Wikileaks : Secret Afghanistan War logs

[GUNNER]

Please do not ‘manufacture’ evidence against Pakistan

By Wajid Shamsul Hasan

The leak of thousands of US military documents about the war in Afghanistan and allegations therein indicting Pakistan’s security institutions speak of a deeper conspiracy into the overall war against terrorism. As far as Pakistan’s role in the war is concerned, suffice it to quote a Persian proverb which says, “Fragrance does not need recommendations of a perfume seller”.

The sacrifices rendered by Pakistan are enormous. Around 27,000 people have been killed during the past six years, over 2,700 security forces laid down their lives and more than 9,000 have been severally wounded. These figures far exceed the total casualties of NATO allies in Afghanistan during the past nine years.

For the West, terrorism (now violent extremism) began after 9/11. But Pakistan’s 9/11 started when the Soviet troops marched into Afghanistan and the bearings of a change in the structure of the realpolitik became evident. The Soviet invasion posed a threat to the “Free World”, so we were told and Pakistan was declared a “bulwark against communism”, and a “defender of the Free World”.

The resistance offered by the Afghans against the Soviets mesmerised the West so much that it bestowed the title of “mujahideen” upon the Afghans. The new madrassas were financed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the Free World to recruit and train more mujahideen.

The so-called intelligence leaks directed against Pakistan are an allegation that does not rest on credible information. Even newspaper commentaries state that intelligence predicting attacks on certain targets proved to be false. The timings of the leak are instructive. Just a week ago, an international conference held in Kabul called for the need to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan through a reconciliation and reintegration process and the gradual withdrawal of the coalition forces by 2014.

The Kabul Conference held on July 20 provides an opportunity to stabilise Afghanistan by engaging antagonists to find a political solution and strike a balance in the future dispensation of Afghanistan. The overwhelming majority of the conference favoured this approach. However, a few factions within Afghanistan and some countries in the neighbourhood, who are trying to dominate Afghanistan and pressurising Pakistan by using Afghanistan’s porous borders to pump in money and weapons in Balochistan, have not liked the idea of reconciliation. This is also reflective of immediate reactions emanating from these sections within Afghanistan and those countries in the neighbourhood.

For the stability of Afghanistan and for a smooth and gradual withdrawal of international and coalition forces, it is important that not only the political process in Afghanistan be led by the Afghans, but it should also be incumbent upon all neighbours as well as “near neighbours” of Afghanistan to honour the commitments made in the Kabul Declaration of July 20. Mere lip service or ‘running with the hare and hunting with the hound’ would not bring stability to Afghanistan.

For its part, Pakistan has proved through its actions that stability in Afghanistan is an imperative. Pakistan has taken firm action against extremists and terrorists and observes zero tolerance against foreign extremists trying to take refuge in Pakistan. More importantly, the democratic government in Pakistan believes in a stable Afghanistan, and by extension a stable region, so that all nations in the region may focus their energies in addressing the plight of their poor. Instead of manufacturing evidence against Pakistan, it would be advisable if we work for peace and stability in Afghanistan through peaceful means.

 

[Musafar]

WikiLeaks Iraq Cache More Than Three Times As Big

The cache of classified U.S. military reports on the Iraq War as yet unreleased by WikiLeaks may be more than three times as large as the set of roughly 76,000 similar reports on the war in Afghanistan made public by the whistle-blower Web site earlier this week, Declassified has learned.

Three sources familiar with the Iraq material in WikiLeaks hands, requesting anonymity to discuss what they described as highly sensitive information, say it’s similar to this week’s Afghanistan material, consisting largely of field reports from U.S. military personnel and classified no higher than the "secret" level. According to one of the sources, the Iraq material portrays U.S. forces being involved in a "bloodbath," but some of the most disturbing material relates to the abusive treatment of detainees not by Americans but by Iraqi security forces, the source says.

Although WikiLeaks founder and principal operative, Julian Assange, provided three news organizations—The New York Times, London newspaper The Guardian, and the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel—with weeks of advance access to the Afghan War material before making it public himself, he’s apparently being more coy in his handling of the Iraq War material, the source indicates. Assange is keeping tighter personal control over the Iraq material than he maintained over the Afghan material, the source says, adding that it’s not clear whether any media organizations have had advance access to it or when it might be made public.

A second source says there are indications that WikiLeaks has been receiving leaked material from sources besides Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army private who recently was charged by military authorities with illegally handling classified information. Among other offenses, Manning has been charged with improperly downloading more than 150,000 U.S. diplomatic cables.

