2010 Afghan War documents leak
Encyclopedia
The Afghan War documents leak is the disclosure of a collection of internal U.S. military
logs of the War in Afghanistan
, also called the Afghan War Diary, which were published by Wikileaks
on 2010. The logs consist of 91,731 documents, covering the period between January 2004 and December 2009. Most of the documents are classified Secret. As of 28 July 2010, only 75,000 of the documents have been released to the public, a move which Wikileaks says is "part of a harm minimization process demanded by [the] source". Prior to releasing the initial 75,000 documents, Wikileaks made the logs available to The Guardian
, The New York Times
and Der Spiegel
in its German and English on-line edition which published reports per previous agreement on that same day, 25 July 2010.
The leak, which is considered to be one of the largest in U.S. military history
, revealed information on the deaths of civilians, increased Taliban attacks, and involvement by Pakistan
and Iran
in the insurgency
. Wikileaks
says it does not know the source of the leaked data. The three outlets which had received the documents in advance, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel, have all concluded that they are genuine when compared to independent reports.
The New York Times described the leak as "a six-year archive of classified military documents [that] offers an unvarnished and grim picture of the Afghan war". The Guardian called the material "one of the biggest leaks in U.S. military history ... 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". Der Spiegel wrote that "the editors in chief of Spiegel, The New York Times and the Guardian were 'unanimous in their belief that there is a justified public interest in the material'."
Some time after the first dissemination by WikiLeaks, the US Justice Department were considering the use of the U.S. Espionage Act of 1917 to prevent WikiLeaks from posting the remaining 15,000 secret war documents it claimed to possess.
and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
established that the US army had built a huge database with six years of sensitive military intelligence material, to which many thousands of US soldiers had access and some of them had been able to download copies, and WikiLeaks had one copy which it proposed to publish online, via a series of uncensorable global servers.
Wikileaks describes itself as "a multi-jurisdictional public service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public." In an interview with the U.K.'s Channel 4
, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said that "we have a stated commitment to a particular kind of process and objective, and that commitment is to get censored material out and never to take it down." He contrasted the group with other media outlets by saying that "other journalists try to verify sources. We don't do that, we verify documents. We don't care where it came from." He denied that the group has an inherent bias against the Afghanistan War, saying that "We don't have a view about whether the war should continue or stop – we do have a view that it should be prosecuted as humanely as possible." However, he also said that he believes the leaked information will turn world public opinion to think more negatively of the war.
An Obama administration statement disputed the self-reported status of WikiLeaks, stating that it "is not an objective news outlet but rather an organization that opposes U.S. policy in Afghanistan." Journalist Will Heaven of The Daily Telegraph has said that WikiLeaks was not politically neutral when it fed its information to the left-leaning newspapers The Guardian, The New York Times, and Der Spiegel instead of releasing the data openly. He said that the selectivity of the leak "contravene[d] its own mission statement – that crowdsourcing and open data are paramount." The Toronto Sun has referred to Assange's statements that "This material shines light on the everyday brutality and squalor of war" and "The archive will change public opinion and it will change the opinion of people in positions of political and diplomatic influence" as evidence that he has an anti-war mission.
(usually known as the ISI) is the most important accomplice the Taliban has outside of Afghanistan." The New York Times was especially alarmed by the level of collusion with the Taliban, having concluded 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, did not think there was "a convincing smoking gun" for complicity between Pakistan intelligence services
and the Taliban.
In particular, the leaks discuss an alleged incident in which Pakistan's former ISI spy chief Hamid Gul met with Afghan insurgents in January 2009, occurring right after alleged Pakistani al-Qaeda figure Osama al-Kini's death by a CIA drone attack. "The meeting attendees were saddened by the news of Zamarai's death and discussed plans to complete Zamarai's last mission by facilitating the movement of a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device from Pakistan to Afghanistan through the Khan Pass," leaked reports said. The New York Times stated that it could not confirm whether or not that the attack ever took place.
The initial web article in The New York Times on the subject, appearing 25 July was written by Mark Mazzetti, Jane Perlez, Eric Schmitt, and Andrew Lehren, and titled "Pakistan Spy Service Aids Insurgents, Reports Assert". It was the lead article in the 26 July print edition of the Times. The article provided a wide range of excerpts from the paper, at some points focusing on coalition successes, and at other times excerpting sections that highlighted coalition failures. Many of the excerpts illustrated American frustration with local involvement, quoting the sources, noting that "glimpses of what appear to be Pakistani skullduggery contrast sharply with the frequently rosy public pronouncements of Pakistan as an ally by American officials."
"The Guardian" has a very different take on this. Its Sunday, 25 July 2010 article by Declan Walsh states: "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."
The Obama administration, in response to the leaks, re-expressed their long-held doubts about links between Pakistan intelligence agents and Afghan insurgents. An anonymous official said to Al Arabiya
, "I don't think anyone who follows this issue will find it surprising that there are concerns about ISI and safe havens in Pakistan.
provided extensive assistance to the Taliban was also revealed. Coming from sources such as Afghan spies and paid informants, Iranian involvement in Afghanistan steadily widened from 2004 to today and constituted armaments, money, and physical deployment of anti-NATO militants. Iran denies supporting the militants.
of the Washington Post, stated that Hezb-e-Islami party
leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
and Amin al-Haq, a financial advisor to Osama Bin Ladin, both flew to North Korea
on 19 November 2005, and purchased remote controlled rockets to be used against American and coalition aircraft. Stein cautioned that he has found no corroborating reports of North Korean involvement in Taliban armaments dealing.
of The Guardian wrote:
In one incident, a U.S. patrol machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers.
On 4 March 2007, in the Shinwar shooting, U.S. Marines opened fire on civilians after witnessing a suicide bombing and supposedly coming under small arms fire. The Guardian reported their actions: "The marines made a frenzied escape [from the scene of the bombing], opening fire with automatic weapons as they tore down a six-mile stretch of highway, hitting almost anyone in their way – teenage girls in the fields, motorists in their cars, old men as they walked along the road. Nineteen unarmed civilians were killed and 50 wounded." The military report of the incident (written by the same soldiers involved in it) later failed to make any reference to the deaths and injuries and none of the soldiers involved were charged or disciplined.
On 21 March 2007, CIA paramilitaries fired on a civilian man who was running from them. The man, Shum Khan, was deaf and mute
and did not hear their warnings.
In 2007, documents detail how US special forces dropped six 2,000 lb 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 U.S. commander reported that 150 Taliban had been killed. Locals, however, reported that up to 300 civilians had died.
On 16 August 2007, Polish troops mortared the village of Nangar Khel
, killing five people — including a pregnant woman and her baby — in what The Guardian describes as an apparent revenge attack shortly after experiencing an IED
explosion.
According to The Guardian, the logs also detail "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".
incidents between Afghan police and army forces, coalition forces, and the U.S. military.
A document dating 3 September 2006 suggests that four Canadian
soldiers died in the Panjwaye District
of Afghanistan during Operation Medusa
, when an American jet dropped a bomb on a building they occupied during the second day of the operation. Seven other Canadian soldiers and one civilian were also reported to have been wounded in the attack. At the time, the Canadian military reported that the deaths and injuries were caused by a firefight with the Taliban, which it still insists. Michel Drapeau, a former colonel with the Canadian Forces, commented that the document is disturbing, due to it differing from the military's report at the time of the soldiers' deaths, which could make the document incorrect. The Canadian military insists it had not been misleading facts about deaths of Canadian soldiers. Former Chief of the Defence Staff
Rick Hillier
also rejects the document and maintains the deaths were due to enemy fire, as do some of the deceased soldiers' families.
A document from 11 June 2007 details an incident where Task Force 373
engaged in a firefight with what were believed to be insurgents. An airstrike was called in, which killed seven Afghan police officers, and injured four others. Nangarhar Province
governor Gul Agha Sherzai
had labelled the incident a misunderstanding.
Less than 48 hours after the documents were leaked, the UK's Ministry of Defense released a statement announcing a new friendly fire death in Afghanistan.
