Back
WORLD AFFAIRS
Afghan expose
JOHN CHERIAN
The WikiLeaks documents confirm reports about the scale of civilian
casualities in the Afghan war and the ISI's strong links with the
Taliban.
LEON NEAL/AP
JULIAN ASSANGE AT a press conference in London. Some 92,000 documents
on the war in Afghanistan were released by the website WikiLeaks to
The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel.
OFFICIALS in Washington and Islamabad have reason to be perturbed by
the tens of thousands of documents released by WikiLeaks in July.
Though the documents, which cover the period between 2004 and 2009, do
not reveal anything substantial that is not already in the public
realm, they detail the killings of more than 20,000 Afghan civilians.
The Barack Obama administration, instead of introspecting, is
threatening with dire consequences those involved in the leak of the
documents, alleging that they now "have blood on their hands".
Islamabad, though inured to a great degree by the continuous
allegations of collusion with sections of the insurgents, has to fend
off more criticisms now.
Targeting Indians
As many as 180 of the files released pertain to the Inter-Services
Intelligence's (ISI) role in training and arming the Taliban. British
Prime Minister David Cameron, on a visit to India in the last week of
July, agreed with his hosts that Pakistan's involvement with terror
groups was destabilising the continent. The WikiLeaks logs revealed
that Indian development projects and diplomatic missions in
Afghanistan were regularly targeted by militants at the prompting of
their handlers in Pakistan.
Even before the war logs were released, it was clear that Pakistan was
far from happy with India's growing presence in Afghanistan. India had
said that the attack on its embassy in Kabul was the handiwork of the
Haqqani faction of the Taliban, which had close ties to the Pakistani
security establishment. After the WikiLeaks expose, the Indian
government issued a statement demanding that Pakistan "cease forthwith
its policy of sponsoring terrorism and stop the utilisation of its
territory for recruiting and providing haven to terrorists".
The Pakistan government has described the documents as "skewed" and
out of touch with the reality on the ground. The Obama administration
will, however, find it difficult to gloss over the documented evidence
of strong linkages between the ISI and the Afghan Taliban, despite
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent assertions that Islamabad
needed just a little more of friendly prodding to fully subscribe to
the American agenda in Afghanistan.
The Pakistan Army chief, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, who was given
an unprecedented three-year extension mainly at the urging of the
Obama administration, was overseeing the ISI's activities in
Afghanistan and elsewhere during the period covered by the leaked
documents.
The U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies have
said that the leaked files have not revealed anything new. The Obama
administration was quick to point out that the events covered in the
"Afghan War Diary", as WikiLeaks calls the documents, occurred during
George W. Bush's presidency. But they do reveal some previously
unknown massacres, such as the targeting of a busload of civilians by
French troops in October 2008, and a similar incident two months later
involving U.S. troops. Many civilians were killed and seriously
injured in both the incidents.
There is also an incident that occurred in 2007, when U.S. planes
targeted a village to kill a Libyan fighter belonging to Al Qaeda.
Instead of the Libyan, seven Afghan police officers were killed.
The "War Diary" documents numerous instances of serious indiscipline
among the Afghan security forces trained by the West. These include
firing on innocent civilians, profiting from the drug trade, and
infighting and mass desertions. Afghan President Hamid Karzai wants
the same Afghan forces to be completely in charge of the country's
security by 2014. At the "Kabul conference" held in early July,
attended by top officials from all the countries involved in
Afghanistan, there was open support for this deadline proposed by
Karzai by none other than Hillary Clinton.
OMAR SOBHAN/REUTERS
Protesters destroy acar, similar to those used by foreign security
guards, during clashes with the police in Kabul on July 30. The leaked
documents prove that the resistance has popular support.
Another important revelation was that the Taliban had acquired
heat-seeking ground-to-air missiles, which may have resulted in the
downing of a few U.S. and NATO planes and helicopters.
The media had written about Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders being
selectively targeted for assassination and the collateral damage that
has frequently resulted from such strikes. The "War Diary", however,
fleshes out the details. It describes the activities of Task Force
373, a squad specifically created by the U.S. to eliminate individuals
on its wanted list in Afghanistan. Task Force 373 has become even more
active under the Obama administration. The "War Diary" also throws
more light on the increasing use of Reaper and Predator drones, which
have rained bombs on thousands of Afghan civilians from a height of
50,000 feet (15 km). The Obama administration has considerably
accelerated the use of the killer drones and other forms of targeted
killings. Counter-insurgency measures and the idea of militarily
defeating the Taliban have been put on the back burner.
