WikiLeaks Revelations

ajtr

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
12,038
Likes
723
The leaky cauldron


WikiLeaks, an online whistle-blower, has released the 'Afghan War Diary', a set of over 91,000 leaked US military reports from 2004-2009. Some 75,000 reports have been released online while the release of some 15,000 reports has been delayed "as part of a harm minimisation process" as per the demand of their 'source'. Apart from putting up the documents on its own website, WikiLeaks gave the Afghan war logs to The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel. Though these reports have created a buzz worldwide, there is nothing earth-shatteringly new in them. According to some of the leaked reports, the ISI is helping the Afghan insurgents; there has been an increase in the use of drones by the US-led NATO forces; more than 2,000 civilians have died due to the Taliban's roadside bombing campaign; the Taliban have access to heat-seeking missiles; humanitarian aid is being pocketed by corrupt Afghan officials, among other things. Now all these revelations may be something new for the American and European public, but they are nothing new for people in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The American administration and its military were not unaware of what has been going on in Afghanistan since it invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and ousted the Taliban regime. Thus there has not been any 'surprise' in the official US circles. US National Security Advisor General James Jones said that the US "strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information...which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk" but the leaks "will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan". Meanwhile, Pakistan's Foreign Office said the leaked reports were not based on facts and "do not reflect the current on-ground realities". The denials from Pakistan were not unexpected either while the Americans have tried to soften the blow of these accusations against its frontline ally in the war on terror by taking a line that does not deny the ISI's alleged assistance to the Afghan Taliban but at the same time applauds Pakistan's efforts in cooperating with the Americans. The Afghans have not shown any surprise either and are of the view that this gives more credibility to what they had been saying over the years about Pakistan's role in destabilising Afghanistan.

So the real issue here is the ISI and its links with the Afghan Taliban. It has been known for years now that our security establishment's skewed policies vis-à-vis the Taliban have pushed the country and the region into a quagmire of disaster. General Musharraf played a dual game with the Americans by handing over al Qaeda members while giving protection and rear base areas to the Afghan Taliban. That same policy is continuing under General Kayani, the only difference being that the local Taliban are being hunted down but the Afghan Taliban are being protected for a post-withdrawal Afghanistan. Now that these documents are out in the open for all to see, voices in the US have already started to emerge and will get louder with each passing day about Pakistan biting the hand that feeds it, in fact chewing it off till the elbow. We cannot overlook the billions of dollars in aid that we have received from the US since 2001. Despite being hit hard by the global recession, the US continued to support Pakistan financially. The outrage in the American media is understandable and soon it will change public opinion to an extent that might lead to US aid being cut off or at the very least being reduced or delayed. Pakistan has to clarify its position beyond a shadow of a doubt if it wants to stay in the US's good books. It is time that we quit playing games with the security of the world at large and the region in particular in our 'too clever by half' mode. *
 

ajtr

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
12,038
Likes
723
Leaky Situation


With the whistleblower website WikiLeaks publishing 91,000 classified US military documents that chronicle the ongoing campaign in Afghanistan, many of which show up the Pakistani army and ISI collaborating with the Afghan Taliban in attacks against American forces, some uncomfortable questions have been raised. They have to do not only with how Islamabad undermined US policy by playing both sides while securing vast amounts of aid from the US but also how under-resourced, under-financed and poorly run the Afghan campaign has been. By the time the Obama administration shifted focus from Iraq to Afghanistan, western powers were already suffering from Afghanistan fatigue.

For a long time now, New Delhi has been stressing that American aid to Islamabad is being diverted to fight India, and that elements of the Pakistani establishment are actively aiding, supporting and arming the Taliban and its affiliates for example the Haqqani network to subvert US military action in Afghanistan and mount attacks on Indians. The WikiLeaks revelations confirm this double game and, once again, bring into question the efficacy of the Obama administration's Af-Pak policy. For, the biggest hurdle that the Americans face in finding a lasting solution to the Afghan problem is that they have little choice but to rely on an ally that continues to see Afghanistan as its own personal fiefdom.

This is borne out by the existence of the 'S wing' of the ISI the dirty tricks division of the intelligence agency that enjoys considerable autonomy and little accountability. There is now a groundswell of field reports that elaborate how on several occasions American troops have been frustrated by the activities of the ISI that has helped Taliban fighters flee across the Durand Line to safe havens in north-west Pakistan. If the leaked documents are anything to go by, there is little hope that the Americans will succeed unless they pull up the Pakistani establishment for allowing elements of its army and the ISI to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.

The Obama administration is legitimately concerned about the security implications of the leaked documents. After all they could seriously jeopardise American foreign policy strategy. At present, however, the ISI-Taliban nexus presents more of a pressing challenge to the US military effort on the ground. As it does to New Delhi's policy in the region. The fiasco of the Krishna-Qureshi joint press conference in Islamabad, and public spats between home and external affairs ministries, put on display how little coordination there is in New Delhi's approach to Islamabad.
 

ajtr

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
12,038
Likes
723
Leading senators lash out at Pakistan, Obama's withdrawal date

Posted By Josh Rogin Tuesday, July 27, 2010 - 9:11 PM Share
The leak of tens of thousands of classified war reports to self-styled whistleblower website WikiLeaks was very damaging to U.S. national security and raises deep concerns about Pakistan's actions, according to the Senate's top Democrat on intelligence matters.

Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, said Tuesday she was shocked by the allegations in the leaked reports that elements of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate were directly involved in attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan.

"We need to find out if it's true," she told The Cable in an interview. "The suspicion is that it may well be true."

Feinstein said she doesn't believe that illicit activities by elements of the Pakistan government, such as those alleged in the reports, are things of the past. She also warned that generous U.S. support for Pakistan could be vulnerable due to such activities.

"Do the Pakistanis work both sides of the street? Yes I think so," she said. "Pakistan has to make up its mind; it has to go one way or the other. And I don't think it can keep the United States doing its hard work for it if it isn't going to be supportive."

As for the seriousness of the WikiLeaks disclosures, Feinstein broke from the Obama administration's contention that there were no real revelations in the reports and therefore there should be no real harm to the war effort.