The Ministry had previously announced an investigation in to a friendly fire incident in 2009 in Helmand province.
and Osama bin Laden
, whose influence was pervasive and possibly growing. A report generated September 2004 stated that terrorists had been assigned by Bin Laden to conduct a suicidal attack against the Afghan president Hamid Karzai, during a press conference or a meeting held. Another report, in September 2008, spoke of co-ordinated, multinational al-Qaeda attack planning. More suicide bombings allegedly were planned with al-Qaeda's Afghan allies, such as the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin militia led by the notorious warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Numerous reports linked Bin Laden and al-Qaeda to insurgent activities. In one report, al-Qaeda was also claimed to be involved in a plan to manufacture chemical weapons payloads for rocket-propelled grenades.
was on a mission to kill or capture Abu Laith al-Libi
. The New York Times reported that the U.S. had given Afghans credit for missions actually carried out by Special Operations commandos. The New York Times said "over all, the documents do not contradict official accounts of the war. But in some cases the documents show that the American military made misleading public statements".
The records log 144 incidents regarding Task Force 373 and involving Afghan civilian casualties, including 195 deaths.
, and their practices.
offered as examples
The paper also found that a man killed by the Taliban two years ago after being suspected of spying for American forces was named in the logs and described as "highly pro-Government of Afghanistan and Coalition Forces. He should be taken seriously in his claims of insurgent knowledge." Another report gave the names, father's names, tribe, village and GPS co-ordinates for homes of individual villagers while stating that "[named person] wanted to help us as much as possible... [but] they were afraid that the people in the next village would see them talking to Americans."
Jane Harman
, chairwoman of the Congressional Homeland Security
Subcommittee on Intelligence, said that the Taliban had been given "its new 'enemies list'." Ahmad Nader Nadery, a commissioner at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said that revealing the names and villages of people who interacted with U.S. troops was an "irresponsibility". Julian Assange answered the question on whether the release might cost lives: "We can't guarantee it. But our understanding of the material is that it's vastly more likely to save lives than cost lives." He also asserted that many informers in Afghanistan had "acted in a criminal way" in sharing erroneous data with NATO authorities and that the White House did not help WikiLeaks check the data. Assange also felt that the U.S. should have had tighter controls over sensitive information, saying "[t]he United States appears to have given every UN soldier and contractor access to the names of many of its confidential sources without proper protection.
The U.S. Secretary of Defense and former CIA director Robert M. Gates said that the announcement by the Taliban that they were going through the dispatches proved that the disclosures imperiled Afghans who had aided American forces. "Growing up in the intelligence business, protecting your sources is sacrosanct".
A task force of more than 100 intelligence analysts sifted through the published documents to identify the Afghan citizens and mosques that were concerned.
Some, including Barack Obama
and Hamid Karzai
, raised concerns that the detailed logs had exposed the names of Afghan informants, thus endangering their lives. Partially in response to this criticism, Wikileaks announced that it has sought the help of the Pentagon in reviewing a further 15,000 documents before releasing them. The Pentagon said it had not been contacted by Wikileaks. However, blogger Glenn Greenwald
presented evidence that the Pentagon had, in fact, been contacted, and that it had refused the request.
On 11 August, a spokesman for the Pentagon told the Washington Post that "We have yet to see any harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the WikiLeaks documents", although the spokesman asserted "there is in all likelihood a lag between exposure of these documents and jeopardy in the field." On 17 August, the Associated Press
reported that "so far there is no evidence that any Afghans named in the leaked documents as defectors or informants from the Taliban insurgency have been harmed in retaliation."
In October, the Pentagon concluded that the leak "did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods", and that furthermore "there has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak." Both Wikileaks and Greenwald pointed to this report as clear evidence that the danger caused by the leak had been vastly overstated.
(PSYOP) material.
requests to verify a video of a 12-year-old child soldier forced to kill
a Pakistani hostage. Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the think tank
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
, remarked that "the documents demonstrate just how pervasive the Taliban’s brutality is in this fight".
in the 1970s. In an interview with Der Spiegel, Assange said that he believed the release would "change public opinion", and said that "we understand why it is important to protect certain U.S. and ISAF sources." He added that "the most dangerous men are those who are in charge of war. And they need to be stopped." Assange also claimed that the files "suggest thousands of war crime
s."
The New York Times described the war logs as "a six-year archive of classified military documents [that] offers an unvarnished and grim picture of the Afghan war".
On the decision to publish, they stated:
The Guardian called the material "one of the biggest leaks in U.S. military history ... 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 Guardian also reported that Daniel Ellsberg
has described the disclosure as on the scale of his leaking of the Pentagon Papers
in 1971 revealing how the U.S. public was misled about the Vietnam War
.
Der Spiegel wrote that "the editors in chief of Spiegel, The New York Times and the Guardian were 'unanimous in their belief that there is a justified public interest in the material.
US Army officials condemned the public dissimination of military secrets and the White House urged the website WikiLeaks to not publish any more classified documents related to the Afghan war. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that it is up to the Justice Department to determine if there would be criminal charges in the release of classified military documents by WikiLeaks, but the website was "morally guilty for putting lives at risk".
On 6 August 2010, U.S. military authorities urged Wikileaks to return the already published 70,000 documents, and the other 15,000 records the website was expected to post soon as well, which contained sensitive details of Afghans who had assisted ISAF forces. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell
said "If doing the right thing is not good enough for them, then we will figure out what alternatives we have to compel them to do the right thing." On 7 August 2010, spokesman Daniel Schmitt said that Wikileaks would continue to publish secret files from governments around the world despite the U.S. demands to cancel plans for further release, claiming that this directly contributed to the public's understanding of the conflict and rejecting allegations that the publication was a threat to America's national security or put lives at risk.
According to a statement by Rangin Dadfar Spanta
, security advisor of the Afghan government and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, the allies of Afghanistan had failed to pay necessary attention to prevent the support for international terrorism and to eliminate its hideouts and centres that can create a major threat to security and stability in the region. "The content of these documents reveal that Afghanistan has been righteous in its stance about the rise of terrorism and political and military discrepancies in counter-terrorism struggle".
Daniel Markey, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations
and former South Asia
analyst for the Bush administration, said, "Whether WikiLeaks uncovered anything new isn't actually important – it's on the front page of every newspaper in the country; the media is now focused on Afghanistan, and that makes it a big deal. [...] The public is now more skeptical about the administration's strategy in Afghanistan than they were last week, and that makes it real."
An editorial in the Los Angeles Times
stated that comparisons to the Pentagon Papers was an exaggeration as the documents lacked the policy implications of the papers, but that "no democracy can or should fight a war without the consent of its people, and that consent is only meaningful if it is predicated on real information". The LA Times did seem to indicate the documents have parallels with the Pentagon Papers in being published during a subsequent administration "the documents offer insight primarily into the war-fighting of the recently departed George W. Bush administration; the Pentagon Papers ended with the Johnson administration and were not published until Richard Nixon was president."
An Editorial in The Washington Post stated "they hardly provide a secret history of the war or disclose previously unknown malfeasance" and that "tends to fill out and confirm the narrative of Afghanistan between 2004 and 2009 that most Americans are already familiar with." The Post commented that it hardly merited the media hype and was not comparable to the Pentagon Papers or the MfS files The editorial argued Wikileaks' founder revealed his organization's antiwar agenda by making the claim it contained evidence for war crimes prosecutions.
Blake Hounshell wrote in his blog on Foreign Policy
that, after reading "selected documents", he believed that there is less new information in the documents than The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel were reporting. Hounshell indicated how careful both The Guardian and The New York Times were to note "the raw reports in the Wikileaks archive often seem poorly sourced and present implausible information." Commenting on the significance of the documents:
publication that Wikileaks' publication of the documents is legally allowed in the United States because the group did not solicit the documents. Asking someone to leak secret information, "with intent or reason to believe that the information to be obtained is to be used to the injury of the United States", would violate the United States' Espionage Act of 1917
In violation of the post-World War I accord signed into law by then President Woodrow Wilson.
European Union An official from the European Union
has told The Associated Press "that the organization 'wants to stay as far from this as possible.
Afghanistan While the Afghan government has stated that the majority of the leaked documents did not comprise new information, it has expressed concern over both Pakistan's connection with the Taliban and the United States' involvement in their funding: Siamak Herawi, deputy spokesman for the office of the President, stated, "There should be serious action taken against the Inter-Services Intelligence
, who has a direct connection with the terrorists. These reports show that the U.S. was already aware of the ISI connection with the al Qaeda terrorist network. The United States is overdue on the ISI issue, and now the United States, should answer."