The Obama administration and many members of Congress have strongly condemned the leaking of U.S. secrets to WikiLeaks, although many experts have said the newly published Afghan material reveals little that was not already known about U.S. conduct of the war or about the perfidy of such parties as Pakistan's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. WikiLeaks is said to have an additional 15,000 unreleased reports in its Afghan trove, for a total of about 92,000 documents. It remains to be seen whether the unpublished material will bring any greater understanding to the war.

Assange did not immediately reply to e-mails from Declassified seeking comment on what further revelations might be forthcoming.

WikiLeaks Iraq Cache More Than Three Times As Big - Newsweek

 

[aakalim]

On WikiLeaks, Pakistan and Afghanistan; the tip of an old iceberg​

Jul 28, 2010 12:27 EDT
al Qaeda | ISI | Pakistan | Taliban | war in afghanistan

I’ve been resisting diving into the WikiLeaks controversy, in part because the information contained in the documents – including allegations of Pakistani complicity with the Taliban - is not new. Yet at the same time you can’t entirely dismiss as old news something which has generated such a media feeding frenzy. So here are a few pointers to add to the discussion.

U.S. POLICY TOWARDS PAKISTAN

On the likely implications (or non-implications) for U.S. policy towards Pakistan, go back to 2009, and this piece in the National Interest by Bruce Riedel who conducted the first review of Afghan strategy for President Barack Obama. Having assessed all the evidence, including well-known American misgivings about the role of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, he concluded that Washington had no option but to stay the course in trying to build a long-term partnership with Pakistan.

American policy for the last 60 years, wrote Riedel, had oscillated wildly between love and hate. “What the U.S.-Pakistan relationship needs is constancy and consistency. We need to recognize that change in Pakistan will come when we engage reliably with the Pakistani people, support the democratic process and address Pakistan’s legitimate security concerns. Candor needs to be the hallmark of an enduring commitment to civilian rule in Pakistan.

“U.S.-aid levels should not be the product of temper tantrums on Capitol Hill … Our goal should be to convince Pakistanis that the existential threat to their liberty comes not from the CIA or India, but from al Qaeda.

“We also need to engage India constructively on how to reduce and then end the tensions, including in Kashmir, that have resulted from partition. Ironically, the Pakistanis and Indians have made great progress on this issue behind the scenes in the last decade … Quiet and subtle American diplomacy should now try to advance this further.”

“None of this will be easy. Pakistan is a complex and combustible society undergoing a severe crisis. America helped create that crisis over a long period of time. If we don’t help Pakistan now, we may have to deal with a jihadist Pakistan later. That should focus our attention.”

That message of U.S. commitment to Pakistan was reinforced in a statement released this week by the U.S. embassy in Islamabad and as my colleague Chris Allbritton writes in this analysis, there is little reason to believe the WikiLeaks uproar will change Washington’s approach of trying to build a long-term relationship with Pakistan while also leaning on it to “do more” to tackle Islamist militants.

The danger of course – and that is one reason why the WikiLeaks uproar cannot be dismissed as old news – is that allegations will stoke already strong anti-American feeling in Pakistan, making it all the harder for Washington to persuade Pakistan to do more. As Chris quotes Pakistani political analyst Hasan-Askari Rizvi as saying: “The Islamic parties and the extreme political right in Pakistan already view the U.S. as a major threat to Pakistan. They don’t view the Taliban as a threat. Now these reports have given them a lot of ammunition.”

PAKISTAN-AFGHANISTAN RELATIONS

In one of the more thoughtful reactions to the WikiLeaks reports, Michael Semple, the former deputy EU representative to Afghanistan, writes in this article in The Guardian that it had become an article of faith in Afghanistan to blame the ISI for conflict in the country (many of the WikiLeaks reports came from Afghan intelligence). This he says was based not on empirical findings but on the assumption that Pakistan would never tolerate stability in its neighbour. That is not to say there is no interference, nor that the Taliban do not benefit from safe havens in Pakistan, but rather that in the Afghan war all information/disinformation needs to be treated with caution.

“… the most popular way of establishing credentials as an Afghan nationalist has long been to denounce Pakistan as the enemy,” he writes. ”Among the 180 (WikiLeaks) 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.”

“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 have been trying to improve their relationship in recent months, with President Hamid Karzai in March describing the relationship between the two as that of “conjoined twins”. That does not mean that suspicions of heavy ISI involvement in the insurgency have disappeared - on the contrary they continue to play a strong role in the perceptions of Taliban commanders in the field, as outlined in a report released by the London School of Economics in June. Nor does it suggest that Pakistan’s own approach to the many militant groups based on its territory is any less opaque. But it did help open up the possibility of an eventual negotiated political settlement in Afghanistan.

Will the WikiLeaks uproar now sour those ties again? The allegations do not come as any more of a surprise to the Afghans than to the Americans, but they have given Afghanistan an opportunity to reassert its long-standing complaint about ISI interference.

