Wikileaks : Secret Afghanistan War logs

[AZADPAKISTAN2009]

Wall Street Journal U.S. Says Pakistan Ties Have Strengthened - WSJ.com

U.S. officials contend that in the past several months, Pakistan's stance has become much more nuanced than portrayed in the WikiLeaks reports, released Sunday by the document-publishing website. U.S. officials argue that the two nations have made strides in deepening military and civilian ties, chiefly in response to a Pakistani military offensive begun almost two years ago against Taliban militants operating on Pakistani soil. In return, the U.S. has pledged billions of dollars in new military and civilian aid.

Since last year, the Pakistan Taliban, who are allied with the Afghan Taliban, began to threaten the Pakistan state, breaking out of their strongholds in the lawless tribal areas on the borders with Afghanistan to overrun the Swat Valley in the north and threaten other settled areas.

The Pakistani military responded with a military offensive that has pushed the militants back to a few areas of the tribal regions. The military cites more than 2,000 casualties so far as a mark of its seriousness in going after militants. The U.S. has supported this campaign with drone missile strikes, which have killed scores of top Taliban leaders.

In response, the Obama administration has also upgraded military and civilian government ties.

The U.S. Congress agreed in October to a $7.5 billion civilian aid package for Pakistan over the next five years. In March, ministers from both governments attended a high-level meeting in Washington aimed at building closer ties.

U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who commanded North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Afghanistan until last month, visited his Pakistani counterpart, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, every three weeks and touted their good relations as being a meaningful breakthrough in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship.

"In the last year, we significantly ramped up consultations," said Rick Snelsire, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad.

Washington is pushing for deeper cooperation on counterterrorism. It has increased the U.S. military presence in Pakistan to about 230 personnel, including 120 Special Operations Forces involved in training and advisory roles. Pakistan doesn't allow U.S. combat forces to operate in Pakistan. The U.S. has trained more than 370 Pakistan military officers in counterterrorism, intelligence and other areas in the past few years.

 

[Bhim]

It seems the heat of leak is dying down.

Here is an exclusive interview with an authority on Foreign affairs, the one and only Mr Fareed Zakaria.


STORY HIGHLIGHTS
WikiLeaks released more than 75,000 U.S. military documents on Afghan war
Fareed Zakaria says comparison to Pentagon Papers was excessive
He says the new documents show detail on things that had been known before
Zakaria: U.S. efforts in Afghan war are out of proportion to the threat, should be reduced
RELATED TOPICS
Afghanistan War
Military and Defense Policy
Pakistan
The Pentagon
Barack Obama
Editor's note: Fareed Zakaria is an author and foreign affairs analyst who hosts "Fareed Zakaria GPS" on CNN U.S. on Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET and CNN International at 2 and 10 p.m. Central European Time/5 p.m. Abu Dhabi/9 p.m. Hong Kong.

(CNN) -- The tens of thousands of secret documents released this week by WikiLeaks.org don't provide major new insights into the Afghanistan war, and the media response to the disclosures has been "vastly overdone," says analyst Fareed Zakaria.

WikiLeaks released more than 75,000 U.S. military documents on Sunday after giving The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel an advance look at them.

The disclosures prompted headlines around the world, focusing particularly on reports of ties between Pakistani military and intelligence officials and militant groups fighting NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The author and host of CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" spoke to CNN on Tuesday. Here is an edited transcript:

CNN: What do you make of the disclosures in the WikiLeaks documents?

Fareed Zakaria: I think the reaction has been vastly overdone. Frankly I think it was overdone by the three newspapers that published them and then by the rest of the media. This has been compared by almost everybody involved to the Pentagon Papers. They are in fact nothing like that.

CNN: How were the Pentagon Papers different?

Zakaria: The Pentagon Papers was a secret report commissioned by the highest levels of government to assess how the war was going in Vietnam. What it revealed was that the government, at the very highest level, had been deceiving itself and the American people about the progress of the war, and that the war was in fact going much, much worse than the public had been led to believe.

What the war logs show is nothing like that at all. They provide a lot of granular detail about the complexities of fighting a counterinsurgency war.

CNN: What's the major thrust of the war logs?

Zakaria: They effectively show you what Barack Obama was saying on the campaign trail for about a year, which [Sen. John] McCain largely concurred with -- which was that the war in Afghanistan had been badly fought in the years 2004-2008, which is roughly when the logs date from, that it had been under-resourced from 2004-6, that the Taliban had managed to come back ... and that one of the reasons it had been able to come back was the support of the Pakistani military.