Australia Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard
has stated that the Department of Defence
will investigate the content of the leaks to examine what the implications are for Australia which had 1,500 troops deployed in Afghanistan. This investigation concluded in October 2010 and found that the leaked documents "had not had a direct significant adverse impact on Australia's national interests".
Canada The Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs
Lawrence Cannon
said the leak could endanger Canadian troops. Canada also disputed one of the records, saying it inaccurately described an incident as friendly fire.
Another document suggests that a Canadian was among the casualties in a helicopter that was destroyed by heat-seeking missiles. The document indicates that the U.S. wanted Canada to put pressure on Saudi Arabia
and South Africa
, where the U.S. believed Taliban fundraising was taking place. The documents claim that American diplomats spoke with two senior Canadian Foreign Affairs officials in their appeal for the Canadian government to join the U.S. government in issuing a joint diplomatic rebuke to Saudi Arabia and South Africa. The documents also allege that Canada was asked to rebuke the United Arab Emirates
independently over alleged militant fundraising.
One document suggests that a Canadian C-130 Hercules was hit with an anti-aircraft weapon fired by the Taliban during takeoff. The document states that the C-130's landing gear and some of its fuselage
was destroyed by a 14.5 mm round as the aircraft departed from the western province of Farah
, with the report stating, "It is unusual that insurgents would engage aircraft in such close proximity to an airfield with a weapon of this caliber." The documents also say that a number of Canadian unmanned drones have crashed and that in one instance, locals removed a vehicle's technology before soldiers could recover it.
Cannon refused to comment on the documents, saying that they had "nothing to do with Canada" and denied the Canadian government was misleading its citizens on the war in Afghanistan. New Democratic Party
leader Jack Layton
said that the documents "undermines the confidence" Canadian citizens have in their government and called on politicians to "get to the bottom of" the situation regarding the friendly fire report.
Germany The German
government has stated that the documents could place its 4,600 troops in danger, and condemns their release. During a meeting in Brussels
, Guido Westerwelle
, the German Minister for Foreign Affairs
, has suggested that the entirety should be "carefully examined, to see what possible new revelations there might be". In general, the government "has shown little alarm over the release of the documents", with a spokesman from the Federal Ministry of Defence
stating that there was "nothing newsworthy"; however, opposition party The Greens
welcomed the release of the files, with Claudia Roth
stating that "[the] Wikileaks documents prove just how dramatic the situation in Afghanistan is", and "show the lengths the allies are prepared to go to in their fight for more stability."
The Greens also showed distrust in the federal government over the lack of disclosure of U.S. special forces activities in German-controlled areas. Omid Nouripour
, the security spokesman for the party, said, "On our reading of the U.S. documents, it is disturbing how little the federal government has informed the parliament about the activities of American special forces in German areas. We demand an immediate explanation from the federal government as to what they know about the missions. We will push with all force for answers."
India The Ministry of External Affairs
said:
Pakistan Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari
announced via spokesman Farhatullah Babar
that allegations about ISI
's involvement "have been regurgitated in the past. Also, these represent low-level intelligence reports and do not represent a convincing smoking gun. I do not see any convincing evidence." The spokesman continued rhetorically, asking if "those who are alleging that Pakistan is playing a double game are also asserting that President Zardari is presiding over an apparatus that is coordinating attacks on the general headquarters, mosque
s, shrines, schools and killing Pakistani citizens?" Pakistan's ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani
on Sunday denounced the leak of secret files calling them as “irresponsible,” saying it consisted of “unprocessed” reports from the field. “The documents circulated by Wikileaks do not reflect the current onground realities,” he said in a statement.
A senior ISI official denied the allegations, saying they were from raw intelligence reports that had not been verified and were meant to impugn the reputation of the spy agency. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with the agency's policy. Former ISI Chief Hamid Gul, who headed the agency in the late 1980s when Pakistan and the U.S. were supporting militants in their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, denied the allegations that he was working with the Taliban, saying "these leaked documents against me are fiction and nothing else."
Politicians and defence analysts critically commented on leaks and the western media in using the ISI card while not highlighting most of the civilian casualties resulting from bombing of NATO forces like how U.S. special forces dropped six 2,000 lb bombs on a compound where they believed a “high-value individual” was hiding, after “ensuring there were no innocent Afghans in the surrounding area”. In fact, up to 300 civilians had died in those attacks.
United Kingdom On July 28, Britain announced that it would launch two new inquiries into the country's role in the war. A committee member said the launching of the inquiries had nothing to do with the Wikileaks documents.
United States National Security Advisor
James L. Jones
and Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani
, both condemned Wikileaks
for an "irresponsible" disclosure. White House National Security Advisor James Jones issued a statement to reporters shortly before the documents were posted online, saying the leaks were “irresponsible” but would not impact U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security," he said in his statement, "These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people."
Taliban spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, has stated they are inspecting the leaked documents which contain the names, tribes, and family information of Afghan informants who were helping the US. "We knew about the spies and people who collaborate with U.S. forces," he said. "We will investigate through our own secret service whether the people mentioned are really spies working for the U.S. If they are U.S. spies, then we know how to punish them."
This statement comes after the Taliban has recently begun intimidating and brutally executing those who cooperate with NATO forces.
, Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict
(CIVIC), Open Society Institute
(OSI), the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Kabul office of the International Crisis Group
(ICG), all worried about the execution of Afghan civilians by the Taliban and other insurgent groups. The AIHRC published figures showing that executions had soared in the first seven months of 2010 to 197, from a total of 225 in all of 2009. The victims were often persons who supported the Afghan government, or their family members, who may have come into contact with the U.S. or other international forces.
On 12 August 2010, the international press watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders
(RWB) accused WikiLeaks of "incredible irresponsibility" after the website said it "absolutely" would release the remaining 15,000 documents. In an open letter to Assange, Jean-François Julliard, RWB secretary-general, and Clothilde Le Coz,
RWB representative in Washington DC, wrote that the publication was "highly dangerous," particularly when it named Afghan informants.
says it does not know the source of the leaked data. Editor-in-chief Julian Assange
stated that "Our whole system is designed such that we don't have to keep that secret." The Pentagon has launched an inquiry. Col. Dave Lapan, a spokesperson for the Pentagon, said that investigators are looking broadly to determine who leaked the material to Wikileaks. He said that Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old U.S. Army intelligence analyst, is someone that they are "looking at closely". Manning is currently facing charges for allegedly leaking the 12 July 2007, Baghdad airstrike video Wikileaks released as “Collateral Murder”. That video was made public through WikiLeaks, along with many diplomatic cables, but war logs were not specifically among the charges.
of December 31st, 2010 6:00 PM, and with a SHA1 checksum of cce54d3a8af370213d23fcbfe8cddc8619a0734c.
At 1.4 gigabytes, that file was 20 times larger than the batch of 77,000 secret U.S. military documents about Afghanistan that WikiLeaks already published, and cryptographers said that the file was virtually impossible to crack, unless WikiLeaks releases the key used to encode the material.
United States armed forces
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. They consist of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard.The United States has a strong tradition of civilian control of the military...
logs of the War in Afghanistan
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...
, also called the Afghan War Diary, which were published by Wikileaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
on 2010. The logs consist of 91,731 documents, covering the period between January 2004 and December 2009. Most of the documents are classified Secret. As of 28 July 2010, only 75,000 of the documents have been released to the public, a move which Wikileaks says is "part of a harm minimization process demanded by [the] source". Prior to releasing the initial 75,000 documents, Wikileaks made the logs available to The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
in its German and English on-line edition which published reports per previous agreement on that same day, 25 July 2010.
The leak, which is considered to be one of the largest in U.S. military history
Military history of the United States
The military history of the United States spans a period of over two centuries. During the course of those years, the United States evolved from a new nation fighting the British Empire for independence without a professional military , through a monumental American Civil War to the world's sole...
, revealed information on the deaths of civilians, increased Taliban attacks, and involvement by Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
and Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
in the insurgency
Taliban insurgency
The Taliban insurgency took root shortly after the group's fall from power following the 2001 war in Afghanistan. The Taliban continue to attack Afghan, U.S., and other ISAF troops and many terrorist incidents attributable to them have been registered. The war has also spread over the southern and...
. Wikileaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
says it does not know the source of the leaked data. The three outlets which had received the documents in advance, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel, have all concluded that they are genuine when compared to independent reports.
The New York Times described the leak as "a six-year archive of classified military documents [that] offers an unvarnished and grim picture of the Afghan war". The Guardian called the material "one of the biggest leaks in U.S. military history ... a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...
, 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". Der Spiegel wrote that "the editors in chief of Spiegel, The New York Times and the Guardian were 'unanimous in their belief that there is a justified public interest in the material'."
Some time after the first dissemination by WikiLeaks, the US Justice Department were considering the use of the U.S. Espionage Act of 1917 to prevent WikiLeaks from posting the remaining 15,000 secret war documents it claimed to possess.
Background
In June 2010, Guardian journalist Nick DaviesNick Davies
Nick Davies is a British investigative journalist, writer and documentary maker.Davies has written extensively as a freelancer, as well as for The Guardian and The Observer, and been named Reporter of the Year Journalist of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards...
and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
Julian Assange
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer and Internet activist. He is the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website and conduit for worldwide news leaks with the stated purpose of creating open governments.WikiLeaks has published material...
established that the US army had built a huge database with six years of sensitive military intelligence material, to which many thousands of US soldiers had access and some of them had been able to download copies, and WikiLeaks had one copy which it proposed to publish online, via a series of uncensorable global servers.
Wikileaks describes itself as "a multi-jurisdictional public service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public." In an interview with the U.K.'s Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said that "we have a stated commitment to a particular kind of process and objective, and that commitment is to get censored material out and never to take it down." He contrasted the group with other media outlets by saying that "other journalists try to verify sources. We don't do that, we verify documents. We don't care where it came from." He denied that the group has an inherent bias against the Afghanistan War, saying that "We don't have a view about whether the war should continue or stop – we do have a view that it should be prosecuted as humanely as possible." However, he also said that he believes the leaked information will turn world public opinion to think more negatively of the war.
An Obama administration statement disputed the self-reported status of WikiLeaks, stating that it "is not an objective news outlet but rather an organization that opposes U.S. policy in Afghanistan." Journalist Will Heaven of The Daily Telegraph has said that WikiLeaks was not politically neutral when it fed its information to the left-leaning newspapers The Guardian, The New York Times, and Der Spiegel instead of releasing the data openly. He said that the selectivity of the leak "contravene[d] its own mission statement – that crowdsourcing and open data are paramount." The Toronto Sun has referred to Assange's statements that "This material shines light on the everyday brutality and squalor of war" and "The archive will change public opinion and it will change the opinion of people in positions of political and diplomatic influence" as evidence that he has an anti-war mission.
Pakistan
According to Der Spiegel, "the documents clearly show that the Pakistani intelligence agency Inter-Services IntelligenceInter-Services Intelligence
The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence , is Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, responsible for providing critical national security intelligence assessment to the Government of Pakistan...
(usually known as the ISI) is the most important accomplice the Taliban has outside of Afghanistan." The New York Times was especially alarmed by the level of collusion with the Taliban, having concluded 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, did not think there was "a convincing smoking gun" for complicity between Pakistan intelligence services
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence , is Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, responsible for providing critical national security intelligence assessment to the Government of Pakistan...
and the Taliban.
In particular, the leaks discuss an alleged incident in which Pakistan's former ISI spy chief Hamid Gul met with Afghan insurgents in January 2009, occurring right after alleged Pakistani al-Qaeda figure Osama al-Kini's death by a CIA drone attack. "The meeting attendees were saddened by the news of Zamarai's death and discussed plans to complete Zamarai's last mission by facilitating the movement of a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device from Pakistan to Afghanistan through the Khan Pass," leaked reports said. The New York Times stated that it could not confirm whether or not that the attack ever took place.
The initial web article in The New York Times on the subject, appearing 25 July was written by Mark Mazzetti, Jane Perlez, Eric Schmitt, and Andrew Lehren, and titled "Pakistan Spy Service Aids Insurgents, Reports Assert". It was the lead article in the 26 July print edition of the Times. The article provided a wide range of excerpts from the paper, at some points focusing on coalition successes, and at other times excerpting sections that highlighted coalition failures. Many of the excerpts illustrated American frustration with local involvement, quoting the sources, noting that "glimpses of what appear to be Pakistani skullduggery contrast sharply with the frequently rosy public pronouncements of Pakistan as an ally by American officials."
"The Guardian" has a very different take on this. Its Sunday, 25 July 2010 article by Declan Walsh states: "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."
The Obama administration, in response to the leaks, re-expressed their long-held doubts about links between Pakistan intelligence agents and Afghan insurgents. An anonymous official said to Al Arabiya
Al Arabiya
Al Arabiya is a Pan-Arabist Saudi-owned Arabic-language television news channel. Launched on March 3, 2003, the channel is based in Dubai Media City, United Arab Emirates, and is majority-owned by the Saudi broadcaster Middle East Broadcasting Center ....
, "I don't think anyone who follows this issue will find it surprising that there are concerns about ISI and safe havens in Pakistan.
Iran
Evidence that IranIran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
provided extensive assistance to the Taliban was also revealed. Coming from sources such as Afghan spies and paid informants, Iranian involvement in Afghanistan steadily widened from 2004 to today and constituted armaments, money, and physical deployment of anti-NATO militants. Iran denies supporting the militants.
North Korea
The documents, wrote journalist Jeff SteinJeff Stein (author)
Jeff Stein is the SpyTalk columnist and blogger at the Washington Post. Previously, he was the SpyTalk columnist and National Security Editor for Congressional Quarterly's website, CQ Politics, from 2002-2009. He specializes in U.S. intelligence, military, and foreign policy issues...
of the Washington Post, stated that Hezb-e-Islami party
Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin
The Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin is an Afghan islamist political party.The original Hezb-e-Islami was founded in 1977 by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who is now the head of HIG. The other faction is headed by Mulavi Younas Khalis who split with Hekmatyar and established his own Hezbi Islami in 1979...
leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is an Afghan Mujahideen leader who is the founder and leader of the Hezb-e Islami political party and paramilitary group. Hekmatyar was a rebel military commander during the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan and was one of the key figures in the civil war that followed the...
and Amin al-Haq, a financial advisor to Osama Bin Ladin, both flew to North Korea
North Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
on 19 November 2005, and purchased remote controlled rockets to be used against American and coalition aircraft. Stein cautioned that he has found no corroborating reports of North Korean involvement in Taliban armaments dealing.
Civilian casualties
Hundreds of civilians have been wounded or killed by coalition forces in several instances that were not previously revealed. The press listed several examples of such previously unreported incidents of civilian injuries and deaths. David LeighDavid Leigh
David Leigh is a British journalist and author, currently investigations executive editor of The Guardian.-Early life:Leigh was born in 1946 and educated at Nottingham High School and King's College, Cambridge, receiving a research degree from Cambridge in 1968.-Career:Leigh has been a prominent...
of The Guardian wrote:
In one incident, a U.S. patrol machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers.
On 4 March 2007, in the Shinwar shooting, U.S. Marines opened fire on civilians after witnessing a suicide bombing and supposedly coming under small arms fire. The Guardian reported their actions: "The marines made a frenzied escape [from the scene of the bombing], opening fire with automatic weapons as they tore down a six-mile stretch of highway, hitting almost anyone in their way – teenage girls in the fields, motorists in their cars, old men as they walked along the road. Nineteen unarmed civilians were killed and 50 wounded." The military report of the incident (written by the same soldiers involved in it) later failed to make any reference to the deaths and injuries and none of the soldiers involved were charged or disciplined.
On 21 March 2007, CIA paramilitaries fired on a civilian man who was running from them. The man, Shum Khan, was deaf and mute
Muteness
Muteness or mutism is an inability to speak caused by a speech disorder. The term originates from the Latin word mutus, meaning "silent".-Causes:...
and did not hear their warnings.
In 2007, documents detail how US special forces dropped six 2,000 lb 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 U.S. commander reported that 150 Taliban had been killed. Locals, however, reported that up to 300 civilians had died.