"It's very serious. It's hard to believe it actually happened because of the size of it," Feinstein said. "It was a concentrated effort to take documents and messages that were classified and just dump them out there without any care or concern over violating the law or what effect it would have on national security."

WikiLeaks claims to be withholding a further 15,000 documents out of respect for its source's concern about disclosures that could put sources and methods in jeopardy.

Earlier Tuesday, President Obama himself downplayed the information in the leaked reports, saying the document dump "doesn't reveal any issues that haven't already informed our debate on Afghanistan."

Other senior Democrats on Capitol Hill Tuesday said they weren't shocked by the reports.

"I don't share her shock," Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin, D-MI, told The Cable, referring to Feinstein. "It reinforces what I and many others know has been the case, which is that there have been some playing both sides in the Pakistani intelligence services. There's been a belief that's been the case for some time and this reinforces it."

But like Feinstein, Levin is extremely critical of how the Pakistani government is carrying out its war against the insurgents in its midst.

"The Pakistanis have not gone after the Haqqani network, which is in North Waziristan; they have not gone after the Quetta Shura, which is openly operating in Quetta." he said. "They know where they are at. They have not taken strong action against terrorists who operate outside of Pakistan."

He said that U.S. economic support funds for Pakistan could be tied into the congressional concerns over the issue.

Senior Republican senators continued to criticize the leakers and WikiLeaks for publishing the reports, while moving to tie the incident to their long held criticism of Obama's July 11, 2011, date to begin the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

"We need Pakistan's help to rid the region of the Taliban, but for that to happen we must convince the Pakistanis and the Afghans that we won't abandon them -- and with President Obama's call for an arbitrary withdrawal date that's a hard sell," Feinstein's committee counterpart Sen. Kit Bond, R-MO, told The Cable.

Levin's counterpart on the Armed Services Committee, Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, said in an interview that the effort to convince both Pakistan and Afghanistan to commit to the fight against the Taliban was being undermined by their shared perception that America is on the way out.

"The ISI is maintaining ties with the Taliban. That's exacerbated by the fact that we've said we're going to leave in the middle of next year. There are many countries and factions that are hedging their bets and accommodating for that eventuality," he said.

Even if Obama doesn't intend to pursue big withdrawals quickly, the date is being used by America's enemies to convince Afghan locals not to risk their lives and side with the U.S., according to McCain, who recently traveled to the Afghanistan.

"It hurts us across the board all over the region," he said.
 

ajtr

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
12,038
Likes
723
WikiLeak: U.S. Battling Militants from Turkey, Its NATO Ally


U.S. troops in Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan in 2007 were persistently attacked by militants identified as Turkish fighters, according to the trove of documents released Sunday by WikiLeaks.

The presence of Turkish fighters isn't totally new. You can find sporadic references online, like this one from CBS in 2008. But the WikiLeaks archive provides vivid new detail about the presence of dedicated militants coming from the country of a NATO ally that has contributed troops and money to the mission in Afghanistan.

At Forward Operating Base Bermel in the eastern part of Paktika Province, soldiers reported being scoped out and progressively fired upon with rockets and small arms fire by Turkish militants from the spring to the fall of 2007, the documents show. Troops at the remote outpost responded with artillery and airstrikes, even calling in Predator and Reaper drones to go after the militants. Reports of communications intercepts indicate that the Turkish fighters were supported by the al-Qaeda-aligned Haqqani network and may have operated out of militant safe havens in Pakistan.

"It's a story that hasn't been mainstreamed, this Turkish involvement in jihad," says Bryan Glyn Williams, an associate professor of history at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth who's studied Islamic militancy in Turkey, including Turkish extremist infiltration into Afghanistan. "There is a growing Salafist-Wahhabist movement in Turkey, a lot more extreme than the [ruling Isalmic-based] AK Party."

U.S. troops at the Bermel base, part of Task Force Eagle — a team of five infantry companies and a cavalry troop operating in the area — began to notice in early May 2007 that Turkish fighters south of the base were scoping out how Pashtun insurgents conducted attacks against U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopters. On May 19, they struck, sending a 107-millimeter rocket into the base. No one was harmed, and an official assessment noted that the incident was amateurish: "fighters were having a difficult time coordinating and carrying out relatively routine actions leading up to an attack."

But a military record that day noted something had changed. "Todays [sic] single rocket was the first involvement of Turkish fighters in directly attacking [coalition forces]," it reads, and went on to suspect that the incident was a test run for something more serious down the line.

That report proved to be prescient. Accounts from Bermel began to accumulate of Turkish militant action against U.S. troops. On May 24, two more rockets fired by the Turks hit the base — again without causing casualties. ("The Turkish fighters appeared to use this indirect fire incident to gather knowledge on range," an analyst commented.) Then, on July 14, they went after U.S. soldiers outside the wire.

Two platoons from Charlie Company, 1-503 Infantry Regiment, drove back to Bermel from a nearby combat outpost, or COP, when they were ambushed from the east and the north with small arms fire, while a third unit shot at them with rocket-propelled grenades. The ensuing battle was brief — and, again, neither soldiers nor insurgents were hurt. But it showed a growing sophistication by the Turks. "The ambush fire was accurate and the [exfiltration] by the enemy was disciplined," the report reads.

In September, troops at Bermel began to get a sense of where the attacks originated. Communications intercepts "picked up throughout the day indicated that Turkish fighters were preparing to fire rockets at the COP," another document reads, and so the troops decided to do something about it. They fired off five 120-millimeter high explosive rounds at an area where they observed militant activity. But then they got wind of another intercept: the insurgents were planning to cross the border into Pakistan — and away from U.S. forces — at a nearby Pakistani military checkpoint.

"C Company notified PAKMIL" through a dedicated communications line that "miscreants had fired rockets and were moving toward the border," the official report reads. The company notified its Pakistani military counterparts that they should expect U.S. fire before the insurgents got away. At Bermel, soldiers trained 155-millimeter mortar rounds and white phosphorus on the route that the insurgents took to the checkpoint, eventually landing rounds "right on top of the Turkish Observers."

Only the Pakistanis never did anything to cut off the Turkish militants' retreat. After four unsuccessful attempts to raise the Pakistani military on the line after firing off the mortars, finally the soldiers got a terse response: "Please wait." They didn't hear anything else from the Pakistanis.

