WASHINGTON – The Obama administration Sunday lashed out at a website called WikiLeaks for posting secret US military reports on the Afghan war detailing the problems American troops have faced in battling the Taliban and in working with Pakistani allies who allegedly are also helping the Afghan insurgency.
“The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organisations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security,” President Barack Obama’s National Security Adviser James Jones said in a statement, calling Wikileaks’ action “irresponsible”.
“Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents – the United States government learned from news organisations that these documents would be posted,” he said. “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.”
Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States Hussain Haqqani joined Jones in denouncing the release of unsubstantiated information by Wikileaks alleging that Pakistani intelligence service’s was backing the Afghan militants. “The documents circulated by wikileaks do not reflect the current on-ground realities,” he said.
Rejecting the “unprocessed reports”, Haqqani said they “reflect nothing more than single source comments and rumours, which abound on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and are often proved wrong after deeper examination,” he said, after The New York Times quoted Wikileaks documents in a story.
Ambassador Haqqani drew attention to the fact that Pakistan’s Government under the democratically elected leadership of President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is following a clearly laid out strategy to fight and marginalize terrorists. “Our military and intelligence services are effectively executing that policy.”
SCEPTICISM!
But some observers here were sceptical about the strong reaction of the Obama administration to the leaked documents that denigrate Pakistan and its security forces. “Something is not right here,” one expert said, adding that WikiLeaks could not have done it without a wink and a nod by some elements in the administration wanting to keep Pakistan under pressure.
On its part, WikiLeaks said the documents produced by military personnel and intelligence officers, which it calls the “Afghan War Diary,” cover “lethal military actions” by the US military in Afghanistan from 2004 through 2009. They also include logs of meetings with political figures, the Website said.
WikiLeaks said the reports, obtained from an undisclosed source, do not generally cover top-secret operations, or those of European or other international coalition members. It said it has delayed the release of about 15,000 reports “as part of a harm minimisation process demanded” by its source. “After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits,” the whistle-blower organisation said.
The New York Times, The Guardian newspaper in Britain and the German magazine Der Spiegel published portions of the reports Sunday.
The Times said the documents “portray American forces as being starved for resources and battling an insurgency that was getter larger and better coordinated year by year.”
The classified documents suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organise networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.
The more than 91,000 documents – most of which consist of low-level field reports – represent one of the largest single disclosures of such information in US history, according to media reports.
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 US 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 US helicopters. Heat-seeking missiles, which the United States provided to the anti-Soviet Afghan fighters known as Mujahiddin 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 US 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 US 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 Washington Post opined.
Senior administration officials acknowledged to the Post 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 US official was quoted as saying.
The documents also appear to suggest that 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.
The documents detail multiple reports of cooperation between Retired Lt Gen Hamid Gul, who ran ISI in the late 1980s, and Afghan insurgents battling US forces in the mountainous eastern region of the country. In the latter years of the anti-Soviet insurgency, Gul worked closely with several major Mujahiddin fighters who currently are battling US troops and trying to topple the Afghan government. The documents also include reports that Gul was trying to re-establish contacts with insurgent leaders such as Gulbaddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose fighters have been responsible for some of the bloodiest attacks on US forces.
The United States has pushed the United Nations to put General Gul on a list of international terrorists, and top American officials said they believed he was an important link between active-duty Pakistani officers and militant groups, according to the Times.
General Gul, who says he is retired and lives on his pension, dismissed the allegations as “absolute nonsense,” speaking to the Times by telephone from his home in Rawalpindi. “I have had no hand in it.” He added, “American intelligence is pulling cotton wool over your eyes.”
Senior Pakistani officials consistently deny that General Gul still works at the ISIÂ’s behest.
Over the past decade, US 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 wasnÂ’t improvement, the United States would begin to take matters into its own hands, reports aid.
“The key thing to bear in mind is that the administration is not naive about Pakistan,” an Obama administration official was quoted as saying in the Post. “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.”
Other reports give accounts of Afghan 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 US lieutenant seeking air support to hold off the much larger Taliban force. The attack on the base was chronicled in a The Washington Post report this year, based on interviews with the officer and his troops.
At times the US 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. Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.
Much of the information – raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan- cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants, The Post said. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place.
Some of the reports describe Pakistani intelligence working alongside Al Qaeda to plan attacks. Experts cautioned that although PakistanÂ’s militant groups and al-Qaeda work together, directly linking ISI with Al Qaeda is difficult.