On 16 August 2007, Polish troops mortared the village of Nangar Khel
Nangar Khel incident
The Nangar Khel incident, sometimes called the Nangar Khel massacre , took place in the Afghanistan village of Nangar Khel on August 16, 2007...
, killing five people — including a pregnant woman and her baby — in what The Guardian describes as an apparent revenge attack shortly after experiencing an IED
Improvised explosive device
An improvised explosive device , also known as a roadside bomb, is a homemade bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action...
explosion.
According to The Guardian, the logs also detail "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".
Friendly-fire casualties
A significant number of documents describe unreported or previously misleading friendly fireFriendly fire
Friendly fire is inadvertent firing towards one's own or otherwise friendly forces while attempting to engage enemy forces, particularly where this results in injury or death. A death resulting from a negligent discharge is not considered friendly fire...
incidents between Afghan police and army forces, coalition forces, and the U.S. military.
A document dating 3 September 2006 suggests that four Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
soldiers died in the Panjwaye District
Panjwaye District
Panjwai is a district in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. It is known as the birthplace of the Taliban. It is located about west of Kandahar city...
of Afghanistan during Operation Medusa
Operation Medusa
Operation Medusa was a Canadian-led offensive by major elements of the International Security Assistance Force, Afghan National Army and an A-Team from the 3rd Special Forces Group, as part of the ongoing war in Afghanistan. It aimed to establish government control over an area of Kandahar...
, when an American jet dropped a bomb on a building they occupied during the second day of the operation. Seven other Canadian soldiers and one civilian were also reported to have been wounded in the attack. At the time, the Canadian military reported that the deaths and injuries were caused by a firefight with the Taliban, which it still insists. Michel Drapeau, a former colonel with the Canadian Forces, commented that the document is disturbing, due to it differing from the military's report at the time of the soldiers' deaths, which could make the document incorrect. The Canadian military insists it had not been misleading facts about deaths of Canadian soldiers. Former Chief of the Defence Staff
Chief of the Defence Staff (Canada)
The Chief of the Defence Staff is the second most senior member of the Canadian Forces, and heads the Armed Forces Council, having primary responsibility for command, control, and administration of the forces, as well as military strategy, plans, and requirements...
Rick Hillier
Rick Hillier
General Rick Hillier, CMM, MSC, CD , is the former Chief of the Defence Staff of the Canadian Forces. He held this appointment from February 4, 2005 to July 1, 2008. He retired on July 1, 2008, and was replaced by former Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff Walter Natynczyk...
also rejects the document and maintains the deaths were due to enemy fire, as do some of the deceased soldiers' families.
A document from 11 June 2007 details an incident where Task Force 373
Task Force 373
Task Force 373 is a joint military commando unit active in the War in Afghanistan.The unit became prominent when the clandestine operations of the unit were brought into the public domain by the release of the Afghan War Diary on Wikileaks on 2010....
engaged in a firefight with what were believed to be insurgents. An airstrike was called in, which killed seven Afghan police officers, and injured four others. Nangarhar Province
Nangarhar Province
Nangarhar is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan in the east of the country. Its capital is the city of Jalalabad. The population of the province is 1,334,000, which consists mainly of ethnic Pashtuns with a sizable community of Arabs and Pashais....
governor Gul Agha Sherzai
Gul Agha Sherzai
Gul Agha Sherzai is the current Governor of Nangarhar province in Afghanistan.He previously served as Governor of Kandahar province, in the early 1990s and from 2001 until 2003.-Biography:...
had labelled the incident a misunderstanding.
Less than 48 hours after the documents were leaked, the UK's Ministry of Defense released a statement announcing a new friendly fire death in Afghanistan.
The Ministry had previously announced an investigation in to a friendly fire incident in 2009 in Helmand province.
Role of al-Qaeda
The war logs made clear that suicide bombing, normally carried out by non-Afghan, foreign fighters, was increasing and claim that they were nurtured by al-QaedaAl-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
and Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
, whose influence was pervasive and possibly growing. A report generated September 2004 stated that terrorists had been assigned by Bin Laden to conduct a suicidal attack against the Afghan president Hamid Karzai, during a press conference or a meeting held. Another report, in September 2008, spoke of co-ordinated, multinational al-Qaeda attack planning. More suicide bombings allegedly were planned with al-Qaeda's Afghan allies, such as the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin militia led by the notorious warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Numerous reports linked Bin Laden and al-Qaeda to insurgent activities. In one report, al-Qaeda was also claimed to be involved in a plan to manufacture chemical weapons payloads for rocket-propelled grenades.
Role of Special Ops greater than previously revealed
Government accounts of coalition activity were, according to The Guardian, sometimes "misleading". The British paper cited as an example a press statement that concealed the fact that the real reason for a coalition presence in a particular area was because a group known as Task Force 373Task Force 373
Task Force 373 is a joint military commando unit active in the War in Afghanistan.The unit became prominent when the clandestine operations of the unit were brought into the public domain by the release of the Afghan War Diary on Wikileaks on 2010....
was on a mission to kill or capture Abu Laith al-Libi
Abu Laith al-Libi
Abu Laith al-Libi was a senior leader of the al-Qaeda movement in Afghanistan who appeared in several al-Qaeda videos. He was believed to have been active in the tribal regions of Waziristan. He also served as an al Qaeda spokesman...
. The New York Times reported that the U.S. had given Afghans credit for missions actually carried out by Special Operations commandos. The New York Times said "over all, the documents do not contradict official accounts of the war. But in some cases the documents show that the American military made misleading public statements".
The records log 144 incidents regarding Task Force 373 and involving Afghan civilian casualties, including 195 deaths.
Detainment facilities and procedures
The leak lends hard numbers such as prisoner head counts and prisoner transfer dates to existing journalistic concerns around certain detainment facilities, such as Bagram Theater Internment FacilityBagram Theater Internment Facility
The Parwan Detention Facility , also called the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, is a United States-run prison located next to Bagram Airfield in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan.It was formerly known as the Bagram Collection Point...
, and their practices.
Taliban use of heat-seeking missiles
The New York Times reported that the documents reveal the Taliban have used heat-seeking missiles to down coalition aircraft. The U.S. military had not previously acknowledged that the Taliban possessed these weapons.Informants named
The leak reportedly names hundreds of Afghan informants. The TimesThe Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
offered as examples
- a 2008 report that includes a detailed interview with a Taliban fighter considering defection and ends with "[t]he meeting ended with [named person] agreeing to meet intel personnel." Both his father's name and village are also included in the report;
- a report that read "[named person] said he would be killed if he got caught interacting with any coalition forces, which is why he hides when we go into [named location]".
The paper also found that a man killed by the Taliban two years ago after being suspected of spying for American forces was named in the logs and described as "highly pro-Government of Afghanistan and Coalition Forces. He should be taken seriously in his claims of insurgent knowledge." Another report gave the names, father's names, tribe, village and GPS co-ordinates for homes of individual villagers while stating that "[named person] wanted to help us as much as possible... [but] they were afraid that the people in the next village would see them talking to Americans."
Jane Harman
Jane Harman
Jane Margaret Lakes Harman is the former U.S. Representative for , serving from 1993 to 1999, and from 2001 to 2011. She is a member of the Democratic Party....
, chairwoman of the Congressional Homeland Security
Homeland security
Homeland security is an umbrella term for security efforts to protect states against terrorist activity. Specifically, is a concerted national effort to prevent terrorist attacks within the U.S., reduce America’s vulnerability to terrorism, and minimize the damage and recover from attacks that do...
Subcommittee on Intelligence, said that the Taliban had been given "its new 'enemies list'." Ahmad Nader Nadery, a commissioner at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said that revealing the names and villages of people who interacted with U.S. troops was an "irresponsibility". Julian Assange answered the question on whether the release might cost lives: "We can't guarantee it. But our understanding of the material is that it's vastly more likely to save lives than cost lives." He also asserted that many informers in Afghanistan had "acted in a criminal way" in sharing erroneous data with NATO authorities and that the White House did not help WikiLeaks check the data. Assange also felt that the U.S. should have had tighter controls over sensitive information, saying "[t]he United States appears to have given every UN soldier and contractor access to the names of many of its confidential sources without proper protection.
The U.S. Secretary of Defense and former CIA director Robert M. Gates said that the announcement by the Taliban that they were going through the dispatches proved that the disclosures imperiled Afghans who had aided American forces. "Growing up in the intelligence business, protecting your sources is sacrosanct".
