Leaked files suggest Pakistan is aiding Afghan rebels

[LarryW]

Am I just too damned old?? What's happened to the military today that they allow documentation re: the conduct of a war (regardless of "low level field reports") to slip out of their control and end up on Wikileaks?? If the stuff pertains to current conflicts then the information should have been controlled. WTF, K???? Some dipshit clown (or Battalion of clowns)…never mind the paygrade or designator or how often he/she was previously decorated for tying their shoes properly…needs to be hung from the yardarm!!! (Sheep-dip jackasses!!)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

By Greg Jaffe and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 26, 2010; 7:26 AM

Tens of thousands of classified documents related to the Afghan war released without authorization by the group Wikileaks.org reveal in often excruciating detail the struggles U.S. troops have faced in battling an increasingly potent Taliban force and in working with Pakistani allies who also appear to be helping the Afghan insurgency.

The more than 91,000 classified documents -- most of which consist of low-level field reports -- represent one of the largest single disclosures of such information in U.S. history. Wikileaks gave the material to the New York Times, the British newspaper the Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel several weeks ago on the condition that they not be published before Sunday night, when the group released them publicly.

Covering the period from January 2004 through December 2009, when the Obama administration began to deploy more than 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan and announced a new strategy, the documents provide new insights into a period in which the Taliban was gaining strength, Afghan civilians were growing increasingly disillusioned with their government, and U.S. troops in the field often expressed frustration at having to fight a war without sufficient resources.

The documents disclose for the first time that Taliban insurgents appear to have used portable, heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles to shoot down U.S. helicopters. Heat-seeking missiles, which the United States provided to the anti-Soviet Afghan fighters known as mujaheddin in the 1980s, helped inflict heavy losses on the Soviet Union until it withdrew its forces from Afghanistan in 1989.

One report from the spring of 2007 refers to witnesses who saw what appeared to be a heat-seeking missile destroy a CH-47 transport helicopter. The Times first unearthed the document in its review of the files. The Chinook crash killed five Americans, a British citizen and a Canadian. Even though the initial U.S. report stated that the helicopter was "engaged and struck with a missile," a NATO spokesman suggested that small-arms fire was responsible for bringing down the helicopter.

Although the use of such weapons by the Taliban appears to be very limited, the disclosure that relatively low-tech insurgents had acquired such arms would have fostered the impression that the Afghan war effort was faltering at a time when U.S. fatalities in Iraq were at record levels and the Bush administration was struggling to maintain support for the Iraq war even among its Republican base.

The Obama administration criticized Wikileaks for disclosing the classified documents. "Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents," national security adviser James Jones said in a statement. "The United States government learned from news organizations that these documents would be posted."

Senior administration officials acknowledged they had been anxiously awaiting the documents' release but sought to diminish their significance. "There is not a lot new here for those who have been following developments closely," one U.S. official said.

Many of the documents posted by Wikileaks suggest that Pakistan's spy service might be helping Afghan insurgents plan and carry out attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan and their Afghan government allies. A few reports also describe cooperation between Pakistani intelligence and fighters aligned with al-Qaeda.

U.S. intelligence concluded a number of years ago that Pakistan retained its ties with Taliban groups, intelligence officials said. Late last year, President Obama warned in a letter to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari that the United States would no longer put up with the contacts.

But the documents appear to suggest that Pakistan's spy agency, known as the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate or ISI, might have assisted insurgents in planning some attacks, at least in the past.

The Pakistani government denied the allegations in the classified intelligence documents. "These reports reflect nothing more than single-source comments and rumors, which abound on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and are often proved wrong after deeper examination," said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States.

The documents detail multiple reports of cooperation between retired Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, who ran ISI in the late 1980s, and Afghan insurgents battling U.S. forces in the mountainous eastern region of the country. In the latter years of the anti-Soviet insurgency, Gul worked closely with several major mujaheddin fighters who currently are battling U.S. troops and trying to topple the Afghan government. The documents also include reports that Gul was trying to reestablish contacts with insurgent leaders such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose fighters have been responsible for some of the bloodiest attacks on U.S. forces.

Gul denied the allegations, the Associated Press reported Monday. "These leaked documents against me are fiction and nothing else," he said.

Over the past decade, U.S. intelligence has collected evidence of direct contacts between ISI and Jalaluddin Haqqani, Hekmatyar and Taliban leader Mohammed Omar. That evidence includes both human intelligence and intercepted communications, officials said.

As the new Afghan war strategy was being formulated late last year, Obama stepped up private pressure on the Pakistanis to sever ties with the Taliban, suggesting that if there wasn't improvement, the United States would begin to take matters into its own hands.

