanistan in the hunt for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, said on CNN's "Rick's List" that the documents "probably are accurate." But Berntsen, now a Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in New York, said the reports are likely to be a propaganda coup for the Taliban and "sap morale in the United States."
"It does paint a bleak picture on this," he said. "But it doesn't mean this fight is less worth fighting and trying to make progress on."
And Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said the information should be put "in context" and that journalists should avoid publishing anything that could harm U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Assange, he said, "is an anti-war activist who has repeatedly cast a very unfair light on the American military and on the American population in general."
"There are American troops in harm's way getting shot and killed," Rieckhoff said. "If WikiLeaks is endangering them, we need to push back, and the American public needs to push back."
Once the jargon of the report is pierced, the stories can be eye-opening.
In a February 5, 2008, incident, Task Force Helmand reported that an Afghan National Police officer -- referred to as ANP -- was in a public shower smoking hashish when two members of the Afghan National Army walked in.
"ANP felt threatened and a fire fight occurred," the report says. "The ANP fled the scene and was later shot. ANP and ANA commanders held meetings to contain the incident."
An October 15, 2007, incident describes an Afghan National Police highway officer's shooting of another Afghan National Police officer in the shoulder and leg, not seriously. "The shooting was not accidental the policeman had been arguing with each other for a few days," the report said.
In a March 19, 2005, incident, "FOB [Forward Operating Base] Cobra received a local national boy who had received a gunshot wound to his stomach," another report said.
"He had been shot during a green-on-green [Afghans attacking Afghans] firefight in Jangalak Village. The boy and his older brother had heard shooting outside of their compound and went outside to check it out, at which point the boy was shot in the stomach. Another brother had also been shot and died at the compound. No adult males had accompanied the brothers, and only the older brother of the injured boy could provide information on the incident. The older brother explained that men in the village were having personal disputes with each other and had then began shooting at each ones' compounds."
Assange said the documents were "legitimate," but said it was important not to take their contents at face value.
"We publish CIA reports all the time that are legitimate CIA reports. That doesn't mean the CIA is telling the truth," he said.
He said his website is not campaigning against the war.
"WikiLeaks does not have an opinion whether the war in Afghanistan should continue or not continue. ... It should continue in a just way if its to continue at all," he said.
He declined to tell CNN where he got the documents, and said the identities of his sources are less important than the authenticity of the documents they provide. And he denied that WikiLeaks has put troops in danger, and said the documents' publication will help people make informed decisions about whether to support the war.
Assange, an Australian, said the site is coming under "significant pressure" from authorities, including several recent "surveillance events." But he said that due to the response the latest release has received, "It is not politically feasible to interfere with us at a high level."

 

[Jet Li]

^^^This is the kind of repetitive nonsensical rant I keep on reading over and over and over in this forum (gaurav yadav post).

 

[mohsinkid]

one thing i have to ask d0 WIkileaks :war logs having anything to related about the Weapon Of Massss Destructi0n at Iraq in saddams possession?

 

[Jet Li]

Pakistan decries WikiLeaks release of U.S. military documents on Afghan war

By Joshua Partlow and Karin Brulliard
Washington Post staff writers
Tuesday, July 27, 2010

KABUL -- Pakistani officials reacted angrily Monday to the publication of a trove of U.S. military documents that suggested Pakistan's spy agency collaborated with the Taliban, saying the United States is using their country as a scapegoat for its failing war.

Diplomats and officials dismissed the reports as rehashed falsehoods, but ones that could have damaging consequences for Pakistan's relations with the United States. Some expressed doubts about whether the United States could be trusted with sensitive information and questioned pledges of increased trust in Pakistan.

In a statement, the Pakistani government called the allegations, contained in more than 91,000 military documents leaked by the group WikiLeaks.org to unveil $500 million worth of development projects, the first disbursement of a $7.5 billion, five-year aid package approved by Congress last year.

In Islamabad, Pakistan, a senior ISI official, speaking on the condition of anonymity according to agency custom, said it was still sifting through the documents. But the official said that the allegations did not sound new and that they appeared to contain no concrete evidence of ISI backing for the Afghan insurgency.

