U.S. war documents leaked online
Posted July 26, 2010 9:29 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Thousands of classified Afghan war documents have been released online, prompting the Pentagon to worry about national security.
About 91,000 military documents were leaked by the whistle-blower website Wikileaks.org.
This is being called one of the largest unauthorized disclosures in military history.
The documents cover much of what the public already knows about the troubled nine-year conflict: U.S. spec-ops forces have targeted militants without trial, Afghans have been killed by accident, and U.S. officials have been infuriated by alleged Pakistani intelligence co-operation with the very insurgent groups bent on killing Americans.
WikiLeaks posted the documents Sunday. The New York Times, London’s Guardian newspaper and the German weekly Der Spiegel were given early access to the records.
The release was instantly condemned by U.S. and Pakistani officials as both potentially harmful and irrelevant.
White House national security adviser Gen. Jim Jones said the release “put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk.”
In a statement, he then took pains to point out that the documents describe a period from January 2004 to December 2009, mostly during the administration of President George W. Bush. And, Jones added, before President Obama announced a new strategy.
Pakistan’s Ambassador Husain Haqqani agreed, saying the documents “do not reflect the current on-ground realities,” in which his country and Washington are “jointly endeavouring to defeat al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies.”
The U.S. and Pakistan assigned teams of analysts to read the records online to assess whether sources or locations were at risk.
The New York Times said the documents reveal that only a short time ago, there was far less harmony in U.S. and Pakistani exchanges.
The Times said the “raw intelligence assessments” by lower level military officers suggest that Pakistan “allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.”
The Guardian; however, interpreted the documents differently, saying they “fail to provide a convincing smoking gun” for complicity between the Pakistan intelligence services and the Taliban.
The leaked records include detailed descriptions of raids carried out by a secretive U.S. special operations unit called Task Force 373 against what U.S. officials considered high-value insurgent and terrorist targets. Some of the raids resulted in unintended killings of Afghan civilians, according to the documentation.
During the targeting and killing of Libyan fighter Abu Laith al-Libi, described in the documents as a senior al-Qaeda military commander, the death tally was reported as six enemy fighters and seven noncombatants, all children.
Task Force 373 selected its targets from 2,000 senior Taliban and al-Qaida figures posted on a “kill or capture” list, known as JPEL, the Joint Prioritized Effects List, the Guardian said.
WikiLeaks said the release Sunday “did not generally include top-secret organizations,” and that it had “delayed the release of some 15,000 reports” as part of what it called “a harm minimization process demanded by our source,” but said it would release the documents later, possibly with material redacted.
U.S. government agencies have been bracing for a deluge of thousands more classified documents since the leak of helicopter cockpit video of a 2007 firefight in Baghdad. That was blamed on a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, Spc. Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Md. He was charged with releasing classified information earlier this month. Manning had bragged on line that he downloaded 260,000 classified U.S. cables and transmitted them to Wikileaks.org.
So how does the leaked U.S. military documents affect Canada?
Well the reaction is mixed.
Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said the files have nothing to do with Canada.
“This is about leaked U.S. documents.”
Although he did acknowledge the leaks have made the Harper government very nervous.
“Our government is concerned – obviously – that operational leaks could endanger the lives of our men and women in Afghanistan.”
Meantime, the files did reveal the U.S. asked Canada to put diplomatic pressure on Saudi Arabia and South Africa – two countries allegedly raising money for the Taliban.
International relations expert and University of Toronto professor Akash Maharaj told 680News more documents WikiLeaks promises to release may deal with our country.
“Canada is a fairly prominent actor within the combat mission in Afghanistan that we will be directly – or at a minimum – indirectly named in documents that are forthcoming.”
Maharaj also said Canada may never trust the U.S. again as he called the leaks an “appalling lack of security.”
“It may indeed make some countries less likely to want to pass information to the American government.”
Canada is slated to end its combat mission in Afghanistan next year.