A task force of more than 100 intelligence analysts sifted through the published documents to identify the Afghan citizens and mosques that were concerned.
Some, including Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
and Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai, GCMG is the 12th and current President of Afghanistan, taking office on 7 December 2004. He became a dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001...
, raised concerns that the detailed logs had exposed the names of Afghan informants, thus endangering their lives. Partially in response to this criticism, Wikileaks announced that it has sought the help of the Pentagon in reviewing a further 15,000 documents before releasing them. The Pentagon said it had not been contacted by Wikileaks. However, blogger Glenn Greenwald
Glenn Greenwald
Glenn Greenwald is an American lawyer, columnist, blogger, and author. Greenwald worked as a constitutional and civil rights litigator before becoming a contributor to Salon.com, where he focuses on political and legal topics...
presented evidence that the Pentagon had, in fact, been contacted, and that it had refused the request.
On 11 August, a spokesman for the Pentagon told the Washington Post that "We have yet to see any harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the WikiLeaks documents", although the spokesman asserted "there is in all likelihood a lag between exposure of these documents and jeopardy in the field." On 17 August, the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
reported that "so far there is no evidence that any Afghans named in the leaked documents as defectors or informants from the Taliban insurgency have been harmed in retaliation."
In October, the Pentagon concluded that the leak "did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods", and that furthermore "there has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak." Both Wikileaks and Greenwald pointed to this report as clear evidence that the danger caused by the leak had been vastly overstated.
Psychological warfare
Evidence within the documents suggest that the U.S. military has been paying Afghan radio and print media to run favorable stories, with two prominent examples being Radio Ghaznawiyaan and Wakht News Agency. One document refers to supplying pre-made content to a radio station, describing that content as Psychological Operations/Psychological WarfarePsychological warfare
Psychological warfare , or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations , have been known by many other names or terms, including Psy Ops, Political Warfare, “Hearts and Minds,” and Propaganda...
(PSYOP) material.
Insurgent attacks against civilians
The leaked documents describe many purported incidents of Taliban and other Afghan insurgent forces attacking civilians. Those forces would also, according to leaked reports, post 'Night Letters' on civilian buildings such as mosques foretelling death for the inhabitants. In one leak from April 2007, then-Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Karen HughesKaren Hughes
Karen Parfitt Hughes is the Global Vice Chair of Burson-Marsteller. She served as the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the U.S. Department of State with the rank of ambassador. She resides in Austin, Texas.-Early life:Born in Paris, France, she is the daughter...
requests to verify a video of a 12-year-old child soldier forced to kill
Summary execution
A summary execution is a variety of execution in which a person is killed on the spot without trial or after a show trial. Summary executions have been practiced by the police, military, and paramilitary organizations and are associated with guerrilla warfare, counter-insurgency, terrorism, and...
a Pakistani hostage. Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the think tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies describes itself as a non-profit, non-partisan policy institute "working to defend free nations against their enemies". It was founded shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks to address what it regards as the "threat facing America, Israel and the...
, remarked that "the documents demonstrate just how pervasive the Taliban’s brutality is in this fight".
Child prostitution
The documents revealed that United States Department of Defense private contractor employees hired local male child prostitutes.Wikileaks
Wikileaks editor Julian Assange said "it is the most comprehensive history of a war ever to be published, during the course of the war". He compared the release of the war logs with the release of the Pentagon PapersPentagon Papers
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967...
in the 1970s. In an interview with Der Spiegel, Assange said that he believed the release would "change public opinion", and said that "we understand why it is important to protect certain U.S. and ISAF sources." He added that "the most dangerous men are those who are in charge of war. And they need to be stopped." Assange also claimed that the files "suggest thousands of war crime
War crime
War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...
s."
The New York Times
The New York Times described the war logs as "a six-year archive of classified military documents [that] offers an unvarnished and grim picture of the Afghan war".
On the decision to publish, they stated:
The Guardian
The Guardian called the material "one of the biggest leaks in U.S. military history ... a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...
, 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 Guardian also reported that Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg, PhD, is a former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War,...
has described the disclosure as on the scale of his leaking of the Pentagon Papers
Pentagon Papers
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967...
in 1971 revealing how the U.S. public was misled about the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
.
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel wrote that "the editors in chief of Spiegel, The New York Times and the Guardian were 'unanimous in their belief that there is a justified public interest in the material.
United States military
US Army officials condemned the public dissimination of military secrets and the White House urged the website WikiLeaks to not publish any more classified documents related to the Afghan war. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that it is up to the Justice Department to determine if there would be criminal charges in the release of classified military documents by WikiLeaks, but the website was "morally guilty for putting lives at risk".
On 6 August 2010, U.S. military authorities urged Wikileaks to return the already published 70,000 documents, and the other 15,000 records the website was expected to post soon as well, which contained sensitive details of Afghans who had assisted ISAF forces. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell
Geoff S. Morrell
Geoffrey S. Morrell is an American public affairs person who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, and was the Press Secretary of the Department of Defense. He was hired to the position in June 2007 and departed in June 2011...
said "If doing the right thing is not good enough for them, then we will figure out what alternatives we have to compel them to do the right thing." On 7 August 2010, spokesman Daniel Schmitt said that Wikileaks would continue to publish secret files from governments around the world despite the U.S. demands to cancel plans for further release, claiming that this directly contributed to the public's understanding of the conflict and rejecting allegations that the publication was a threat to America's national security or put lives at risk.
Afghan authorities
According to a statement by Rangin Dadfar Spanta
Rangin Dadfar Spanta
Dr. Rangin Dadfar Spanta was the foreign minister of Afghanistan.He was appointed to that position by Hamid Karzai during a cabinet reshuffle on March 21, 2006 and approved by the 249-seat lower house on April 20, 2006. He was previously the Senior Advisor on International Affairs to President...
, security advisor of the Afghan government and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, the allies of Afghanistan had failed to pay necessary attention to prevent the support for international terrorism and to eliminate its hideouts and centres that can create a major threat to security and stability in the region. "The content of these documents reveal that Afghanistan has been righteous in its stance about the rise of terrorism and political and military discrepancies in counter-terrorism struggle".
Council on Foreign Relations
Daniel Markey, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...
and former South Asia
South Asia
South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...
analyst for the Bush administration, said, "Whether WikiLeaks uncovered anything new isn't actually important – it's on the front page of every newspaper in the country; the media is now focused on Afghanistan, and that makes it a big deal. [...] The public is now more skeptical about the administration's strategy in Afghanistan than they were last week, and that makes it real."
Los Angeles Times
An editorial in the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
stated that comparisons to the Pentagon Papers was an exaggeration as the documents lacked the policy implications of the papers, but that "no democracy can or should fight a war without the consent of its people, and that consent is only meaningful if it is predicated on real information". The LA Times did seem to indicate the documents have parallels with the Pentagon Papers in being published during a subsequent administration "the documents offer insight primarily into the war-fighting of the recently departed George W. Bush administration; the Pentagon Papers ended with the Johnson administration and were not published until Richard Nixon was president."
The Washington Post
An Editorial in The Washington Post stated "they hardly provide a secret history of the war or disclose previously unknown malfeasance" and that "tends to fill out and confirm the narrative of Afghanistan between 2004 and 2009 that most Americans are already familiar with." The Post commented that it hardly merited the media hype and was not comparable to the Pentagon Papers or the MfS files The editorial argued Wikileaks' founder revealed his organization's antiwar agenda by making the claim it contained evidence for war crimes prosecutions.
Foreign Policy
Blake Hounshell wrote in his blog on Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy is a bimonthly American magazine founded in 1970 by Samuel P. Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel.Originally, the magazine was a quarterly...
that, after reading "selected documents", he believed that there is less new information in the documents than The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel were reporting. Hounshell indicated how careful both The Guardian and The New York Times were to note "the raw reports in the Wikileaks archive often seem poorly sourced and present implausible information." Commenting on the significance of the documents:
Legality of the disclosure
Ann Woolner wrote in an editorial in the BloombergBloomberg L.P.