The official acknowledged, however, that some of the allegations sound "very damning" and could erode support in the United States for the alliance with Pakistan. If the CIA does not denounce the suggestions, the official said the ISI might need to reexamine its cooperation.

Pakistani officials dismissed the disclosures that their country's spies meet and coordinate attacks with Taliban leaders. Several officials and analysts suggested that the Obama administration is trying to exert pressure on their government or smear Pakistan's reputation.

Retired Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, a former Pakistani spy chief who was repeatedly implicated in the documents, also lashed out at the allegations that he aided the Taliban attacks. Gul is accused, among other things, of directing Pakistan-based militants to craft plans for strikes inside Afghanistan, including one meant as payback for the death of an al-Qaeda operative killed by a U.S. drone attack.

In an interview Monday, he said the leaked documents should prompt Pakistan to drop its alliance with the United States. The Americans are "facing defeat in Afghanistan and to cover that, they are coming up with false allegations against Pakistan," he said. "This is a pack of lies to malign [the] Pakistan army and the ISI."

Gul worked closely with the CIA's anti-Soviet campaign during his tenure from 1987 to 1989. Today, he is one of Pakistan's most strident critics of the United States and an unabashed supporter of Afghan insurgents. U.S. officials have long suspected him of retaining links to former mujaheddin such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The senior ISI official said Gul has no remaining ties to the agency.

washingtonpost.com

 

[Jet Li]

Pakistan and Afghanistan: interdependent, distrustful neighbours

The relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan is a lot more complex than described in the stories of ISI goons

Michael Semple guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 27 July 2010 11.15 BST

No one should be surprised that 180 of the leaked intelligence reports sound alarm bells about the involvement of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service in Afghan insurgency. Plenty such alarm bells have been sounded in the public domain already. But it is important that policymakers draw the right conclusions.

During the period covered by these reports, I sat in on one of the first national workshops of the Afghan reconciliation commission, headed by former president, Sebghatullah Mojadedi. Provincial police chiefs and governors and other officials split into small groups to discuss the causes of ongoing conflict. Encouraged by Mojadedi himself, every single working group fed back the conclusion that Pakistani ISI interference was the prime cause of conflict in the country.

This was more an article of faith than an empirical finding. Assembled Afghan officialdom simply worked on the basis that Pakistan had supported the Taliban, was opposed to the post-Taliban set-up and must be behind any resistance to this new setup.

In an even more blatant fashion, while visiting one of the Afghan provinces bordering Pakistan I asked the provincial intelligence chief to explain his role. He described his main function as being to inculcate in the people of the province a belief that Pakistan could never tolerate a stable Afghanistan, so that they would always be on their guard to check ISI interference.

The point is that Afghanistan and Pakistan are countries with a complex history of interdependence. Although most of Afghanistan's trade comes through Pakistan and Pakistan was the main place of refuge for Afghan refugees during the 1980s, the most popular way of establishing credentials as an Afghan nationalist has long been to denounce Pakistan as the enemy.

Among the 180 reports of ISI interference, most are drawn from informants or briefings from the Afghan intelligence service, who describe in lurid detail direct involvement of ISI officers in trying to wreak havoc inside Afghanistan. The bulk of them can now be dismissed as unreliable either with the benefit of hindsight (they warn of impending disasters which never happened) or on the basis of implausibility (conveying details the source could not have known) and because they fit in with a pattern of disinformation (stories constructed from recurrent themes and familiar characters).

One set of informants most likely passed on these reports because they found there was a market for them. More politically motivated informants, such as those Afghan officials who supplied briefings which US personnel later wrote up as intelligence, probably wanted to strengthen US backing by turning the US against Pakistan.

If you try and understand the Pakistan-Afghanistan links in the Afghan insurgency without the benefit of the largely concocted reports supplied to the US military, you still conclude that the insurgency depends upon a safe haven in Pakistan. All the commander networks which actually do the fighting in Afghanistan maintain a presence in Pakistan and use this to support their war effort. This is hardly surprising given the length of border, the amount of civilian movement, the tribal relationships and the intricate commercial links, even before you factor in a pre-2001 history of covert actions across the border. The relationship is a lot more complex than described in the crude stories of ISI goons.