"The key thing to bear in mind is that the administration is not naive about Pakistan," an Obama administration official said. "The problem with the Pakistanis is that the more you threaten them, the more they become entrenched and don't see a path forward with you."

Most of the voluminous store of classified reports reflects the daily grind of life in Afghanistan as covered in news reports for the past several years. In them, junior officers complain about poorly equipped Afghan forces, corrupt Afghan government officials and a U.S. war effort that at times seemed to be seriously wanting for resources.

In one document, a team of civil affairs soldiers reports donating money for an orphanage that is supposed to help about 100 fatherless children and finding later that only about 30 boys and girls were being helped. Also missing were the stores of rice, grain and cooking oil that the troops had provided. "We found very few orphans living there and could not find most of the HA [humanitarian assistance] we had given them," the report states.

Other reports give accounts of police chiefs skimming the pay of their patrol officers or placing nonexistent "ghost" troops on their rolls so that they could pocket the additional salaries.

Another report that chronicles a massive Taliban attack on Combat Outpost Keating in eastern Afghanistan quotes frantic radio calls from an overwhelmed U.S. lieutenant seeking air support to hold off the much larger Taliban force. The attack on the base was chronicled in a Washington Post report this year, based on interviews with the officer and his troops.

At times the U.S. troops show a lack of knowledge about Afghanistan, botching the names of cities and the relationships between senior Afghan officials.

The reports highlight how civilian casualties resulting from mistakes on the battlefield have alienated Afghans. Over the past year, civilian casualties in Afghanistan have dropped significantly. But many of the problems referred to in the memo -- a resilient Taliban, porous borders with Pakistani safe havens and largely ineffectual Afghan government -- remain.

BTW, Happy Birthday, CIA!

[jw74]

If I receive stolen property, I am guilty of a crime. Why is the person behind wikileaks not under arrest?

[Big Boss]

Didn't the guy (Brian Hogan) who found the iPhone 4 prototype and the guy from Gizmodo (Jason Chen) get in bad water for not returning stolen, excuse me, lost property?

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/iphone-finder/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20003446-37.html

Guess the rules are different outside my little world.

[Ghostracer11]

If I remember correctly, this is not the first time that this has happened to our country. Towards the end of the Vietnam war the Pentagon Papers were published in the New York Times detailing that war. You'd think the military would have learned it's lesson.

[ttg290580]

Some 22yo PVT the artical says he is in jail in Kuwait...... and it says he is the one who leaked the collarteral damage video too. Noose this guy like they should have noosed all these other "Americans" who we keep catching working with the enemy in a time of war.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot...eaks-firestorm

[Utah Bob]

Originally Posted by Ghostracer11

If I remember correctly, this is not the first time that this has happened to our country. Towards the end of the Vietnam war the Pentagon Papers were published in the New York Times detailing that war. You'd think the military would have learned it's lesson.

What lesson are they supposed to learn? Don't write anything down?

[blue02hd]

Originally Posted by Ghostracer11

If I remember correctly, this is not the first time that this has happened to our country. Towards the end of the Vietnam war the Pentagon Papers were published in the New York Times detailing that war. You'd think the military would have learned it's lesson.

So candidate, explain to us what your solution would be to safe guard an already secured network, from individual users that choose to ignore the half a dozen (conservative estimate) security briefs and disclosure statements that they willfully sign.

That would be a great next post for you.

[Buffalobob]

Well, I am not exactly sure why the thread title is what it is so I will just say a few words about the title.

SF originated as a behind enemy lines type of unit and that implies that you fully trust no one. You train the partisans or indig etc (you can choose your war and the slang that went with it). Betrayal by your trainees is always a contingency that you must plan for. This happened enough in RVN that even an earthworm which has only two neurons knows to be careful when dealing with the indig.

Any number of "super powers" over the last 4 or 5 centuries have gotten bogged down in Afghanistan. A person would have to be seriously short of neurons to think that a heavily Muslim nation like Pakistan doesn't have enough sense to play both sides of the isle so that they are guaranteed to be on the winning side. Plus as long as the US is going to dump bales of money all over the country side Pakistan is surely going to run around and pick it up. When the money dries up Pakistan will say so long and go back to bothering India full time.

[Foot Drill]

x

[LarryW]

Well, I am not exactly sure why the thread title is what it is so I will just say a few words about the title.

(This is interesting, BB. The title of the thread was taken verbatim from the article in the WP as quoted in the link I attached. That link now rolls to a different article. Can't find the one I copied from the web via the link quoted. Will do more reasearch and see if there's a rat. Thanks, sir.)