"Good Taliban"
Eliminating Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders with whom the Americans and
the Pakistanis do not want to do business seems to be the order of the
day. Senior White House sources told the American media after the leak
of the documents that they hoped that the recent bonhomie between
Karzai and Kayani would help get the so-called "good Taliban" on board
so as to facilitate a political settlement. As much as $300 million
has been officially set aside by the U.S. and allies such as Japan to
lure middle-ranking Taliban leaders to the negotiating table. The ISI
is expected to do most of the arm-twisting and cajoling to get the
recalcitrant Taliban on board.
WikiLeaks has on earlier occasions published top-secret Indian
government documents. They include classified documents on the Unique
Identification Authority, which was leaked in October last year. The
other important document leaked was the draft of the India-European
Union Free Trade agreement and a report by the Finance Ministry on
diluting Environmental Impact Assessment norms.
WikiLeaks has said that it is yet to release huge amounts of documents
pertaining to Afghanistan. There is a possibility that the covert
activities of other countries, including India, could figure in future
disclosures. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange recently said that his
organisation had "several million files" waiting to be released on
every country in the world having a population of more than a million.
Out of the 92,000 documents from the secret Pentagon files in its
possession, only 76,000 have been posted online. WikiLeaks has said
that it is screening the rest of the documents before releasing them
as it does not want any harm to come to individuals whose names figure
in them.
U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates recently said that WikiLeaks was
already responsible for a number of deaths. The Taliban has announced
that it will hunt down the "informers" whose names figure in the
documents. However, so far there have been no known revenge killings
reported as a result of the documents.
Gates has said that the "battlefield consequences" of the leaks are
"potentially severe and dangerous" for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan.
But his alarmist view is not shared by Major General John Campbell,
the U.S. Commander in eastern Afghanistan. He told reporters that the
release of the documents had not changed the military's operations or
tactics.
Senior American officials tend to forget that the leaks of
intelligence assessments have only substantiated stories about the
scale of civilian carnage in Afghanistan. The 20,000 deaths that have
been documented are only a fraction of the number of civilian deaths
in Afghanistan in the last nine years under occupation.
Popular support
The leaked documents also prove that the resistance has popular
support and does not have to depend on groups such as Al Qaeda to
carry on the fight. There are reports of more than 27,000 enemy
actions and more than 23,000 "explosive hazards" (IEDs) placed by the
enemy. The documents also show that there were 273 demonstrations held
by Afghan civilians against the presence of occupation forces. Afghan
civilian casualties were understated in the U.S. Army documents. For
instance, the documents report that only 56 insurgents were killed in
the NATO air attack in Kunduz in September 2009. But the actual number
of civilians killed was 142, including many women and children.
Assange, the driving force behind the expose, has said that many of
the informers whose names figure in the leaked documents were anyway
acting in a "criminal way" by providing false information to their
American paymasters with the aim of "creating victims themselves".
Assange has justified his action on the grounds that "the vast sweep
of abuses, everyday squalor and carnage of war – the continuous deaths
of children, insurgents, allied forces – and [many] thousands of war
crimes" needed to be exposed for the sake of accountability. United
Nations Security Council Resolution 917 adopted in March 2010 calls
"for full respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms and
international humanitarian law throughout Afghanistan".
Assange, who has been working under tremendous pressure and increasing
threats from Washington, has said in interviews that the archives will
have a decisive impact on international public opinion and
decision-makers in Western capitals. "There is a mood to end the war
in Afghanistan. This information won't do it alone, but it will shift
political will in a significant manner," he told the German magazine
Der Spiegel, which, along with The Guardian and The New York Times,
was made privy to the documents.
Public opinion in the West, including the U.S., has turned
overwhelmingly against the war in Afghanistan. July was the deadliest
month for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, with 66 killed in action. As
many as 102 Democratic Congressmen voted against the continuation of
the war in late July, signalling to the White House that their support
should no longer be taken for granted. They were joined by 12
Republican Congressmen who voted against the additional $33 billion
being sanctioned for the Afghan war. Senator Richard Lugar, an
influential Republican, warned that Washington could go on spending
billions of dollars "without reaching a satisfying conclusion".
Senior Obama administration officials have been quick to reassure the
Pakistani and Afghan leaderships that they are not going to leave
Afghanistan in a hurry. Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued statements that they would stay in
the region for as long as it took to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Gates specifically stated that the U.S. was not making a substantial
withdrawal of troops anytime soon. He stressed that the Obama
administration was re-emphasising the message that the U.S. was not
leaving Afghanistan in the July of 2011. He said that the date only
signified "a transition process and a thinning of our ranks".
U.S. Vice-President Joseph Biden told the media that the number of
troops to be withdrawn next year would be as low as 2,000. The "exit
strategy" from Afghanistan that Obama has been talking about is
evidently yet to be formulated. The impact of the WikiLeaks documents
on public opinion may yet force the Obama administration's hand and
make the occupation forces leave Afghanistan by 2014 as originally
envisaged.