But the Task Force did pick up wind of insurgent injuries. "Nasrat, do you hear me? I hear somebody is injured," an account of an intercept reads. "You dont hear anything else but this voice. This means everybody is hurt when we arrive we can tell you the story."

That wouldn't be the last the Task Force would hear from "Nasrat," whom the documents indicate came under surveillance. The next time would prompt the first of Task Force Eagle's two biggest responses.

Just after noon on October 5, communications intercepts picked up Nasrat's call sign, and quickly, the Task Force sent out a Predator drone to spot the Turkish militants' locations, in nearby district called Sarobi. By 3 p.m., the Task Force had positive identification of a 14-insurgent team — and, evidently tired of the Turkish harassment, called in an airstrike. Two A-10s flew to the site and dropped 500-lb GBU-12 bombs on a cave where the insurgents took position, and pursued ten insurgents attempting to flee, firing "MK82 airburst, chain guns, and rockets."

Discovered at the scene after fighting died down: "Blood trail and part of a head," along with four corpses and a still-living enemy fighter who was given initial medical treatment before being sent to a bigger base for additional "treatment and interrogation." But that wasn't all they received: a post-battle communications intercept of a conversation before the offensive revealed "a Turkish fighter" in Orgun district "asking if Haqqani had 2,000 rupees with him and that he would need 50 pieces of (unspecified item) and 5 boxes." That was the first indication in the trove that the Turkish fighters had some ties to the cross-border network of Jalaleddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin, some of the most fearsome combatants in Afghanistan.

The Turks came back on the soldiers the next day, firing rockets back into Bermel and injuring no one. But it wouldn't be until late November that the soldiers really got into it with the Turks again. Radio traffic indicated that insurgents were preparing for an assault on Malekshay from two positions southeast and northeast from the outpost, and assets from Task Force Eagle under the command of a captain named — hmm — McChrystal — began firing mortar and artillery at the positions. Soldiers at Malekshay and Bermel observed the fighters "wildly flee the area," but the Task Force called on F-15s and then Apache helicopters to pursue, "sweeping the strike site and further reducing the observed threat with rockets and chain gun."

In all, 30 insurgents were reported killed in the attack, including two Turks, according to an informant. A communications intercept found one insurgent lamenting, "My friend was taking me to Afghanistan. Only two of us are left. I dont know where we could go. Now the other guy is lost. We are separated. I am disappointed we could not fight back."

That would do it for the Turkish militant threat to Task Force Eagle in 2007. But it wasn't necessarily the end of Turkish militant infiltration to Afghanistan. A different report from November 2009 details U.S. forces finding a trove of Turkish cash in a militant compound. (The amount of money isn't detailed.)

That doesn't surprise the University of Massachusetts' Williams. He's been going to Turkey since the 1990s and has been disturbed to see growing anti-Americanism and sympathy for terrorists on websites like Cihaderi, a phenomenon he says has grown by inches since the 1990s, when Turks went to fight on behalf of Islamic militants in Bosnia and Chechnya. Now, it's being channeled through Deobandi mosques in tribal Pakistan, where radicalized Turks go as an entrance point "to take shots at Americans and even fellow Turks" fighting for the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

That's not to say the Turks aren't stalwart allies. Williams remembers talking with Turkish troops in Kabul last year, where he briefly worked as a cultural adviser on an information operations team for former commander Stanley McChrystal. The conversation turned to Turkish militants. "They were furious," Williams recalls. "They believed in Turkey's contribution to the U.S. presence. These guys said [the militants] were no longer Turks, in a nationalist sense. They were Salafis and Wahhabis."

Update, 4:23 p.m.: As a caveat to this whole post, all the WikiLeaks documents I reviewed here make clear references to "Turkish" fighters. But sometimes that label can be applied to ethnically-Turkic Afghans or other Turkic peoples in the region. So it's possible that the frontline U.S. military units here could have confused or conflated Turkish fighters with Turkic fighters. We don't have clear information that they did, but it's a possibility that shouldn't be ruled out, so please keep that in mind as you read this report.



Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/201...ants-from-turkey-its-nato-ally/#ixzz0uxULBO4z
 

ajtr

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
12,038
Likes
723
Lost in a Maze


The waterfall of leaks on Afghanistan underlines the awful truth: We're not in control.

Not since Theseus fought the Minotaur in his maze has a fight been so confounding.

The more we try to do for our foreign protectorates, the more angry they get about what we try to do. As Congress passed $59 billion in additional war funding on Tuesday, not only are our wards not grateful, they're disdainful.

Washington gave the Wall Street banks billions, and, in return, they stabbed us in the back, handing out a fortune in bonuses to the grifters who almost wrecked our economy.

Washington gave the Pakistanis billions, and, in return, they stabbed us in the back, pledging to fight the militants even as they secretly help the militants.

We keep getting played by people who are playing both sides.

Robert Gibbs recalled that President Obama said last year that "we will not and cannot provide a blank check" to Pakistan.

But only last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Pakistan to hand over a juicy check: $500 million in aid to the country that's been getting a billion a year for most of this decade and in 2009 was pledged another $7.5 billion for the next five. She vowed to banish the "legacy of suspicion" and show that "there is so much we can accomplish together as partners joined in common cause."

Gibbs argued that the deluge of depressing war documents from the whistle-blower Web site WikiLeaks, reported by The New York Times and others, was old. But it reflected one chilling fact: the Taliban has been getting better and better every year of the insurgency. So why will 30,000 more troops help?

We invaded two countries, and allied with a third — all renowned as masters at double-dealing. And, now lured into their mazes, we still don't have the foggiest idea, shrouded in the fog of wars, how these cultures work. Before we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, both places were famous for warrior cultures. And, indeed, their insurgents are world class.

But whenever America tries to train security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan so that we can leave behind a somewhat stable country, it's positively Sisyphean. It takes eons longer than our officials predict. The forces we train turn against us or go over to the other side or cut and run. If we give them a maximum security prison, as we recently did in Iraq, making a big show of handing over the key, the imprisoned Al Qaeda militants are suddenly allowed to escape.