So all this was fairly well known. It does provide some richness and bears some little details such as the fact that the Taliban had been using heat-seeking missiles, which was reported but not widely reported. To me, that doesn't add up to a basic change in what we know about the war. ... If these documents had not been marked "secret" and someone presented you with that as reporting, at this point it would not even have made the front page.

CNN: The head of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has suggested the documents may show "war crimes" and said on the Larry King show Monday that "we see events that are very suspicious. ... We see an incident in August 2006 where U.S. forces, in one report, kill 181 [of] what they say are insurgents. There's one wounded and zero captured."

Zakaria: He cited one episode on the Larry King show. A lot of counterinsurgency warfare is being done by helicopters and drones, in which cases there are aerial bombardments.

Yes there are high casualty rates in those cases, but unless he's alleging that those people were civilians, unless he's alleging something a little more specific, it's very difficult to know what he means by isolating one incident and saying it's suspicious. I'm not ruling it out, I'm saying it's a pretty serious charge to make and he's tossed it around rather cavalierly.

CNN: What's the impact of the release going to be?

Zakaria: I think the most specific impact is the issue of Pakistan ... the reality is that Pakistan's interest and America's interest are not the same. Pakistan has been maintaining its contact with these militant groups.

The one thing that this report did is to provide enough detail on this set of problems that it's essentially pretty undeniable and it also is very difficult now for the administration to deny that there is a huge problem here -- that the Pakistanis have been playing a double game. That part of it seems to shed light very centrally on the role of Pakistan.

Again to be fair, the Obama administration came into power arguing that Afghanistan needed to be thought of as "Afpak," that Pakistan is very much part of the problem and part of the solution. And they have been working on that. It's not an easy problem because we have limited leverage with Pakistan.

CNN: Why can't the United States take a firmer stance with Pakistan?

Zakaria: If you were to shun and isolate them, it would probably strengthen even further their contacts with the militants. So I recognize that this is a thorny problem for any administration. But I do think it centrally highlights this problem, that you're really never going to solve the Afghanistan problem as long as you have not just a safe haven across the border, but a safe haven in which the government on the other side is playing footsie with the terrorists.

CNN: Regarding the Afghan war, you've noted that CIA director Leon Panetta has said there are probably only 50-100 members of al Qaeda in Afghanistan now. How should that affect U.S. policy?

Zakaria: There's no question that our efforts in Afghanistan are disproportionate. There are simply many cheaper and more cost effective ways to deal with the very real problem of al Qaeda and the potential for a reconstituted Taliban that would shelter al Qaeda.

Those are both real threats but I think there are ways to deal with them short of a foreign troop presence of 150,000 and expenditures in the $200 billion a year range.

That said, you can't switch this engagement off like a television set. There are 50 countries involved, NATO involved and the entire international community at some level involved.

I think that what we have in place right now is a strategy that says Gen. [David] Petraeus [the top military commander in Afghanistan] is going to be given a year to try to stabilize the situation, and then a year from now we are going to begin a drawdown. I think that that's perfectly reasonable. I don't see any advantage to an immediate, precipitous drawdown that begins tomorrow. ...

But I do think we need to start moving to rebalance American foreign policy.

CNN: What do you mean by rebalancing?

Zakaria: We have simply spent far too much time in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We are dealing there with the problems of the past. The problems of the future, the opportunities of the future, lie elsewhere in the world, in Asia and Latin America, and we should be spending more time and effort on those rather than on reorganizing the tribal relations between the Pashtuns and the non-Pashtuns in Afghanistan and and the Sunnis and the Shia in Iraq.

These are pretty much the same problems the British were dealing with 100 years ago and they are not going to be amenable to a simple solution. We should stabilize things and then draw down.

Reaction to WikiLeaks 'vastly overdone' - CNN.com

 

[karan.1970]

Karan1970

Oh yeah , i ll be anxiously waiting to see a Pakistani being harrased in US on the basis of these reports. Isnt that goes against there laws .. !
However , i have to agree that there have been incidents of such nature in the past and most probably we might see one or more in the light of events this leakage of reports have brought about.
Frankly many of the politician's kids or influential Pakistanis work/study in US. I wish any of that sort happens to them. The music back home will be deafening and the public will eventually react in the similar fashion.But this time America will finally be wiped off from our land for good . . . . .

I didnt mean any violent or extreme reaction. More of bias, suspicion and prejudice.. And please, in no way I am supporting that.. Just think its understandable from a family who has lost a son in Afghan war and is looking for someone to blame..