WHAT DOES PAKISTAN WANT IN AFGHANISTAN?

This to me is a far more interesting question than whether Pakistan has a role in Afghanistan. You can be fairly sure the U.S. administration has a shrewd idea of the answer and has been working for months to narrow its differences with a country which has a powerful role either as ally or adversary.

It says it wants a stable and neutral Afghanistan, and a rollback in Indian influence there. While “neutrality” is hard to define given Pakistan’s deep distrust of India, and while it would be expected to push for a friendly government in Kabul, this does not imply that it wants the Taliban back in power in Kabul (although it would probably expect them to be part of any political settlement.)

Pakistan found the Taliban hard enough to control when they were in power from 1996 to 2001 – it was not, for example, able to persuade them to recognise the Durand Line, the colonial era border dividing the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. A resurgent Taliban, fresh from any victory against the Americans, would be even harder for Pakistan to manage. So it would be against its interests for the movement to have too much power, particularly since this might embolden Taliban allies on the Pakistan side of the border, who have already unleashed a wave of bombings across the country.

On top of that, there is little love lost between the Taliban and Pakistan, and certainly no liking for the ISI, if you go by comments made by Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the last Taliban ambassador to Islamabad. “In my dealings with them (the ISI) I tried not to be so sweet that I would be eaten whole, and not so bitter that I would be spat out,” Zaeef writes in his book “My Life with the Taliban”.

Pakistan has also been pushing for a political settlement which it says should include all Afghanistan’s different ethnic groups (a Pashtun/Taliban only settlement would likely lead to renewed civil war and de facto partition, both of which would leave Pakistan still struggling with an unstable neighbour). But I’ve not heard anyone suggest that Pakistan wants U.S. troops out of Afghanistan within a year – rather the talk is more of a three to five-year time horizon (coincidentally or not, the three-year timetable matches the unexpectedly-long three-year extension in the term of office just given to Pakistan Army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.)

So far the U.S. administration has said it needs more time to weaken the insurgency and bring the Taliban to the negotiating table; but acknowledges there will eventually have to be a political settlement (a propos of which, it’s interesting to note that David Ignatius, writing in the Washington Post, quotes General James Jones as saying that elements of the Taliban might be willing to meet one U.S. condition for talks, which is to disavow al Qaeda. “The Taliban generally as a group has never signed on to the global jihad business and doesn’t seem to have ambitions beyond its region,” it quotes him as saying.) It’s not entirely clear, therefore, that there is such a huge gulf between the United States and Pakistan on the need for a political settlement, except on the timing.

Where it does get impossibly murky, is in managing the tortuous relationship between India and Pakistan. Pakistan accuses India of using its large presence in Afghanistan to destabilise its border areas, including by backing separatists in Baluchistan – an allegation India denies. India fears Pakistan wants to use Afghanistan as a base for anti-India militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir – as happened before 2001. With the kind of “quiet and subtle” diplomacy advocated by Riedel in 2009, Washington has been pushing the two countries to talk, although so far progress has been limited. So while Pakistan might eventually be able to lean on the Taliban to negotiate, and may not be that far apart from Washington on the kind of settlement it wants to see in Afghanistan, it is unlikely to want to give much ground until it has some reassurances about India (that India, in turn, still angry about the 2008 attack on Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants, is unwilling to give.)

Add into that all the uncertainties of the region, including a potential showdown over Iran’s nuclear programme, the practical difficulties of persuading the Taliban to sever ties with al Qaeda (something it is unlikely to want to do as long as it needs it as an ally), the difficulties of persuading Pakistan’s population to turn against Islamist militancy, and a 60-year-old conflict over Kashmir, among many other things, and you have a situation that is incredibly hard to manage.

Compared to that, the WikiLeaks reports are only the tip of an iceberg that everyone has always known is there.

Or as Andrew Exum argues in this op-ed in the New York Times: “I can confirm that the situation in Afghanistan is complex, and defies any attempt to graft it onto easy-to-discern lessons or policy conclusions. Yet the release of the documents has led to a stampede of commentators and politicians doing exactly that.”

On WikiLeaks, Pakistan and Afghanistan; the tip of an old iceberg | Analysis & Opinion |

 

[Spring Onion]

We don't know source of leaked data, says WikiLeaks head
AP,



LONDON: WikiLeaks' editor-in-chief claims his organization doesn't know who sent it some 91,000 secret US military documents, telling journalists that the Web site was set up to hide the source of its data from those who receive it.

Julian Assange didn't say whether he meant he had no idea who leaked the documents or whether his organization simply could not be sure. But he did say the added layer of secrecy helps protect the site's sources from spy agencies and hostile corporations.