The British Empire prided itself on discovering warrior races in places it conquered — Gurkhas, Sikhs, Pathans, as the Brits called Pashtuns. But why are they warrior cultures only until we need them to be warriors on our side? Then they're untrainably lame, even when we spend $25 billion on building up the Afghan military and the National Police Force, dubbed "the gang that couldn't shoot straight" by Newsweek.

Maybe we just can't train them to fight against each other. But why can't countries that produce fierce insurgencies produce good standing armies in a reasonable amount of time? Is it just that insurgencies can be more indiscriminate?

Things are so bad that Robert Blackwill, who was on W.'s national security team, wrote in Politico that the Obama administration should just admit failure and turn over the Pashtun South to the Taliban since it will inevitably control it anyway. He said that the administration doesn't appreciate the extent to which this is a Pashtun nationalist uprising.

We keep hearing that the last decade of war, where we pour in gazillions to build up Iraq and Afghanistan even as our own economy sputters, has weakened Al Qaeda.

But at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. James Mattis, who is slated to replace Gen. David Petraus, warned that Al Qaeda and its demon spawn represent a stark danger all over the Middle East and Central Asia.

While we're anchored in Afghanistan, the Al Qaeda network could roil Yemen "to the breaking point," as Mattis put it in written testimony.

Pakistan's tribal areas "remain the greatest danger as these are strategic footholds for Al Qaeda and its senior leaders, including Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri," the blunt four-star general wrote, adding that they "remain key to extremists' efforts to rally Muslim resistance worldwide."

Questioned by John McCain, General Mattis said that we're not leaving Afghanistan; we're starting "a process of transition to the Afghan forces." But that process never seems to get past the starting point.

During the debate over war funds on Tuesday, Representative Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, warned that we are in a monstrous maze without the ball of string to find our way out.

"All of the puzzle has been put together, and it is not a pretty picture," he told The Times's Carl Hulse. "Things are really ugly over there."
 

SHASH2K2

New Member
Joined
May 10, 2010
Messages
5,711
Likes
730
what was new in this leak? Nothing.
Brother we all know that there is nothing new in it . but problem is that we have lots of Ostriches around us who will hide its face in sand and assume that problem is over and there is nothing to worry. They need proof . You give them they need credible proof . you give them credible proof they need very very credible proof . And it goes on and on.
 

SHASH2K2

New Member
Joined
May 10, 2010
Messages
5,711
Likes
730
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/107038/World/pak-reacts-angrily-to-camerons-terror-remarks.html

British Prime Minister David Cameron's warning that Pakistan should not have links with groups that export terror drew an angry response from Islamabad, which said it had done more than other nations in combating the menace.

Noting that terrorism is a "global issue", Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said the world community should instead ask India to "view this issue objectively".

"Pakistan has done much more than any other country in combating terrorism. Our people and security forces have rendered innumerable sacrifices. We hope that our friends will be able to persuade India to view this issue objectively and the value of 'cooperation' in counter-terrorism," Basit said in a statement.

He said that "terrorism is a global issue as well as regional and local" and that Pakistan and Britain have a "robust and comprehensive partnership, including on counter-terrorism".

"Terrorists have no religion, no humanity, no specific ethnicity or geography. Terrorists' networks, as the UK knows full well, mutate and operate in different regions and cities.

The genesis of terrorism as a global phenomenon warrants close attention," Basit said. "Pakistan is as much a victim of terrorism as are Afghanistan, India or other countries," he added.

Speaking in Bangalore, Prime Minister Cameron warned Pakistan not to have any relations with groups that "promote the export of terror".
He said he would raise the issue with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh when they hold talks tomorrow.

Cameron's remarks follow the leak of secret US documents on WikiLeaks website that said Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency was allegedly helping the Afghan Taliban.

He said Britain wants a strong, stable and democratic Pakistan but it "cannot tolerate in any sense the idea that this country is allowed to look both ways and is able, in any way, to promote the export of terror whether to India, whether to Afghanistan or to anywhere else in the world".
Cameron's spokeswoman clarified he was talking about Pakistan as a country and not the government.

She said the main message was for Pakistan to shut down terror groups.
 

ajtr

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
12,038
Likes
723
Washington's Hidden Enemy
Logs Suggest Pakistani Intelligence Controls Course of War


By Matthias Gebauer, John Goetz, Hans Hoyng, Susanne Koelbl, Marcel Rosenbach and Gregor Peter Schmitz

Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, appears frequently in the war logs obtained by WikiLeaks. They suggest that even as Pakistan served as an ally to the United States, it was still secretly helping the Taliban in its insurgency in Afghanistan. The documents also suggest a major role is played by former ISI chief Hamid Gul.

Editor's note: The following article is an excerpt from this week's SPIEGEL cover story. The facts in the story come from a database of almost 92,000 American military reports on the state of the war in Afghanistan that were obtained by the WikiLeaks website. Britain's Guardian newspaper, the New York Times and SPIEGEL have all vetted the material and reported on the contents in articles that have been researched independently of each other. All three media sources have concluded that the documents are authentic and provide an unvarnished image of the war in Afghanstan -- from the perspective of the soldiers on the ground.

Afghanistan's neighbor, Pakistan, has been in a tight spot since the al-Qaida attacks on New York and Washington. Officially, the country is part of the worldwide anti-terrorism coalition forged by former United States President George W. Bush. Unofficially, however, the Pakistani security forces are the patrons of the Taliban forces that gave refuge to Osama bin Laden and his terrorists. It is clear that the Taliban would not exist without help from abroad. The Pakistani intelligence service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), helped build up and install the Taliban after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan and the country descended into a fratricidal war among the victorious mujahedeen, creating the threat of a power vacuum.

Despite all assurances by Pakistani politicians that these old connections 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.

Now there is new evidence to support this. The war logs make it clear that the Pakistani intelligence service is still presumably the Taliban's most important supporter outside Afghanistan. The fact is that the war against the Afghan security forces, the Americans and their allies within the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is still being conducted from Pakistani soil, with the country serving as a safe haven for all hostile forces.

It also serves as a staging ground from which they can deploy. The Taliban's new recruits, including feared foreign fighters, are streaming across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The three main enemies of the Western coalition forces, the Taliban under Mullah Omar, the fighters led by former mujahedeen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the militias of the Haqqani clan of warlords all have important quarters and operations centers in Pakistan.