 

[indian navy]

citizen of USA must ask from the govt why there hard earning tax payer money is wasting in Pakistan

why USA is providing money while Pakistan is not acting against terror group

day by day hardcore group are getting stronger

 

[SMC]

^ I have stated the following several times before. The same question can be asked worded differently, but that question is harder for those who want to see Pakistan being blamed hence they will not ask that question.

---------- Post added at 12:40 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:39 AM ----------

It seems the heat of leak is dying down.
..

Just another day in the life of Fareed Zakaria.

 

[sparklingway]

Fareed Zakaria was thrashing and bashing Pakistan on the Daily Show tonight.

 

[MZUBAIR]

 

[MZUBAIR]

There is no doubt on Pakistan sincerety:- American Ambasidar

 

[ice_man]

citizen of USA must ask from the govt why there hard earning tax payer money is wasting in Pakistan

why USA is providing money while Pakistan is not acting against terror group

day by day hardcore group are getting stronger

wiki leaks is just "NEWS" from paid observers!!!! hence the USA also said we will go through the wiki leaks if it is HARDCORE FACTS as some people claim it to be then why are the USA state department going through the wiki leaks they should be knowing everything stated shouldn't they????

this same type of "PAID OBSERVERS OPINON" made the USA ATTACK IRAQ!! so the credibility of this BS leak is nothing more than an indian wet dream!

 

[indian navy]

wiki leaks is just "NEWS" from paid observers!!!! hence the USA also said we will go through the wiki leaks if it is HARDCORE FACTS as some people claim it to be then why are the USA state department going through the wiki leaks they should be knowing everything stated shouldn't they????

this same type of "PAID OBSERVERS OPINON" made the USA ATTACK IRAQ!! so the credibility of this BS leak is nothing more than an indian wet dream!

its not just wiki leak i hope you will remember the last report you can see below

heat is not for Pakistan its for USA govt now peoples in USA they ask question on govt policy

 

[Jet Li]

This may be a sign that these leaks are not going to damage Pak-US relations
___________________________________________________________

House rejects troop pullout from Pakistan
(AP) – 8 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The House has rejected a resolution directing the president to remove all U.S. troops from Pakistan.

The United States has only several hundred military trainers in Pakistan, but the sponsor of the resolution, Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich, said Congress should act now to prevent the military presence there from growing.

He cited the recent release of thousands of classified documents about military operations in the region, arguing that Pakistan's intelligence service has been aiding Taliban forces in Afghanistan and undermining U.S. interests.

But opponents pointed out the Americans on the ground in Pakistan are engaged in training and humanitarian missions, not combat.

The vote was 372-38 against the resolution.

The Associated Press: House rejects troop pullout from Pakistan

 

[ajpirzada]

Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation
• Hundreds of civilians killed by coalition troops
• Covert unit hunts leaders for 'kill or capture'
• Steep rise in Taliban bomb attacks on Nato
• Read the Guardian's full war logs investigation
(4842)
Tweet this (2659)
Comments (661)
Nick Davies and David Leigh
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 July 2010 22.03 BST
Article history

The war logs reveal civilian killings by coalition forces, secret efforts to eliminate Taliban and al-Qaida leaders, and discuss the involvement of Iran and Pakistan in supporting insurgents. Photograph: Max Whittaker/Corbis
A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.

The disclosures come from more than 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the conflict obtained by the whistleblowers' website Wikileaks in one of the biggest leaks in US military history. The files, which were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel, give a blow-by-blow account of the fighting over the last six years, which has so far cost the lives of more than 320 British and more than 1,000 US troops.

Their publication comes amid mounting concern that Barack Obama's "surge" strategy is failing and as coalition troops hunt for two US naval personnel captured by the Taliban south of Kabul on Friday.

The war logs also detail:

• How a secret "black" unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for "kill or capture" without trial.

• How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.

• How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada.

• How the Taliban have caused growing carnage with a massive escalation of their roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.

In a statement, the White House said the chaotic picture painted by the logs was the result of "under-resourcing" under Obama's predecessor, saying: "It is important to note that the time period reflected in the documents is January 2004 to December 2009."

The White House also criticised the publication of the files by Wikileaks: "We strongly condemn the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organisations, which puts the lives of the US and partner service members at risk and threatens our national security. Wikileaks made no effort to contact the US government about these documents, which may contain information that endanger the lives of Americans, our partners, and local populations who co-operate with us."