"We never know the source of the leak," he told journalists gathered at London's Frontline Club late on Tuesday. "Our whole system is designed such that we don't have to keep that secret."

US officials said US operatives inside Afghanistan and Pakistan may be in danger following the massive online disclosure Sunday.

In his first public comments, President Barack Obama said the leak of classified information from the battlefield "could potentially jeopardize individuals or operations." He spoke in Washington after meeting on Tuesday with Congressional leaders from both parties on the topic.

US Attorney General Eric Holder said a Pentagon investigation will determine whether criminal charges will be filed in the leaking of Afghanistan war secrets. Holder, speaking during a visit on Wednesday to Egypt, said the Justice Department is working with the Pentagon-led investigation to determine the source of the leak.

In Baghdad, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters he was "appalled" by the leak.

"There is a real potential threat there to put American lives at risk," he said.

While Assange acknowledged that the site's anonymous submissions raised concerns about the authenticity of its material, he said WikiLeaks had yet to be fooled by a bogus document.

"We do see wholly fabricated submissions, usually around election time," he said, but added that they were "quite rare."

Assange added that WikiLeaks used ex-military and former intelligence workers to help evaluate whether documents leaked from the armed forces or spy agencies were genuine.

The Web site's worse fear, he said, was not a complete forgery but a real document that had been subtly altered. Still, he said he had yet to see that happen.

US officials are also worried that the raw data may prove useful not only to the Taliban but to hostile intelligence services in countries such as China and Russia who have the resources to make sense of such vast vaults of data, said Ellen McCarthy, former US intelligence officer and president of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance.



Former CIA director Michael Hayden denounced the leak as a gift to America's enemies.

"If I had gotten this trove on the Taliban or al-Qaida, I would have called it priceless," he said. "If I'm head of the Russian intelligence, I'm getting my best English speakers and saying: 'Read every document, and I want you to tell me, how good are these guys? What are their approaches, their strengths, their weaknesses and their blind spots?"'

Assange agreed that the files offered insight into US tactics. But he said that was none of his concern, and his Web site already carried a copy of the US Special Forces' 2006 Southern Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Manual, among other military documents.

"We put out that stuff all the time," he said. He seemed irritated when a member of the audience pressed him on whether he believed there were ever any legitimate national security concerns that would prevent him from publishing a leaked document.

"It is not our role to play sides for states. States have national security concerns, we do not have national security concerns," he said.

"You often hear ... that something may be a threat to US national security," he went on. "This must be shot down, whenever this statement is made. A threat to US national security? Is anyone serious? The security of the entire nation of the United States? It is ridiculous!”

But he admitted that individual cases were different. "If we are talking a threat to individual soldiers ... or citizens of the United States, then that is potentially a genuine concern," he said.

Assange cast a bit of light on the way his organization operates, describing an online submission system "like nothing else you've ever seen."

"We encrypt all the information, it is routed through protected legal jurisdictions, multiple servers," he said.

But, to the amusement of the audience, the former computer hacker said one of the best ways to submit classified material remained the international postal system.

His comments also offered insight into his own motivation, referring to a statement he gave to German newspaper Der Spiegel in which he said he "loved crushing bastards."

He said the comment wasn't meant in jest, describing himself as a combative person who likes "stopping people who have created victims from creating any more."

Assange also expressed disdain for the military, invoking a quotation attributed to mathematician and noted pacifist Albert Einstein that describes soldiers as contemptible drones and attacks patriotism as a cover for brutality and war.

He scoffed when the Frontline's moderator spoke of teenage British soldiers "giving their lives" in Afghanistan.

"To what?" he asked.

AP.

 

[muse]

In one of the more thoughtful reactions to the WikiLeaks reports, Michael Semple, the former deputy EU representative to Afghanistan, writes in this article in The Guardian that it had become an article of faith in Afghanistan to blame the ISI for conflict in the country (many of the WikiLeaks reports came from Afghan intelligence). This he says was based not on empirical findings but on the assumption that Pakistan would never tolerate stability in its neighbour. That is not to say there is no interference, nor that the Taliban do not benefit from safe havens in Pakistan, but rather that in the Afghan war all information/disinformation needs to be treated with caution.

“… the most popular way of establishing credentials as an Afghan nationalist has long been to denounce Pakistan as the enemy,” he writes. ”Among the 180 (WikiLeaks) 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.”

We on the forum have been pointing this out ever since the forum was established -- while people with real experience of Afghhanistan know this, some armchair warriors in the US media and some frustrated by the failure of the "American century" project, seem unable to confront reality and instead base their entire hostility on the notion of "sanctuaries" and such. It won't wash.