Osama bin Laden, the original justification for this war, is also believed to have found safe haven in Pakistan, where he is still involved in the day-to-day operations of jihad against the infidels. On one occasion, according to the documents, bin Laden planned to attack his enemies with a poison called, in his honor, "Osama Kapa," and on another he reportedly gave the gift of a wife to a particularly zealous Taliban fighter who had designed effective remotely triggered explosive booby traps.

Pakistan 's Assurance of Future Influence

The Pakistani intelligence service has excellent relations with all groups. In the constant fear that Pakistan's archrival India could gain a foothold in Afghanistan and thus have Pakistan in its pincers, so to speak, the ISI supports everything that could preserve and strengthen its own influence in Kabul. And because many ISI strategists cannot believe that the Americans will remain in Afghanistan for long (after all, Washington has already announced the beginning of its withdrawal), the Taliban remains Pakistan's assurance of future influence in Kabul. This reasoning is particularly clear in the Afghanistan war logs.

According to the warnings of new attacks and suicide bombings by the enemy, ISI envoys were present when Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's commanders met for a war council in northern Waziristan.

A document dated Sept. 1, 2007 reports on an imminent attack by a group of Hekmatyar's fighters on one of the Allies' forward operating bases in Kunar, the Afghan province bordering Peshawar in Pakistan. The elaborate and carefully planned attack was to involve four suicide bombers, and the Americans' source even knew where they were from: one Pakistani, one Arab and two Afghans. The plans also included a rocket attack and artillery fire. Finally, foot soldiers were to storm the outpost and take enemy soldiers prisoner, if possible.

The Pakistani intelligence service supplied Chinese ammunition to the insurgents. The ISI, as partial financier of the operation, wanted to retain control and thus intended to send an officer to observe the attack and advise the fighters.

Nothing Works without the ISI

Pakistan's western Balochistan Province is believed to be the area where Taliban leader Mullah Omar spends most of his time. The Shura, the Taliban's decision-making body, meets once a month in the city of Quetta, or at least it did in the first few years after the Taliban fled Afghanistan. Some of the documents, such as the Aug. 16, 2006 warning of an impending attack, even claim that bin Laden himself has attended this meeting. The American intelligence gatherers, skeptical about this claim, classified the document as 3F, which means that it does not require verification.

A man who undoubtedly attended the Shura was Mullah Baradar, a brother-in-law of Mullah Omar and the former Taliban military chief. The documents describe Baradar as the chairman of the Shura, and state that he monitors the financing, procurement and distribution of weapons, ammunition and other materials. As it happens, Baradar is also a confidant of the ISI. He designed the Taliban's strategy and, according to the war logs, is also responsible for the use of suicide bombings. Why, then, would Pakistani security forces have arrested Baradar on Feb. 8, 2010?

Many observers believe that the Pakistani security forces struck after the mullah had begun communicating with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. If this interpretation is correct, then the arrest of Baradar constituted a clear signal to the Taliban and their allies that nothing works without the ISI.

Anyone reading through the material already comes away with this impression. In document after document, it is the ISI that controls the course of the war, and suicide bombers are apparently one of its preferred weapons. In fact, it is the ISI itself that often deploys them, as a threat warning note dated Oct. 30, 2008 indicates. The note reads: "According to a source (C6) AQ (al-Qaida) and ISI formed an attack group that was called 'General.' There are six suicide bombers in the group, two of them are Chinese, two of them are Uzbek and the others are Arab. The suicide bombers intruded into Khost (province) ... ."

The ISI also issues precise orders to murder certain individuals. According to the documents, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is at the top of its hit list. Some of the documents are shockingly succinct and to the point. According to a warning dated August 21, 2008, for example, an ISI colonel "had directed Talib Maulawi Izzatullah to see that Karzai was assassinated. Izzatullah assigned Abdulbari from Sarobi District to assassinate Karzai in a suicide mission at the Presidential Palace."

Archenemy India a Frequent Target

Pakistan's archenemy India is mentioned again and again. According to the documents, the intelligence service instructed its Afghan allies to kill Indians who worked in Afghanistan. Their efforts apparently did not go unrewarded, with the ISI promising fighters in the Haqqani network large sums of money for killing Indians. The ISI's other preferred targets included all Indian consulates in Afghanistan, roads built by Indian workers and a telephone network installed by Indians. There is only one warning about a planned attack that does not include any indication of the ISI's involvement, this time on the Indian embassy in Kabul -- which did in fact happen, on July 7, 2008, claiming 58 lives. That warning came from intelligence agents within the Polish ISAF contingent.

The documents also contain information about attacks ordered on strategic targets, like dams, key roads and the Kabul power supply. Some of the plans the intelligence service apparently had developed were relatively extreme. One report, for example, states that the ISI planned to have its agents poison drinking water and alcoholic beverages sold on the black market. All attacks, including the suicide bombings on foreign troops, came with financial incentives, although the reports vary widely on the level of compensation. For example, the ISI was allegedly willing to pay between $15,000 and $30,000 to fighters in the Haqqani network for each attack on Indians.

Former ISI Chief Plays Key Role in Logs

Pakistan's former intelligence chief Hamid Gul plays a special role in the documents. Gul, a former army general who headed the ISI from 1987 to 1989, was one of the key supporters of the mujahedeen when they were fighting the Soviet occupation force in Afghanistan. When speaking with the Western media, Gul later proved to be a propagandist of sorts for the Taliban and someone who could easily see himself sympathizing with their struggle against the Americans. The United States accuses him of maintaining ties to al-Qaida.

In the newly leaked documents, Gul is also portrayed as an ally and, in one case, even as "a leader" of the Taliban. According to a threat assessment dated Jan. 14, 2008, he coordinated plans to kidnap United Nations employees on Afghanistan's Highway No. 1 between Kabul and Jalalabad. Some 15 to 20 Taliban fighters were to stop the UN vehicle and threaten the passengers with their weapons. There was to be no mercy. As the report reads, if the Taliban encountered resistance during the kidnapping, the hostage-takers "will use the AK47 guns to fight the resistance or kill the hostages."

According to the reports, the retired general continued to supply his protégés with weapons. One source mentions that Gul had organized a convoy of 65 trucks filled with ammunition for the Taliban, although the authors of the report do not completely trust the source. Another report mentions that the ISI sent 1,000 motorcycles to the Haqqanis and delivered 7,000 weapons to Kunar Province, including Kalashnikovs, mortars and Strella missiles.