[Richard]

Leaked files suggest Pakistan is aiding Afghan rebels

MOO - but I would suggest that we aided the Afghan rebels when we made OEF effort a seconadary priority in 2003 with the focal shift to OIF.

From the article's timeline:

The Conflict in Afghanistan

• 1979 The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan. Mujahedeen - Islamic fighters - from across the globe, including Osama bin Laden, come to fight Soviet forces.
• 1989 Last Soviet troops leave Afghanistan.
• 1996 The Taliban take control of Afghanistan, imposing fundamentalist Islamic law. Mr. bin Laden takes refuge in the country.
• 2001 After the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush gives the Taliban an ultimatum to hand over Mr. bin Laden; the Taliban refuse, and in OCT the U.S. leads a campaign that drives the Taliban out of major Afghan cities by the end of the year.
• 2002 Hamid Karzai becomes interim president of Afghanistan. The Taliban continue to wage guerrilla warfare near the border with Pakistan.
• 2004 New constitution is ratified, making Afghanistan an Islamic state with a strong president. Later, Mr. Karzai wins the country's first presidential election.
• FEB 2009 President Obama orders 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.
• AUG 2009 President Karzai wins re-election in a vote marred by fraud.
• DEC 2009 President Obama issues orders to send 30,000 troops in 2010, bringing the total American force to about 100,000.

This is the calendar of events per the NYT article. What is missing is arguably the most important date in this matter - 2003 US forces relinquish the lead of the war in Afghanistan to NATO forces. US focus instead on IRAQ. NATO forces are hamstrung in that our "allies" do not want to leave the security of the bases, allowing the Taliban resurgence.

NOTE: DEC 2009 President Obama issues orders to send 30,000 troops in 2010. We are still deploying these forces and that should, from all reports, be completed by the end of the summer.

Just think, at one time we assured our allies that we were prepared to deliver 10 Mech/Armor Heavy Divisions in 10 days...and now we are hard pressed to deliver 30,000 soldiers (less than 3 of the previous heavy divisions) in 30 weeks.

Progress is apparently not our most important product.*

And so it goes...

Richard's $.02

* With apologies to GE.

[LarryW]

FWIW, compare the article as it appears above to the one the link now takes you to. The article pasted above was published on the Washington Post website on 26 JUL. The one you will read if you click on the same link was published on 27 JUL. The server had to have been "serviced" to remove the first article.

Guess I can't trust the Washington Post.

Where's Glenn Beck when I need him...?

[Buffalobob]

This is the calendar of events per the NYT article. What is missing is arguably the most important date in this matter - 2003 US forces relinquish the lead of the war in Afghanistan to NATO forces. US focus instead on IRAQ. NATO forces are hamstrung in that our "allies" do not want to leave the security of the bases, allowing the Taliban resurgence.

I agree that it turned the war badly and was the most serious error made.


I will take a minute to re type a last paragraph that I deleted from my first post on this subject because I thought it added nothing important.

The Headline that was in several newspapers including the Washington Post yesterday about Pakistan aiding the insurgents was in my opinion just a headline to get people to read an article that had little news in it. In other words several news agencies tried to INFLATE the value of the leaked documents in order to make them appear newsworthy.

[LarryW]

Don't mean to beleaguer this point adnauseum, but the article above mentions..."Wikileaks gave the material to the New York Times, the British newspaper the Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel several weeks ago on the condition that they not be published before Sunday night, when the group released them publicly." The article now appearing under the same link doesn't mention other news agencies at all, and goes a long way to downplay the whole situation. (i.e.,"Most of these documents are several years old and may well reflect situations and conditions and circumstances that have either been corrected already or are in the process of being corrected," Crowley said. "Some of the documents talked about a conflict that was underresourced and that was a fundamental element of the strategy review overseen by the president.")

"Ignore the man behind the curtain!"

[Buffalobob]

Guess I can't trust the Washington Post.

The Washington Post has had several versions of the newspaper every day for about the last 25 years at least. We get the DC morning version which is different from the afternoon version which is different from the Montgomery County version, etc, etc, etc.. They have (or will) probably curtailed this practice with the financial problems that they and all of the print media are having. The Washington Post internet site often rolls around during the day and an article you see in the morning will not be there in the afternoon and you have to go and use search and then it is different. This has been going on for about ten years that I know of. They also copy protect their pictures and you have to buy them if you want one.

You can see Nmaps comment about the Las Vegas Sun in another thread, it has some bearing on things.