 

[Old School]

We on the forum have been pointing this out ever since the forum was established -- while people with real experience of Afghhanistan know this, some armchair warriors in the US media and some frustrated by the failure of the "American century" project, seem unable to confront reality and instead base their entire hostility on the notion of "sanctuaries" and such. It won't wash.

We know which Afghan intel staffs did it and how they did it. We also know who guided them through the whole process. But our enemies have achieved nothing substantial. Sorry for them.

 

[H2O3C4Nitrogen]

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

since how many times we have bashed that dog ,, that ashole always tries to prove his ethnic enemity against pakistan with any BS he can devise... !!!

 

[somebozo]

Most of the current CIA private inteligensia is manned by ex-KHAD personal who have their loyalities for sale to highest bidder..and since their motives are to make money their findings follow the trail of green paper. Speak what makes the dollars roll. as simple as that. Americas biggest failure in afghanistan is failed strategy to commercialize the war and assume greenback can buy everything.

 

[muse]

An Editorial from the Hindu -- Readers are invited to note how very different is the view from India, as opposed to Indians in the US, in their assessment of events in Afghanistan and the what the import of the Wikileak stuff ought to be:


» Editorial
July 28, 2010 Afghan war exposed

The governments of the United States and the United Kingdom have reacted with predictable shock and dismay to the appearance on the non-profit website WikiLeaks of some 92,000 U.S. military documents on the calamitous war in Afghanistan. Material on the conduct of German, French, and Polish troops — fellow-members of the International Security Force in Afghanistan (ISAF) — is a sort of bonus. The New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel collaborated in analysing and placing substantial amounts of the information on the Internet, though they have withheld details that are likely to heighten the danger to U.S. troops and their partners. The White House, however, says the leaks might put American lives and those of partners at risk and could threaten national security. The U.K. expresses similar concerns. The documents show that intelligence is unreliable and often unverifiable; that ISAF communications frequently break down; that there are technical problems with equipment, including drone aircraft; and that troops are so frightened of suicide bombers and Taliban collaborators that they have killed hundreds of civilians by shooting and bombing indiscriminately. Furthermore, large numbers of ordinary Afghans fear and hate the foreign troops and are victims of the corruption and brutality that pervade the U.S-backed Hamid Karzai government. Taliban forces, for their part, are increasingly well-trained and adept, and their roadside bombs have killed over 2,000 civilians.

The WikiLeaks exposé has been likened to the 1971 leak of the Pentagon Papers, the contents of which significantly strengthened worldwide opposition to the Vietnam war, and also to the publication of pictures of U.S. torture at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. It turns out that the CIA has its own secret operation to kill suspected Taliban leaders, that incident reports conceal civilian deaths and other failures, and that the U.S. military has covered up the Taliban's acquisition of heat-seeking missiles. Politically speaking, there is deepening international concern that the ISAF presence is not doing anything other than wrecking Afghanistan and strengthening the Taliban. The U.S., in particular, has persistently underestimated the weakness and incompetence of the Afghan government. Therefore, prosecuting anyone found responsible for the leak amounts to nothing more than shooting the messenger. That will address neither the chaos in Afghanistan nor the fact that a war effort that has already cost over $300 billion is totally directionless. The very concept of a victory, military or political, is now completely unintelligible and the official lies about Afghanistan can no longer be sustained.


A somewhat differnt picture that what some of our Indian American posters portray of opinon in India - interesting.

 

[fatman17]

An Editorial from the Hindu -- Readers are invited to note how very different is the view from India, as opposed to Indians in the US, in their assessment of events in Afghanistan and the what the import of the Wikileak stuff ought to be:


» Editorial
July 28, 2010 Afghan war exposed

The governments of the United States and the United Kingdom have reacted with predictable shock and dismay to the appearance on the non-profit website WikiLeaks of some 92,000 U.S. military documents on the calamitous war in Afghanistan. Material on the conduct of German, French, and Polish troops — fellow-members of the International Security Force in Afghanistan (ISAF) — is a sort of bonus. The New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel collaborated in analysing and placing substantial amounts of the information on the Internet, though they have withheld details that are likely to heighten the danger to U.S. troops and their partners. The White House, however, says the leaks might put American lives and those of partners at risk and could threaten national security. The U.K. expresses similar concerns. The documents show that intelligence is unreliable and often unverifiable; that ISAF communications frequently break down; that there are technical problems with equipment, including drone aircraft; and that troops are so frightened of suicide bombers and Taliban collaborators that they have killed hundreds of civilians by shooting and bombing indiscriminately. Furthermore, large numbers of ordinary Afghans fear and hate the foreign troops and are victims of the corruption and brutality that pervade the U.S-backed Hamid Karzai government. Taliban forces, for their part, are increasingly well-trained and adept, and their roadside bombs have killed over 2,000 civilians.