Skepticism over Veracity of Some Documents

But it is precisely the especially transparent attempts to portray the Taliban's supporters at the ISI as the most sinister of monsters that give rise to skepticism about the documents.

On May 29, 2006, for example, the Afghan intelligence service reported on an ISI campaign to burn down Afghan schools. Was this truly the work of a generally secular military, or was the campaign in fact the brainchild of Taliban religious fanatics?

And the claims about the ISI's alleged recruitment of children as suicide bombers? According to the documents, the child bombers were sent out with explosive vests attached to their bodies, and the explosives were then detonated remotely. Was this also the work of the Pakistani intelligence service, which was supposedly being overrun by domestic and foreign candidates for martyrdom?

Did the ISI truly ask women to hide explosive vests under their burqas, and is it true that ISI agents tenderly concealed an explosive device inside a gold-colored, fake Koran? These and other claims appear in this collection of reports assembled by the Americans. But are they true? The truth is that not all documents from this treasure trove are beyond any doubt.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
 

ajtr

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
12,038
Likes
723
Leaks show up undeclared war by Pak on India


WASHINGTON: Pakistan's war by terrorism against India in Afghanistan is highlighted in the WikiLeaks cache, including a July 1, 2008, threat report issued by Polish intelligence in Kabul that warns of an attack on the Indian embassy, which was carried out a week later.

The report relating to the attack on the Indian Embassy reads: INS [insurgents] are planning to divide into two groups: first will attack Indian embassy building, whilst the second group will engage security posts in front of MOI [the Afghan ministry of interior], IOT [in order to] give possibility to escape attackers from the first group.

The main goal of this operation is to show TB's [Taliban's] ability to carry out attack on every object in Kabul."
The attack claimed more than 50 lives, including that of a young Indian diplomat from the foreign service and a senior Indian military attache.

In fact, so strong was the ISI fingerprint in the attack that the then-US President George Bush and CIA deputy director Stephen Kappes are said to have confronted Islamabad with evidence that ISI elements aided militants in the attack.

While the WikiLeaks cache of documents is replete with instances of Pakistani support and sponsorship of terrorism in Afghanistan, the most charitable explanation being trotted out by Pakistani apologists in Washington is that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing in Pakistan. Another way of looking at it is Pakistan deliberately insulates a section of the ISI (called the S division) that controls and practices terrorism, to maintain what is called plausible deniability.

The expose also suggests that Pakistan uses its retired and former generals in pursuit of its policy of state-run terrorism. Among its proxies is Lt-Gen Hamid Gul, a favourite of television anchors even in India whose pro-Taliban stance and conspiracy theories are said to provide an alternative narrative in the war on terror. But according to the documents accessed by WikiLeaks, Gul, a former ISI chief and one of Pakistan's top generals, is an active terrorist. In the documents, Gul is depicted as an adviser and an important source of aid to the Taliban. One report even calls him "a leader" of the insurgents.

One threat report from January 14, 2008 claims that Gul coordinated the planned kidnapping of United Nations employees on Highway 1 between Kabul and Jalalabad. The memos also state that Gul ordered suicide attacks, describing the former intelligence chief as one of the most important suppliers of weaponry to the Taliban.

A threat report issued in Kabul on December 23, 2006, reveals monthly visits by Gen Gul to a madrassa in Khyber Pakhutnwa Province, in Pakistan, cited as a major provider of young buys for suicide missions in Afghanistan. The report includes a comment from the CIA Counterterrorism Center: "95% of the suicide attackers are trained in the 'Madrassa of Hashimiye' which is located in Peshawar district of Pakistan. Monthly, the former chief of ISI General Hamid Gul is visiting this madrassa."

Another threat report issued in Kabul on December 30, 2006, suggests Gen Gul, in a meeting earlier that month, directed three attackers to carry out IED attacks along the roads of the Afghan capital during the Eid ul-Fitr. The report reads: "Gul instructed two of the individuals to plant IEDs along the roads frequently utilized by government of Afghanistan (GOA) and ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] vehicles. The third individual is to carry out a suicide attack utilizing a suicide vest against GOA or ISAF entities. Reportedly, Gul's final comment to the three individuals was 'make the snow warm in Kabul', basically telling them to set Kabul aflame.
 

ajtr

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
12,038
Likes
723
What the WikiLeaks Documents Really Reveal - by Leslie H. Gelb


The extensive release of thousands of secret files shows basic and unsustainable contradictions in U.S. policy, says Leslie H. Gelb—and underscores why the administration needs to reconsider its Af-Pak policy.

What do the secret documents released by WikiLeaks tell us about U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan? It has to be said right off that they don't tell us anything important we didn't already know. There have been "informed" stories for years detailing how Pakistani military intelligence has been providing arms, money, and intelligence to the Afghan Taliban, who in turn have been killing American soldiers.

So, why are these leaked military and intelligence documents now threatening to shake the very foundations of U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan? Because it's now much more difficult to deny or dodge the truths that we've all been well aware of.

No amount of rhetorical tap dancing will allow the White House to escape the fundamental contradictions that underlie U.S. policy toward Af-Pak.

Government officials can always deflect news stories simply by crossing their fingers and waiting for the story to sink in a haze of oil spills and Lindsay Lohan extravaganzas. Now, however, "proof" is there in the black-and-white of secret U.S. documents, compliments of anti-war WikiLeaks. Even if one does not believe that the information contained in every one of these reports is accurate (some do sound rather bizarre), and even if little in the reports can be corroborated independently, the very volume of the "secret" material is overwhelming and plausible—and yes, seductively "secret."

This leaves the Obama administration with three tales it can tell, most of which it is already shoveling.

First, officials can say that the documents represented leaked material that reveal "only one side of the story." It's the story in some cases of rather hysterical soldiers with limited experience and access to wider secrets. We, the government, have other documents that tell another story—one that gives a mixed picture of the behavior of our complicated and loyal Pakistani friends. (I'd hate to be the official assigned to deliver this pile of manure.)