Bloomberg L.P. is an American privately held financial software, media, and data company. Bloomberg makes up one third of the $16 billion global financial data market with estimated revenue of $6.9 billion. Bloomberg L.P...
publication that Wikileaks' publication of the documents is legally allowed in the United States because the group did not solicit the documents. Asking someone to leak secret information, "with intent or reason to believe that the information to be obtained is to be used to the injury of the United States", would violate the United States' Espionage Act of 1917
Espionage Act of 1917
The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law passed on June 15, 1917, shortly after the U.S. entry into World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code but is now found under Title 18, Crime...
In violation of the post-World War I accord signed into law by then President Woodrow Wilson.
Reactions
European Union An official from the European UnionEuropean Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
has told The Associated Press "that the organization 'wants to stay as far from this as possible.
Afghanistan While the Afghan government has stated that the majority of the leaked documents did not comprise new information, it has expressed concern over both Pakistan's connection with the Taliban and the United States' involvement in their funding: Siamak Herawi, deputy spokesman for the office of the President, stated, "There should be serious action taken against the Inter-Services IntelligenceInter-Services Intelligence
The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence , is Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, responsible for providing critical national security intelligence assessment to the Government of Pakistan...
, who has a direct connection with the terrorists. These reports show that the U.S. was already aware of the ISI connection with the al Qaeda terrorist network. The United States is overdue on the ISI issue, and now the United States, should answer."
Australia Australian Prime Minister Julia GillardJulia Gillard
Julia Eileen Gillard is the 27th and current Prime Minister of Australia, in office since June 2010.Gillard was born in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales and migrated with her family to Adelaide, Australia in 1966, attending Mitcham Demonstration School and Unley High School. In 1982 Gillard moved...
has stated that the Department of Defence
Department of Defence (Australia)
The Australian Department of Defence is a Federal Government Department. It forms part of the Australian Defence Organisation along with the Australian Defence Force . The Defence mission is to defend Australia and its national interests...
will investigate the content of the leaks to examine what the implications are for Australia which had 1,500 troops deployed in Afghanistan. This investigation concluded in October 2010 and found that the leaked documents "had not had a direct significant adverse impact on Australia's national interests".
Canada The Canadian Minister of Foreign AffairsMinister of Foreign Affairs (Canada)
The Minister of Foreign Affairs is the Minister of the Crown in the Canadian Cabinet who is responsible for overseeing the federal government's international relations section of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada....
Lawrence Cannon
Lawrence Cannon
Lawrence Cannon, PC is a Canadian politician from Quebec and Prime Minister Stephen Harper's former Quebec lieutenant. On October 30, 2008 he was sworn in as Minister of Foreign Affairs...
said the leak could endanger Canadian troops. Canada also disputed one of the records, saying it inaccurately described an incident as friendly fire.
Another document suggests that a Canadian was among the casualties in a helicopter that was destroyed by heat-seeking missiles. The document indicates that the U.S. wanted Canada to put pressure on Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
and South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, where the U.S. believed Taliban fundraising was taking place. The documents claim that American diplomats spoke with two senior Canadian Foreign Affairs officials in their appeal for the Canadian government to join the U.S. government in issuing a joint diplomatic rebuke to Saudi Arabia and South Africa. The documents also allege that Canada was asked to rebuke the United Arab Emirates
United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates, abbreviated as the UAE, or shortened to "the Emirates", is a state situated in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia on the Persian Gulf, bordering Oman, and Saudi Arabia, and sharing sea borders with Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iran.The UAE is a...
independently over alleged militant fundraising.
One document suggests that a Canadian C-130 Hercules was hit with an anti-aircraft weapon fired by the Taliban during takeoff. The document states that the C-130's landing gear and some of its fuselage
Fuselage
The fuselage is an aircraft's main body section that holds crew and passengers or cargo. In single-engine aircraft it will usually contain an engine, although in some amphibious aircraft the single engine is mounted on a pylon attached to the fuselage which in turn is used as a floating hull...
was destroyed by a 14.5 mm round as the aircraft departed from the western province of Farah
Farah Province
Farah is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. It is in the southwest of the country. Its capital is Farah. Farah is a spacious and sparsely populated province that lies on the Iranian border...
, with the report stating, "It is unusual that insurgents would engage aircraft in such close proximity to an airfield with a weapon of this caliber." The documents also say that a number of Canadian unmanned drones have crashed and that in one instance, locals removed a vehicle's technology before soldiers could recover it.
Cannon refused to comment on the documents, saying that they had "nothing to do with Canada" and denied the Canadian government was misleading its citizens on the war in Afghanistan. New Democratic Party
New Democratic Party
The New Democratic Party , commonly referred to as the NDP, is a federal social-democratic political party in Canada. The interim leader of the NDP is Nycole Turmel who was appointed to the position due to the illness of Jack Layton, who died on August 22, 2011. The provincial wings of the NDP in...
leader Jack Layton
Jack Layton
John Gilbert "Jack" Layton, PC was a Canadian social democratic politician and the Leader of the Official Opposition. He was the leader of the New Democratic Party from 2003 to 2011, and previously sat on Toronto City Council, serving at times during that period as acting mayor and deputy mayor of...
said that the documents "undermines the confidence" Canadian citizens have in their government and called on politicians to "get to the bottom of" the situation regarding the friendly fire report.
Germany The GermanGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
government has stated that the documents could place its 4,600 troops in danger, and condemns their release. During a meeting in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
, Guido Westerwelle
Guido Westerwelle
Guido Westerwelle [] is a German liberal politician, who, since 28 October 2009, has been serving as the Foreign Minister in the second cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel, and who was Vice Chancellor of Germany from 2009 to 2011. He is the first openly gay person to hold either of those positions...
, the German Minister for Foreign Affairs
Minister for Foreign Affairs (Germany)
The Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs is the head of the Federal Foreign Office and a member of the Cabinet of Germany. The current office holder is Guido Westerwelle...
, has suggested that the entirety should be "carefully examined, to see what possible new revelations there might be". In general, the government "has shown little alarm over the release of the documents", with a spokesman from the Federal Ministry of Defence
Federal Ministry of Defence (Germany)
The Federal Ministry of Defence is a top-level federal agency, headed by the Federal Minister of Defence as a member of the Cabinet of Germany...
stating that there was "nothing newsworthy"; however, opposition party The Greens
Alliance '90/The Greens
Alliance '90/The Greens is a green political party in Germany, formed from the merger of the German Green Party and Alliance 90 in 1993. Its leaders are Claudia Roth and Cem Özdemir...
welcomed the release of the files, with Claudia Roth
Claudia Roth
Claudia Benedikta Roth is a German Green Party politician and one of the two current party chairs, together with Cem Özdemir.- Biography :...
stating that "[the] Wikileaks documents prove just how dramatic the situation in Afghanistan is", and "show the lengths the allies are prepared to go to in their fight for more stability."
The Greens also showed distrust in the federal government over the lack of disclosure of U.S. special forces activities in German-controlled areas. Omid Nouripour
Omid Nouripour
Omid Nouripour is an Iranian-German politician, a member of Green party in Germany and a member of the German parliament ....
, the security spokesman for the party, said, "On our reading of the U.S. documents, it is disturbing how little the federal government has informed the parliament about the activities of American special forces in German areas. We demand an immediate explanation from the federal government as to what they know about the missions. We will push with all force for answers."
India The Ministry of External AffairsMinistry of External Affairs (India)
The Ministry of External Affairs is the foreign ministry of India. It is the Indian government agency responsible for the foreign relations of India. The Minister of External Affairs holds cabinet rank as a member of the Council of Ministers. The current minister is S M Krishna...
said:
Pakistan Pakistani President Asif Ali ZardariAsif Ali Zardari
Asif Ali Zardari is the 11th and current President of Pakistan and the Co-Chairman of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party . He is also the widower of Benazir Bhutto, who served two nonconsecutive terms as Prime Minister....
announced via spokesman Farhatullah Babar
Farhatullah Babar
Farhatullah Babar is a Pakistani politician and Parliamentarian from Pakistan People's Party to the Parliament. He is a senior member of the Pakistan Peoples Party and served in the Pakistani Senate from 2003 to 2006. He was an outspoken critic of the former Pakistani administration headed by...
that allegations about ISI
Inter-Services Intelligence
The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence , is Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, responsible for providing critical national security intelligence assessment to the Government of Pakistan...