The WikiLeaks exposé has been likened to the 1971 leak of the Pentagon Papers, the contents of which significantly strengthened worldwide opposition to the Vietnam war, and also to the publication of pictures of U.S. torture at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. It turns out that the CIA has its own secret operation to kill suspected Taliban leaders, that incident reports conceal civilian deaths and other failures, and that the U.S. military has covered up the Taliban's acquisition of heat-seeking missiles. Politically speaking, there is deepening international concern that the ISAF presence is not doing anything other than wrecking Afghanistan and strengthening the Taliban. The U.S., in particular, has persistently underestimated the weakness and incompetence of the Afghan government. Therefore, prosecuting anyone found responsible for the leak amounts to nothing more than shooting the messenger. That will address neither the chaos in Afghanistan nor the fact that a war effort that has already cost over $300 billion is totally directionless. The very concept of a victory, military or political, is now completely unintelligible and the official lies about Afghanistan can no longer be sustained.


A somewhat differnt picture that what some of our Indian American posters portray of opinon in India - interesting.

and the 'hindu' is right-wing, anti-pakistani!!!

 

[igoogle]

and the 'hindu' is right-wing, anti-pakistani!!!

The news media is generally labeled Anti Pakistani or Right wing based upon the situation the forum members want to turn..... If its favoring Pakistan its a good newspaper...and when its against Pakistan ..its boldly labeled as anti Pakistani or right wing.

It more like Labeling of Convenience.

 

[muse]

Hindu is a respected paper and generally speaking, not favorably disposed towards Pakistan -- But this isn't about Pakistan - It's about US policy -- please do note what the editorial says about US policy and concludes:The very concept of a victory, military or political, is now completely unintelligible and the official lies about Afghanistan can no longer be sustained

Look at what it has to say about the efforst at misdirection by US and "allied" media : prosecuting anyone found responsible for the leak amounts to nothing more than shooting the messenger. That will address neither the chaos in Afghanistan nor the fact that a war effort that has already cost over $300 billion is totally directionless.


What's interesting about this is how different this point of view is from the the one so many Indian posters forward on this forum and on others - this disconect is interesting, I am sure you will agree.

 

[fatman17]

"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"

this is what i think of 'wikileaks'

 

[fatman17]

The truth of a scandalous war

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Aijaz Zaka Syed

And we all thought we had read and said all that was needed to be read and said on Afghanistan! We have read and heard so much on the shenanigans of the coalition of the willing over the past few years that nothing seems to shock us anymore. Yet the shock-and-awe of the WikiLeaks disclosures takes your breath away.

This is the mother all of all exposes, and perhaps the biggest news story of our time, even for the whistleblowers who have made a name for themselves with stories like the raw video footage of the US soldiers gaily firing on a group of Iraqi civilians including two Reuters journalists from the safety of their Apache gunship in the air.

All three publications, the New York Times, the Guardian and German Der Spiegel that got the exclusive rights to break the story after the WikiLeaks released it on the Web first, agree that the West's Afghan mission is in far worse shape than admitted so far.

Nine years after the cowboy coalition walked into the Afghan morass, eyes wide shut, and after even spending $300 billion of US taxpayer's money, it remains a mission as impossible as ever.

While not even the most ardent America apologists have dared to suggest the West is faring well on the Afghan front, clearly no one in the Western media in their wildest dreams ever thought things could be this bad. The disclosures, based on daily logs of US military operations, paint a picture of the war that is truly mind-boggling and far more harrowing than ever imagined by anyone, including the blissfully clueless Americans.

In its intensity, geopolitical ramifications and utter pointlessness, this war is far more disastrous and deadlier than Vietnam, a war whose memories still shock the Americans out of their wits. From the friendly fire between the US and Nato troops to the fierce fighting between Afghan and Pakistan soldiers along the border, it's a complete mess out there.

In the thick fog of war, nobody seems to have a clue what is going on down on the ground. The coalition totters from crisis to crisis and from disaster to disaster, insisting it will stay the course as precious billions are poured down the bottomless pit that is Afghanistan.

The insurgents get bolder, deadlier and more effective as they hone their skills in a game that they have played for centuries. But we have already been familiar with most of these facts despite the endless propaganda blitz of the US military establishment and the unquestioning US media.

Thanks to some courageous whistleblowers and independent bloggers, the world is not totally ignorant of the deepening mess in Afghanistan. Only we underestimated the extent of the trouble.

The highlight of the WikiLeaks expose, however, is the humanitarian tragedy of the war, a story that has found little space in the international reportage of the war.