Second, the administration could say that yes, some rogue Pakistani intelligence officers have been carrying out operations in support of the Taliban, that President Obama and his top aides have already remonstrated with the Pakistani government about this, and the Pakistanis are now trying to do better. (That tends to contradict the first story that the leaks are misleading.)

Or third, officials could button their jackets, clear their throats, and say the war is the main thing and these difficult and complicated circumstances have to be put in the larger perspective. What counts is winning this war. Victory in Af-Pak, as it is fondly known, is a U.S. vital national interest; the officials could and probably will say.

But no amount of rhetorical tap dancing will allow the White House to escape the fundamental contradictions that underlie U.S. policy toward Af-Pak. In the first contradiction, the administration claims it's fighting in Afghanistan to prevent al Qaeda from returning, and once again using Afghan soil to attack America. But now that al Qaeda can attack the United States, its friends and allies from Yemen or Somalia or Pakistan or London or New Jersey, it's hard to claim any uniqueness for Afghanistan. So, why does the United States have to fight the war there with 100,000 troops?

In the second contradiction, the administration says that, deep down, the reason we're fighting in Afghanistan is to help prevent an extremist takeover of Pakistan, an unstable Muslim country with nuclear weapons. And administration officials point to the fact that Pakistani officials tell us publicly and privately that the U.S. must stay the course in Afghanistan and stabilize the situation there—otherwise its ill effects will spill over into Pakistan and strengthen extremism there. And yet—and here's where the new trough of secret WikiLeaks comes in—Pakistani military intelligence, known as Inter-Services Intelligence, is indeed helping the Taliban against Americans in Afghanistan. To boot, the Pakistani government is providing safe haven to the Taliban in Northwest Pakistan, thus making it militarily impossible for U.S. forces to smash them.

To put the issue somewhat melodramatically: The United States is giving "moderate" Pakistanis and the Pakistani military billions of dollars yearly in military and economic aid, which allows Pakistani military intelligence to "secretly" help the Taliban kill Americans in Afghanistan, which will drive America out of Afghanistan and undermine U.S. help for Pakistan.

All this flies in the face of the administration's new line about an improving Af-Pak relationship. Yes, indeed, we've worked out a new trade agreement between these traditional adversaries. Yes, indeed, the Pakistanis are giving us the secret wink for our drone attacks against Taliban safe havens (even as they publicly condemn us for these drone attacks). Yes, indeed, Pakistanis are helping President Hamid Karzai talk with his fellow Pashtun Taliban. (Heaven knows what will come of this).

But let's face it: Pakistan's overriding interests in Afghanistan don't have much to do with the United States. Their fixation is India, plain and simple. They don't want India to gain any sort of foothold in Afghanistan and somehow encircle them. They're pressing Washington for sophisticated American arms to fight India, not the Taliban. Some Pakistani leaders even worry of secret plotting between India and the United States against them, especially in Afghanistan.

Pakistani interests are not the same as America's in Afghanistan, far from it. As it tries to explain away what these secret documents mean, the Obama administration should take time out to reconsider its basic policy toward Af-Pak.

A policy based on fundamental contradictions cannot stand.
 

ajtr

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
12,038
Likes
723
The biggest revelations from the leaked documents:

"For me, the most interesting and biggest revelation was the level of detail about Pakistan's spy service, the ISI, and its involvement in the Afghan insurgency. This is not blockbuster news. We've been reporting for several years that the U.S. intelligence community believes that the ISI helps training and financing militant groups in Afghanistan, but what was striking to us was the level of detail about named operatives working in Pakistan and naming specific meetings — the dates, times and places — and even when we threw out some of this information because we didn't think it was credible, we were still left with a body of evidence that we thought was very credible. We then ran this by U.S. officials and they said that while they couldn't vouch for each individual intelligence report, it broadly does track with what the American intelligence community believes the spy service is up to."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128776573
 

ajtr

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
12,038
Likes
723
Richard Engel, NBC's chief foreign correspondent says:
"So, it might be difficult for people in the US to accept a stepping back of relationships between India and the United States - which are very close, people in the United States feel very connected to India, it's a good trading partner, it's a world partner - do we have to then sacrifice some of our relationship with India in order to placate Pakistan, in order to save ourselves in Afghanistan - maybe, there may be some of that tradeoff that's coming along"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/vp/38411097#38316973
 

ajtr

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
12,038
Likes
723
Obama First Causality of Wikileaks.

Democrats abandon Obama on Afghan war


The House's vote yesterday on emergency funding for the Afghanistan war shows a significant eroding of support for President Obama's war policy -- from members of his own Democratic Party.

There were 102 Democrats voting against the $33 billion in war funding. That's more than three times the number of Democrats (32) who voted against a similar funding bill in June 2009. (This year's war funding bill passed, 308-114.)

Among those voting "no" this time: prominent liberals such as Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, and 30 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois and Maxine Waters of California.

Rep. Louise Slaughter's "no" vote should come as no surprise. In December 2009, when Obama announced his intention to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, the New York Democrat was sharply critical.

"The president failed to set out concrete goals and a firm exit strategy. I cannot support this escalation without those guarantees. I am extremely concerned that Afghanistan will rapidly become one more military quagmire that sacrifices American lives and drains our funds," Slaughter said last year.

Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said he voted against war funding this year because it would involve using borrowed money.

"This war, which has run longer than the Revolutionary War, longer than the Civil War, longer than the World Wars or Vietnam, is not a candidate for 'emergency' deficit spending. If Afghanistan is worth fighting for, it must be worth paying for," he said in a statement.

As USA TODAY's Richard Wolf reported yesterday, one of the "no" votes came from House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey, the man charged with shaping the measure and bringing it to the floor. Obey, who is retiring this year, said he believes it's a mistake to increase troops in Afghanistan. Like Becerra, Obey says the war has dragged on too long.
 

ajtr

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
12,038
Likes
723
Stop Panicking About the Stingers

The WikiLeaks war logs only confirmed what we already know: The Taliban simply doesn't have the firepower to wreak havoc on Afghanistan's skies.