's involvement "have been regurgitated in the past. Also, these represent low-level intelligence reports and do not represent a convincing smoking gun. I do not see any convincing evidence." The spokesman continued rhetorically, asking if "those who are alleging that Pakistan is playing a double game are also asserting that President Zardari is presiding over an apparatus that is coordinating attacks on the general headquarters, mosque
Mosque
A mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. The word is likely to have entered the English language through French , from Portuguese , from Spanish , and from Berber , ultimately originating in — . The Arabic word masjid literally means a place of prostration...
s, shrines, schools and killing Pakistani citizens?" Pakistan's ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani
Husain Haqqani
Husain Haqqani or Hussain Haqqani is the former Pakistan Ambassador to the United States, appointed by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani in April 2008 and was resigned on November 22, 2011...
on Sunday denounced the leak of secret files calling them as “irresponsible,” saying it consisted of “unprocessed” reports from the field. “The documents circulated by Wikileaks do not reflect the current onground realities,” he said in a statement.
A senior ISI official denied the allegations, saying they were from raw intelligence reports that had not been verified and were meant to impugn the reputation of the spy agency. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with the agency's policy. Former ISI Chief Hamid Gul, who headed the agency in the late 1980s when Pakistan and the U.S. were supporting militants in their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, denied the allegations that he was working with the Taliban, saying "these leaked documents against me are fiction and nothing else."
Politicians and defence analysts critically commented on leaks and the western media in using the ISI card while not highlighting most of the civilian casualties resulting from bombing of NATO forces like how U.S. special forces dropped six 2,000 lb bombs on a compound where they believed a “high-value individual” was hiding, after “ensuring there were no innocent Afghans in the surrounding area”. In fact, up to 300 civilians had died in those attacks.
United Kingdom On July 28, Britain announced that it would launch two new inquiries into the country's role in the war. A committee member said the launching of the inquiries had nothing to do with the Wikileaks documents. United States National Security AdvisorNational Security Advisor (United States)
The Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, commonly referred to as the National Security Advisor , serves as the chief advisor to the President of the United States on national security issues...
James L. Jones
James L. Jones
James Logan Jones, Jr. is the former United States National Security Advisor and a retired United States Marine Corps General....
and Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani
Husain Haqqani
Husain Haqqani or Hussain Haqqani is the former Pakistan Ambassador to the United States, appointed by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani in April 2008 and was resigned on November 22, 2011...
, both condemned Wikileaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
for an "irresponsible" disclosure. White House National Security Advisor James Jones issued a statement to reporters shortly before the documents were posted online, saying the leaks were “irresponsible” but would not impact U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security," he said in his statement, "These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people."
- Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes stated that "[since] taking office, President Obama has been very clear and candid with the American people about the challenges that we face in Afghanistan and Pakistan. [...] It is important to note that the time period reflected in the documents is January 2004 to December 2009. The war in Afghanistan was under-resourced for many years. [...] On Dec. 1, 2009, President Obama announced a new strategy and new resources for Afghanistan and Pakistan precisely because of the grave situation there," and that they "strongly condemn the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations that put the lives of the U.S. and partner service members at risk and threatens our national security."
- Representative Dennis KucinichDennis KucinichDennis John Kucinich is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1997. He was furthermore a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections....
(DemocratDemocratic Party (United States)The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
) of OhioOhioOhio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
said "These documents provide a fuller picture of what we have long known about Afghanistan: The war is going badly. We have to show the ability to respond to what’s right in front of our face: This war is no longer justifiable under any circumstances." Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Senator John KerryJohn KerryJohn Forbes Kerry is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior U.S. Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to former President George W...
(DemocratDemocratic Party (United States)The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
) of MassachusettsMassachusettsThe Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
said "However illegally these documents came to light, they raise serious questions about the reality of America's policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan. Those policies are at a critical stage and these documents may very well underscore the stakes and make the calibrations needed to get the policy right more urgent." In a later release he was quoted as saying "All of us [are] concerned that after nine years of war ... the Taliban appear to be as strong as they have been."
Taliban spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, has stated they are inspecting the leaked documents which contain the names, tribes, and family information of Afghan informants who were helping the US. "We knew about the spies and people who collaborate with U.S. forces," he said. "We will investigate through our own secret service whether the people mentioned are really spies working for the U.S. If they are U.S. spies, then we know how to punish them."
This statement comes after the Taliban has recently begun intimidating and brutally executing those who cooperate with NATO forces.
Reactions of human rights groups
A coalition of five human-rights organizations addressed Julian Assange, founder and editor of the Wikileaks website, expressing their concerns for the safety of persons identified in the published documents. These human-rights groups were Amnesty InternationalAmnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
, Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict
Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict
Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization and advocacy founded in 2003 by Marla Ruzicka. CIVIC works on behalf of war victims, providing research and advocating policymakers. CIVIC is a part of the Making Amends Campaign.-Foundations:Campaign for...
(CIVIC), Open Society Institute
Open Society Institute
The Open Society Institute , renamed in 2011 to Open Society Foundations, is a private operating and grantmaking foundation started by George Soros, aimed to shape public policy to promote democratic governance, human rights, and economic, legal, and social reform...
(OSI), the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Kabul office of the International Crisis Group
International Crisis Group
The International Crisis Group is an international, non-profit, non-governmental organization whose mission is to prevent and resolve deadly conflicts around the world through field-based analyses and high-level advocacy.-History:...
(ICG), all worried about the execution of Afghan civilians by the Taliban and other insurgent groups. The AIHRC published figures showing that executions had soared in the first seven months of 2010 to 197, from a total of 225 in all of 2009. The victims were often persons who supported the Afghan government, or their family members, who may have come into contact with the U.S. or other international forces.
On 12 August 2010, the international press watchdog organisation Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders is a France-based international non-governmental organization that advocates freedom of the press. It was founded in 1985, by Robert Ménard, Rony Brauman and the journalist Jean-Claude Guillebaud. Jean-François Julliard has served as Secretary General since 2008...
(RWB) accused WikiLeaks of "incredible irresponsibility" after the website said it "absolutely" would release the remaining 15,000 documents. In an open letter to Assange, Jean-François Julliard, RWB secretary-general, and Clothilde Le Coz,
RWB representative in Washington DC, wrote that the publication was "highly dangerous," particularly when it named Afghan informants.
Source of the leak
WikileaksWikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
says it does not know the source of the leaked data. Editor-in-chief Julian Assange
Julian Assange
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer and Internet activist. He is the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website and conduit for worldwide news leaks with the stated purpose of creating open governments.WikiLeaks has published material...
stated that "Our whole system is designed such that we don't have to keep that secret." The Pentagon has launched an inquiry. Col. Dave Lapan, a spokesperson for the Pentagon, said that investigators are looking broadly to determine who leaked the material to Wikileaks. He said that Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old U.S. Army intelligence analyst, is someone that they are "looking at closely". Manning is currently facing charges for allegedly leaking the 12 July 2007, Baghdad airstrike video Wikileaks released as “Collateral Murder”. That video was made public through WikiLeaks, along with many diplomatic cables, but war logs were not specifically among the charges.
"Insurance file"
On July 30, days after the initial disclosure, media began to report that Wikileaks had released an additional file named "insurance.aes256" in connection with the Afghan War Diary disclosure. The new "insurance file" was AES-256 encrypted, 1.4 GB in size, with a timestampTimestamp
A timestamp is a sequence of characters, denoting the date or time at which a certain event occurred. A timestamp is the time at which an event is recorded by a computer, not the time of the event itself...
of December 31st, 2010 6:00 PM, and with a SHA1 checksum of cce54d3a8af370213d23fcbfe8cddc8619a0734c.
At 1.4 gigabytes, that file was 20 times larger than the batch of 77,000 secret U.S. military documents about Afghanistan that WikiLeaks already published, and cryptographers said that the file was virtually impossible to crack, unless WikiLeaks releases the key used to encode the material.
External links
- Full Afghan War Diary database (mirror)
- Afghanistan: The War Logs The Guardian
- The War Logs The New York Times
- The Afghanistan Protocol Der Spiegel
- Warlogs browsing interface OWNI
- Interview with Julian Assange Channel 4
- Wikileaks press conference on the war logs
- Wikileaks Disclosures: The Dirty Truth about the War Qantara.de, August 19 2010