While many of us including yours truly have occasionally protested, for what it's worth, against civilian killings and reckless coalition bombings of wedding parties and funeral processions etc., none of us thought the rot is as widespread as it has been revealed by the WikiLeaks.

This despite the fact that the three publications voluntarily removed material "which threatens the safety of troops, local informants and collaborators."

Still the collective picture that emerges is spine-chilling. The logs record at least 150 incidents of trigger-happy coalition forces bombing unsuspecting civilians including women and children. These incidents have never been reported before.

So they are besides the incidents those reported by international media like the airstrike in Azizabad, in Western Afghanistan, that killed as many as 92 civilians in August 2008. In May 2009, another airstrike killed 147 civilians. "Bloody errors" include the day French troops strafed a bus full of children in 2008.

A US patrol similarly machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers, and in 2007 Polish troops mortared a village, killing an entire wedding party including a pregnant woman. The logs 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.

These are just some of the many 'incidents' that haven't been reported or recorded by anyone. One couldn't muster the courage and patience to go through it all. As the New York Times puts it, "incident by incident, the reports resemble a police blotter of the myriad ways Afghan civilians were killed – not just in airstrikes but in ones and twos – in shootings on the roads or in the villages."

This is not all. The war logs also detail how a secret "black" unit of special forces hunts down Afghans for "kill or capture" without so much as a trial. Not surprisingly, many of these "Taliban leaders" happen to be innocent civilians. The diary also reveals how the coalition has been using Reaper drones to hunt and kill "usual suspects" by remote control from the safety of a base in the remote Nevada desert in the US. So much for America's mission to promote freedom, democracy and human rights in the Muslim world!

Commenting on the WikiLeaks story, a White House spokesperson has pointed out that the "time period reflected in the documents is January 2004 to December 2009," suggesting most of it took place under Bush. But can this fig-leaf help the Obama administration justify what has been going on in Afghanistan for years?

Having inherited this mess from his predecessor, this president had a historic opportunity and all the means at his disposal to turn around America and its troubled relationship with the Muslim world by getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama squandered that opportunity, just as he has squandered all the goodwill he had generated with his historic election and soaring rhetoric. Instead our hero chose to perpetuate the poisonous legacy of his predecessor. So much for the "audacity of hope" and so much for the promise of "change we can!"

I know, I know. Obama didn't start these wars and he's not to blame for much of the madness. But the least the Nobel laureate president could have done was put an end to the shame of Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the WikiLeaks logs illustrate in terrifying detail, some of the worst human rights abuses including old-fashioned murder, rape and torture have taken place during these wars fought in the name of freedom, human rights and democracy. If the same were to happen under some other regime, the coalition of the willing would have bombed them back to the Stone Age.

The two wars have claimed more than a million innocent lives. What for? And who'll pay for these crimes? But who can confront the superpower and its powerful allies with these questions? For all our talk of democracy and fine-sounding international institutions, ours is still a world where might is right.

President Obama faces a stark choice in Afghanistan: Leave now with some dignity intact or await the humiliation of total and comprehensive defeat, the kind that came the way of the Russians.

For one thing is certain. The Afghans' legendary patience and their never-say-die spirit will outlive the persistence and fortitude of the invading armies. Ask the Russians and the British. No matter how hard the West tries to pretend all's well, it will have to leave Afghanistan, sooner or later.

This war has been already unravelling faster than you could say Mission Accomplished! It's up to Obama if he wants to leave now or stay the course and lose thousands of more precious lives and burn billions of hard earned dollars in the Graveyard of Empires that is Afghanistan.



The writer is opinion editor of the Khaleej Times. Email: aijaz@khaleej times.com

 

[GUNNER]

Here we go again!


Thursday, July 29, 2010

By Ikram Sehgal

In another major attack on Pakistan's credibility as a responsible entity among the comity of nations, among the 92,000 secret US documents about the Afghan war leaked to the media by WikiLeak, a number of reports accused Pakistan's premier intelligence agency of being in collusion with the Taliban. The "war logs" also alleged ISI involvement in plots to kill President Hamid Karzai as well as planning strategy for attacks against US and coalition forces in Afghanistan. Independent analysts warned that most of the intelligence material was of questionable value, coming from sources inimical to Pakistan.

Clearly fabricated, inconsistent and certainly not verified, it was not surprising that most emanated from the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan's premier intelligence agency, which was taken over lock, stock and barrel by India's RAW when the Northern Alliance came to power.

As director general of the ISI in the late 1980s, Lt Gen (Retd) Hameed Gul was actively working with the CIA in aiding the Taliban. His views are well known and have not really changed. His extreme stance is presently at variance with the moderate nature of the "great silent majority" of Pakistanis. One does not agree with him on any number of issues, however one does respect his integrity and patriotism. To suggest that he would support the Taliban actively in any way, particularly when the army that he loves and served with distinction is at war with them, is, in his own words, "preposterous."