The logs detail, in sometimes harrowing vignettes, the toll on civilians exacted by coalition forces: events termed "blue on white" in military jargon. The logs reveal 144 such incidents.

Some of these casualties come from the controversial air strikes that have led to Afghan government protests, but a large number of previously unknown incidents also appear to be the result of troops shooting unarmed drivers or motorcyclists out of a determination to protect themselves from suicide bombers.

At least 195 civilians are admitted to have been killed and 174 wounded in total, but this is likely to be an underestimate as many disputed incidents are omitted from the daily snapshots reported by troops on the ground and then collated, sometimes erratically, by military intelligence analysts.

Bloody errors at civilians' expense, as recorded in the logs, include the day French troops strafed a bus full of children in 2008, wounding eight. A US patrol similarly machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers, and in 2007 Polish troops mortared a village, killing a wedding party including a pregnant woman, in an apparent revenge attack.

Questionable shootings of civilians by UK troops also figure. The US compilers detail an unusual cluster of four British shootings in Kabul in the space of barely a month, in October/November 2007, culminating in the death of the son of an Afghan general. Of one shooting, they wrote: "Investigation controlled by the British. We are not able to get [sic] complete story."

A second cluster of similar shootings, all involving Royal Marine commandos in Helmand province, took place in a six-month period at the end of 2008, according to the log entries. Asked by the Guardian about these allegations, the Ministry of Defence said: "We have been unable to corroborate these claims in the short time available and it would be inappropriate to speculate on specific cases without further verification of the alleged actions."

Rachel Reid, who investigates civilian casualty incidents in Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch, said: "These files bring to light what's been a consistent trend by US and Nato forces: the concealment of civilian casualties. Despite numerous tactical directives ordering transparent investigations when civilians are killed, there have been incidents I've investigated in recent months where this is still not happening.

Accountability is not just something you do when you are caught. It should be part of the way the US and Nato do business in Afghanistan every time they kill or harm civilians." The reports, many of which the Guardian is publishing in full online, present an unvarnished and often compelling account of the reality of modern war.

Most of the material, though classified "secret" at the time, is no longer militarily sensitive. A small amount of information has been withheld from publication because it might endanger local informants or give away genuine military secrets. Wikileaks, whose founder, Julian Assange, obtained the material in circumstances he will not discuss, said it would redact harmful material before posting the bulk of the data on its "uncensorable" servers.

Wikileaks published in April this year a previously suppressed classified video of US Apache helicopters killing two Reuters cameramen on the streets of Baghdad, which gained international attention. A 22-year-old intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, was arrested in Iraq and charged with leaking the video, but not with leaking the latest material. The Pentagon's criminal investigations department continues to try to trace the leaks and recently unsuccessfully asked Assange, he says, to meet them outside the US to help them. Assange allowed the Guardian to examine the logs at our request. No fee was involved and Wikileaks was not involved in the preparation of the Guardian's articles.

Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation | World news | The Guardian

 

[mjnaushad]

its not just wiki leak i hope you will remember the last report you can see below

heat is not for Pakistan its for USA govt now peoples in USA they ask question on govt policy

YouTube - Report alleges strong link between Pakistan's ISI and Taliban - PressTV 100616

LSE report .......

Discussed to death.....Please go through LSE report thread and you'll find the truth about the report......


No need to discuss it here just to satisfy yourself.....

---------- Post added at 01:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:02 PM ----------

Fareed Zakaria was thrashing and bashing Pakistan on the Daily Show tonight.

Do you even watch his show......

 

[mjnaushad]

Aid is for Drone attack and safe passage of goods through pakistan.

USA hands are tied due to 2 wars. Once Iraq war ends, 100k soliders will be free. That is the time for pakistan. No more aid, no more drones. Only B-52, F-22 fighter.

Yes you are right....No more drones and Aid.....

But a little correction... they cannot sale F22......Perhaps they sale us F35.......

I always see positive side of the comment......

 

[ice_man]

its not just wiki leak i hope you will remember the last report you can see below

heat is not for Pakistan its for USA govt now peoples in USA they ask question on govt policy

YouTube - Report alleges strong link between Pakistan's ISI and Taliban - PressTV 100616

one question why is USA talking about good taliban bad taliban? reconciliation with taliban themselves these days???

what has the USA achieved in the 9 year war in iraq & in afghanistan???beisdes making the whole world unsafe & increasing racism & radicalism?? the easy solution is blame pakistan make it the scapegoat (WHICH THEY NEVER HAD IN VIETNAM)