WikiLeaks Afghan War Documents

Summary: A collection of more than 92,000 US government documents classified as secret was made public in July 2010 by the organization WikiLeaks. At the same time, reports on the documents were published by the New York Times, the Guardian of London, and Der Spiegel of Germany; the three organizations had been given access to the documents several weeks before their release on the Internet. While the documents covered a broad range of subjects, they appeared to paint a more pessimistic picture of the war in Afghanistan than official public reports and to implicate US troops in previously undisclosed incidents of killing civilians. The documents also suggested that Pakistan's military intelligence agency, ISI, was instrumental in advising the Afghan Taliban in its battle against the United States and its NATO allies, even while Pakistan was receiving foreign aid from the United States. Although officials insisted there was nothing "new" in the documents, their release did focus renewed public attention on the Afghan war and its conduct.

On July 25, 2010, more than 92,000 US documents classified as secret were made public on the Internet by WikiLeaks, a website run by an Australian. On the same day, three print publications—the New York Times, the Guardian of London, and Der Spiegel of Germany, published an account of the contents of the documents, which had been provided to them a few weeks earlier by WikiLeaks on the understanding they would refrain from publishing accounts of the information until July 25, 2010, when the documents were made available for anyone to see.

Summary of contents. The Guardian described the leaked documents as "internal records of actions by the US military in Afghanistan between January 2004 and December 2009." The documents, most of which were classified secret (a lower rating than top secret), covered a wide range of subjects, including intelligence assessments of threats, plans for and accounts of coalition operations, descriptions of incidents including attacks and bombings, and reports on meetings with local officials.

Among the documents were reports on hundreds of civilian casualties in incidents previously not reported. They also included secret assessments of the progress of the conflict that were more pessimistic than official public statements suggested.

One set of documents appeared to reflect an assessment that Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISS), the military intelligence organization, was deeply involved in aiding the Afghan Taliban in its fight against the United States and allied countries.

What was new. Most commentators said the leaked documents did not disclose information that was not widely known, even if that knowledge was not in as much specific detail as contained in the leaked documents. The New York Times listed various topics about which the leaked documents appeared to shed new light:

• Use of anti-aircraft missiles by the Taliban, not previously publicly disclosed. Such heat-seeking missiles were also used by Afghan insurgents against the occupying Soviet army in the 1980s.
• The existence of secret commando units assigned to assassinate about seventy top Taliban commanders. Missions by such units were escalated under the administration of President Obama. They have also resulted in civilian casualties.
• The escalating use of unmanned drone aircraft in Afghanistan, both in battle and to survey the battlefield. According to the leaked documents, such aircraft were often less effective than officials had claimed.
• The role of the Central Intelligence Agency in planning and conducting paramilitary operations in Afghanistan and the CIA's financing of Afghanistan's intelligence agency, which included running that organization as a "virtual subsidiary," according to the New York Times.

In its account of the documents, the New York Times concluded, "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—attributing the downing of a helicopter to conventional weapons instead of heat-seeking missiles or giving Afghans credit for missions carried out by Special Operations commandos."

In this respect, some compared the WikiLeaks document cache to the Pentagon Papers, a secret military history of the Vietnam War leaked to the press in 1971 by Daniel Ellsberg, who had contributed to the documents. The Pentagon Papers appeared to make clear that President Lyndon Johnson had misrepresented some incidents, notably the alleged firing on US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin by North Vietnam, to justify escalating the Vietnam conflict and secretly bombing targets in Cambodia and Laos. The Pentagon Papers further diminished the government's credibility in justifying the Vietnam War.

Reaction by Pentagon. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the disclosures put at risk the lives of Afghans who aided American forces. Gates said he was especially disturbed that some leaked documents made public the names of individual Afghans.

In May 2010, a month after WikiLeaks disclosed a military video showing a helicopter crew firing on civilians, the US Army arrested an intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, a private assigned to the Tenth Mountain Division in Baghdad. He was accused of downloading more than 150,000 classified diplomatic communications and named "a person of interest" in the investigation into the Afghan war documents. Manning was turned in by a one-time computer hacker to whom he had allegedly turned for help. After his arrest in Baghdad, he was taken to a military prison in Kuwait. (WikiLeaks did not acknowledge receiving any material from Manning, saying its policy was to protect the anonymity of those who send documents.) In July, the US Army said it was also investigating friends and coworkers of Manning to see whether others might be involved.

Pakistan. The foreign ministry of Pakistan said, "The people of Pakistan and its security forces, including the ISI, have rendered enormous sacrifices against militancy and terrorism. Our contributions have been acknowledged by the international community, in particular by the United States. As underlined by the US national security adviser in his statement on WikiLeaks yesterday, the ongoing counter-terrorism cooperation between Pakistan and the [United States] will continue with a view to defeating our common enemies."

One theme of the WikiLeaks documents was the role of Pakistan's ISI in the conflict in neighboring Afghanistan in 2004-2009. Der Spiegel's analysis of the documents on this topic concluded, "Despite all assurances by Pakistani politicians that these old connections [between Pakistan army intelligence and the Afghan Taliban] were severed long ago, the country still pursues an ambiguous policy, in which Pakistan is both an ally of the United States and a helper of its enemies. The war logs indicate that the Pakistani intelligence service is presumably the Taliban's most important supporter outside Afghanistan." For part of the period covered by the documents, 2004-2007, the ISI was led by General Ashfaq Kayani, who became chief of staff of Pakistan's army in November 2007, succeeding Pervez Musharraf, who had served simultaneously as president and army chief. On July 19, three days before the WikiLeaks documents were disclosed, Pakistan announced that Kayani's term would be extended for three years. Another senior Pakistan military official often mentioned in the documents, retired General Hamid Gul, a former head of ISI, said allegations that Pakistan secretly supported Al Qaeda were lies. In Washington, President Obama's National Security Adviser, General James Jones, said in a statement issued the same day the leaks were published that "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."

About WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks is a website founded by Julian Assange, an Australian who carried the title "editor in chief" of the site. The site has previously published government documents marked "secret" that it received from anonymous sources. In that sense, WikiLeaks does not leak documents but rather mounts them on its servers for public access.

WikiLeaks has published documents related to many subjects, not just the US-NATO war effort in Afghanistan. In February 2010, for example, the site made public a communication from the US embassy in Reykjavik, Iceland, reporting on politicians' reactions to that country's financial crisis and including a negative assessment by one politician of the president of Iceland.

In April 2010, WikiLeaks made public a military video recording showing US helicopters shooting civilians in a street in Baghdad, including audio of the crew bragging about their "good shooting."

In the case of the video, the alleged leaker, Bradley Manning, twenty-two, a military intelligence analyst, was subsequently arrested in Iraq and put in a military prison in Kuwait. He was identified in a series of email exchanges in which he said he had access to the "Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, SIPRNET," that carries intelligence reports marked secret, and the "Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System" that carries reports marked "top secret."

According to the Guardian, Assange claimed to have several million American government files on different activities. Assange arranged for the three publications to see the files several weeks before making them public out of fear that the volume of information would overwhelm the public. The three publications agreed not to publish the information before a common date that coincided with the day WikiLeaks made the documents available to anyone.

Bibliography

"Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010." WikiLeaks, 25 July 2010, wikileaks.org/wiki/Afghan‗War‗Diary,‗2004-2010. Accessed 4 Oct. 2023.

Estulin, Daniel. Deconstructing Wikileaks. 1st ed. Independent Publishers Group (IPG), 2012.