There is a radical difference between the ISI that existed during the Afghan war and the ISI that exists today. Clandestine organisation like the ISI, the CIA, MI-5 and the former KGB, of necessity operate in grey areas. But that any would work against the best interests of the state is ridiculous. The Pakistani army shields Pakistan from its enemies, the ISI provides the outer shield for Pakistan and the army. Our enemies' motives in their constant attacks on the ISI are well known: reduce the shield and you compromise the security and integrity of Pakistan.

The documents leaked by WikiLeak include details of war crimes by US and coalition forces and the involvement of Karzai's family in drug smuggling, yet these got only cursory media attention.

Nowhere in the 92,000 documents does there seem to be any mention of India, good or bad. One may well ask: why this golden silence on India? True to form, the Afghan presidential spokesman, Waheed Omar, studiously focused on Pakistan, saying the "documents could help raise awareness on the sanctuaries Islamabad provides for militant groups." That about sums up Afghanistan's hostility to Pakistan and its ingratitude for all the sacrifices Pakistan has made (and is making) for Afghanistan. Only the week before, the Pakistani government had signed a memorandum of understanding under which the Afghans will receive most-favoured free access to Pakistani ports as well as to roads/railways communications infrastructure.

It is time our foreign policy to discover self-respect. One is forced to use language that is not diplomatic: till they learn to shut up and keep shut, we should allow only food essentials for Afghanistan to transit through Pakistan, and nothing else. As regards transit facilities for India to Afghanistan, either through Karachi port or Wagah, somebody in our government needs to get their head examined for even agreeing to talk about it. We do not need Afghanistan, they need us.

The US has forcefully condemned the leaks as harmful to their national security interests. However, there is a hint of a "wink" and a "nod" to put Pakistan under further pressure "to do none." One has great respect for Admiral Mike Mullen. What he has achieved in calming the suspicions and fears of our armed forces is remarkable but this doublespeak in the US establishment is shocking. One is heartened by comments by US lawmakers who have taken into account the tremendous sacrifices rendered by Pakistani security forces in dealing with the militants. They rightly say that the leaks do not represent facts as they exist on the ground today.

Richard Haass, chairman of the Council of Foreign Relations appeared on a show (hosted by CNN's Fareed Zakaria) to announce blithely that Pakistan allows Al-Qaeda to roam about freely in Pakistan and manipulates Afghanistan in its designs against India. While Indian Muslim Fareed Zakaria (an original "Uncle Tom") has a vested interest in showing himself as being more loyal than the king, these accusations were mind-boggling. We are the ones suffering most at the hands of Al-Qaeda and, to correct Haass, just look at the geography. It is the other way around: it is India that manipulates Afghanistan for its own purposes against Pakistan.

With experience in the White House working with both the younger and elder Bush, Haass was an insider in the making of decisions affecting millions. In his Essay "Dilemma of Dissent," Haass disclosed that "very frequently the rulers and their close aides made important (decisions) without proper enquiry, analysis or debate." Those facilitating such decision-making Haass calls "enablers." One way to avoid becoming an "enabler" was to resign. That unfortunately requires a conscience. Richard Haass became an "enabler" rather than risk "being ignored or overruled."

Bluntly put, many American soldiers and Iraqis across the board have died (and are dying) because people like Haass wanted to stay within the reaches of power. If any order is unlawful, further action is a matter of morality. People like Haass sacrificed morality at the altar of their own careers. To quote from my article "Defining Character" published on May 28, 2009: "Richard Haass may be brilliant, he is also a self-confessed intellectually dishonest person." Yet, people like Haass proliferate in the upper reaches of US decision-making and can rule the airwaves to spread false perceptions.

Perception is nine-tenths of media law. To quote from my recent article "Pie in the sky": "Propaganda is a deliberate attempt to persuade people by any available media to think and then behave in a manner desired by the source, it is really the means to an end. There could be individual Taliban sympathisers in the ranks of Pakistan's intelligence agencies and other official circles, but to say that Pakistan provides concerted institutional support…is nonsense, it demeans not only the blood that our soldiers have shed fighting the Taliban but that of our innocent civilians also."

As a coherent platform for our national security strategy, our present media policy is quite impractical and is tilted inwards, rather than being focussed externally. The stakes are high, a comprehensive media strategy must incorporate the new ground realities and must project Pakistan abroad by coalescing and force-multiplying the talent and potential of the private sector. The attacks on the army and the ISI have grave national repercussions for us, and they will happen again and again unless we do something.