Most Taliban I have talked to regarding the role of Pakistan make three broad points. They say that they require some degree of official blessing to be able to operate from Pakistan. They say that this blessing is never assured – it is an uncomfortable relationship. And they say that any solution to the insurgency must have Pakistan's blessing.

The conclusion I draw from the intelligence controversy is that anyone charged with negotiating an end to the conflict in Afghanistan will have to guard that process from exactly the kind of disinformation we have all been studying. They will need to keep Pakistan, the insurgents and the various parts of today's Afghan establishment on board, and overcome a high degree of distrust which years of disinformation have contributed to.

Pakistan and Afghanistan: interdependent, distrustful neighbours | Michael Semple | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

 

[was]

indians as usual jumping with happiness

 

[Jet Li]

^^^that is a very important article (last one I posted)

 

[mjnaushad]

indians as usual jumping with happiness

Thats a usual response......Jumping and saying "Now US will attack Pakistan...Now US will take its 10 Kadam." .....No big deal....We get this all the time....

 

[Ras]

So wikileak is more powerful, resourceful and informed than CIA coupled with other couple of US intelligence agencies and entire fleet of Pentagon experts ??????????

I never said that...the Pentagon has not confirmed or denied anything wikileaks has put out other than saying that things with Pakistan has improved recently.

 

[karan.1970]

Ah, you are suggesting that media manipulation and propaganda based on unverifiable accounts that are looking increasingly 'made up' will result in prejudice and discriminatory behavior towards Pakistani-Americans from other Americans?

Yes.. Unfortunate but true...

Once more, if that comes to take place, it reflects extremely poorly on Americans, and only further necessitates pointing out that the intelligence being ballyhooed by the US media is unverified, and in many cases turned out to be outright false.

If it happens (which I think it will) it reflects badly on the US media and more so on US govt for allowing this leak (if false) or its policy of allying with Pakistan (if true). But not on the people.

Its fairly simple.. If someone in your house has died fighting in Afghanistan and then you hear all over the media that an ally who was supposed to be fighting alongside you was actually helping the enemy, most folks will react in a predictable manner..Specially with the present image (correct or not) that Pakistan has in the western countries..

So I think that fact that these allegations are patently not true continues to be a very important point that needs to be made.

By I understand your discomfort, now that the falsity of these allegations is increasingly clear, resulting in a shifting away from 'true or not' to focus on secondary issues as a result of the media propagating false information.

I dont think these leaks are yet proven false. And I believe the result of the analysis wont be black or white but will have multiple shades of grey in between.. Understand that these are leaks of official papers that were anyway known to the US govt. Their reaction was what it was and wont change. The reasons could be the lack of authenticity of these papers or US's strategic compulsions in the region.

What has happened is that they are now leaked to public and controlling their reaction to these is going to be a tough ask. Will depend on how strongly and categorically US govt denies this. Because if there is some strain of truth in this, the US official stand will leave a plausible deniablity route for them and will be visible.

The issue is not if it will damage Pakistan's credibility with the Western population, but the extent of the damage..


US Govt's stand will not change since this is not something they were not aware of. The change will be in public perception and if damage control is not done effectively, the 1st constituency on the receiving end of this bias will be Pakistani folks living in the West..

Extremely unfortunate & prejudicial but true...


Edit: btw you are already hearing some of the US administration saying that the picture of Pakistan painted by these leaks represents Pakistan's actions prior to OBama admin. A face save way out if I ever saw one..

 

[was]

Thats a usual response......Jumping and saying "Now US will attack Pakistan...Now US will take its 10 Kadam." .....No big deal....We get this all the time....

in indian forum they were saying ,the day is not far when US f-15 along IAF su 30s will bomb pakistan,.

 

[Jet Li]

in indian forum they were saying ,the day is not far when US f-15 along IAF su 30s will bomb pakistan,.

really? No mention of the B-2 Stealth Bomber.

 

[karan.1970]

in indian forum they were saying ,the day is not far when US f-15 along IAF su 30s will bomb pakistan,.

That is one load of c??p.. These leaks are not something the US govt was not aware of before they were published in the newspaper..

About the posts on the Indian forums... well, what can I say... such idiots exist in abundance on both sides of our border..