The records also contain firsthand accounts of American frustration at PakistanÂ’s unwillingness to confront insurgents who launched attacks near Pakistani border posts, moved openly by the truckload across the frontier, and retreated to Pakistani territory for safety.
Behind the scenes, both Bush and Obama administration officials as well as top American commanders have confronted top Pakistani military officers with accusations of ISI complicity in attacks in Afghanistan, and even presented top Pakistani officials with lists of ISI and military operatives believed to be working with militants.
Benjamin Rhodes, Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications, said that Pakistan had been an important ally in the battle against militant groups, and that Pakistani soldiers and intelligence officials had worked alongside the United States to capture or kill Qaeda and Taliban leaders.
Still, he said that the “status quo is not acceptable,” and that the havens for militants in Pakistan “pose an intolerable threat” that Pakistan must do more to address.
“The Pakistani government – and PakistanÂ’s military and intelligence services – must continue their strategic shift against violent extremist groups within their borders,” he said. American military support to Pakistan would continue, he said.
Several Congressional officials said that despite repeated requests over the years for information about Pakistani support for militant groups, they usually receive vague and inconclusive briefings from the Pentagon and CIA.
Monitoring Desk adds: Pakistani officials inside and outside Afghanistan on Monday reacted angrily to the publication of a trove of secret US military documents that suggested PakistanÂ’s spy agency collaborated with the Taliban, and they said the US is using Pakistan as a scapegoat for its failing war, reports The Boston Globe and The Washington Post.
The ISI blasted the leaked reports, calling the accusations malicious, far-fetched and unsubstantiated.
The reports, which were released by the online whistleblower Wikileaks, raised new questions about whether the US can succeed in convincing Pakistan to sever its historical links to the Taliban and deny them sanctuary along the Afghan border – actions that many analysts believe are critical for success in Afghanistan.
A senior ISI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, 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.
The official said the agency was still sifting through the documents, but, he added, the allegations did not sound new and that they appeared to contain no concrete evidence of ISI backing for the Afghan insurgency.
“In the intelligence business, anything and everything is reported. If tomorrow a person walks into my office and says he saw Osama bin Laden or XYZ, I have to report that. That does not become credible information or intelligence until and unless that is corroborated,” the official said. “The majority of these reports coming out of Wikileaks fall into that category.”
The official said, however, that some of the allegations sound “very damning” and could erode support among the American public for the US alliance with Pakistan. But he said that was not a major concern.
“It is our war that we are fighting. If the Americans don’t think they can support us, sorry. Tough luck,” the official said. “We will continue to do what we are doing.”
Maj-Gen Athar Abbas, spokesman for PakistanÂ’s Army, was not reachable for comment Monday on the intelligence reports.
Other reports mention former ISI officials, including LT-Gen (r) Hamid Gul, who headed the agency in the late 1980s when Pakistan and the US were supporting Mujahideen in their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Talking to BBC, Gul, who appeared multiple times throughout the reports, denied allegations that he was working with the Taliban, saying, “These leaked documents against me are a pure fiction which is being sold as intelligence and nothing else.”
“It’s not intelligence,” Gen Gul told the BBC. “It may have a financial angle to it but more than that it is not hardcore (intelligence). I’m an old veteran. I know. This is not intelligence.”
He said the leaked documents should prompt Pakistan to drop its alliance with the US. The Americans are “facing defeat in Afghanistan and to cover that they are coming up with false allegations against Pakistan,” he said. “This is a pack of lies to malign Pakistan army and the ISI.”
PakistanÂ’s Ambassador to Afghanistan Mohammad Sadiq, said in an interview in Kabul that regardless of how the documents emerged, they cast a poor light on the Obama Administration.
Pakistani officials on both sides of the border dismissed the disclosures that Pakistani spies meet and coordinate attacks with Taliban leaders. Some officials assumed this was an intentional effort by the Obama Administration to exert pressure on their government or smear their reputation.
“You know the quality of the intelligence, it’s like WMD in Iraq,” said one senior Pakistani official. “What they are saying is not possible. If really the ISI is so bad, why are they cooperating so closely with ISI? This is a typical way of pressurising. It’s not only this case.”
The official added that “leaks are an instrument of policy in the US”. He said Pakistan takes the blame for America losing in Afghanistan.
“The whole thing has become a joke. This is really not serious. You cannot fight wars like this. When you are fighting a war, you need a more serious approach. I think the whole approach is full of farce.”