BY MATTHEW SCHROEDER | JULY 28, 2010

Of all the stories being plucked from WikiLeaks' classified Afghanistan war logs, many analysts have picked out the Taliban's use of heat-seeking missiles as the most troubling. Remembering how the mujahideen used missiles to drive Soviet aircraft from the skies, pundits worried that the Taliban would inflict a similar pain upon American planes and helicopters in Afghanistan. But for those of us who follow the illicit arms trade, the documents simply underscore what we already knew: The Taliban has failed to reproduce the devastatingly effective anti-aircraft campaign that brought the Red Army to its knees in the mid-1980s.

COMMENTS (4)
SHARE:

Twitter

Reddit

Buzz

More...
Afghanistan's storied history of anti-aircraft weapons (known as Man-portable Air Defense Systems -- MANPADS) centers around the American Stinger missile, which played a decisive role in the U.S.-funded insurgency that ended nine brutal years of Soviet occupation in the 1980s. Prior to the arrival of the Stinger, none of the weapons procured and distributed to the Afghan rebels by their three main benefactors -- the United States, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia -- had proven effective against Soviet aircraft, which bombed villages, attacked rebel strongholds, and strafed supply caravans with impunity.

That all changed in September 1986, when a newly trained mujahideen missile team fired its first Stingers at three Soviet Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships attempting to land at Jalalabad airfield. Locked onto the infra-red signatures of their targets, the five-foot-long, 35-pound missiles raced after the ill-fated helicopters at speeds of over 1,500 mph, smashing into them with "the kinetic force of a mid-sized car traveling at sixty miles per hour," according to a 1987 article in the Arizona Republic. The stricken helicopters fell to the ground and burst into flames, marking the advent of a new chapter in the war.

Over the next three years, the mujahideen, who received Stingers from Washington and extensive training on their use in Pakistan, staged dozens of attacks that brought down nearly 270 aircraft, contributing in no small part to the Soviet Union's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989. While no single factor can be credited for the triumph of a rag-tag militia over the formidable Soviet military, the Stinger missile was a game-changer, destroying hundreds of multi-million-dollar Soviet aircraft, killing dozens of highly trained pilots, and disrupting and degrading Soviet counter insurgency operations throughout the country. So pervasive was the Stinger's influence on events in Afghanistan that analysts coined a term around it: "the Stinger effect."

After the Soviet withdrawal, the U.S. government scrambled to collect the remaining Stinger missiles, fearing they could end up in the hands of terrorists. A top-secret CIA program dubbed "Operation Missing in Action Stinger" was established to buy back the missiles. Details on the classified program remain scant, but the information that is available suggests that, despite rewards of $100,000 or more for each device, the CIA failed to recover many if not most of the loose Stingers. Government officials interviewed by author Steve Coll for his book Ghost Wars claim that an estimated 600 of the Afghan Stingers were still missing as of 1996. Some of the missing missiles ended up in the hands of terrorists, insurgents, and hostile governments as far away as North Korea and Sri Lanka, but many remained squirreled away in rebel arms caches. As recently as 2005, Stingers were seized from a cache near the Pakistan border, and incidents of trafficking in Stinger components have been reported as recently as 2006. Today, however, there is nothing comparable to the "Stinger effect" in Afghanistan. Open-source accounts of the Taliban's weapons suggests that, in recent years, the group has had access to limited numbers of first- and second-generation anti-aircraft weapons, including Soviet SA-7s, Chinese HN-5s, and perhaps a few early model Stingers. (It is difficult to tell from the WikiLeaks documents if the devices used were, in fact, Stingers, but they likely were not.) In 2009, London's Telegraph newspaper reported that Soviet SA-14s -- a second-generation heat-seeking missile introduced in the 1970s -- had been smuggled into Afghanistan across the Iranian border. While loose missiles of any type are worrisome, none of those reportedly acquired by the Taliban have the game-changing potential that the Stinger had in the 1980s. This assessment is supported both by open-source reporting on insurgent missile attacks in Afghanistan and the classified documents obtained by Wikileaks. Those files contain numerous reports of suspected missile attacks but very few reports of downed aircraft. One assault recounted in the war logs, for example, succeeded in downing a Chinook helicopter in 2007. But a single downed helicopter -- or even 10 or 20 downed helicopters -- over nine years hardly qualifies as a successful insurgent anti-aircraft campaign.

The Taliban's fortunes in the anti-aircraft game are unlikely to improve anytime soon. The U.S. military is well-versed in this particular missile threat and has developed tactical and technical countermeasures to mitigate it. These countermeasures are not perfect, as evidenced by aircraft lost in Iraq and possibly in Afghanistan, but they appear to be reasonably effective against the MANPADS currently used by the Taliban.

That could change, of course, if the Taliban suddenly acquired state-of-the-art weaponry. But that seems unlikely. The only reason the mujahideen had access to the Stingers (which are among the most tightly guarded weapons in the world,) was a Cold War cost-benefit calculus that no longer applies. The producers of today's most advanced shoulder-fired missiles have no compelling reason to arm the Taliban. It is conceivable that a country with an anti-U.S. agenda might be interested in giving the insurgency a boost. Still, publicly available information suggests that the least-accountable regimes (that is, the North Koreas of the world) don't yet have access to the most advanced such weapons even if they wanted to send them the way of the Taliban. And lacking a friendly government supplier, the Taliban would have a hard time acquiring the best missiles on its own.

At least, for the time being. As more Stingers and their peer missiles are exported to countries with leaky arsenals, the likelihood that groups like the Taliban will eventually acquire more capable weapons can only rise. Securing MANPADS and other advanced conventional weapons will require vigilance, focus, and sustained commitment -- not exactly something that the current panic over the WikiLeaks documents is likely to foster.
 

ajtr

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
12,038
Likes
723
CNN correspondent is questioning why the US Army never publicly stated that the downed CH-47 was hit by a heat-seeking missile.I assume that the US doesn't want to demoralize its troops or embolden Taliban by openly acknowledging that there was a SAM threat.:

 
Last edited by a moderator:

ajtr

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
12,038
Likes
723
Kucinich double-speaks Wikileaks, Afghanistan and Pakistan on the O'Reilly Factor

 
Last edited by a moderator:

ajtr

Tihar Jail
Banned
Joined
Oct 2, 2009
Messages
12,038
Likes
723
In light of the recent documents uncovered by Wikileaks, Katie Couric discusses the suspicions many U.S. officials have over alleged double agents in Pakistan.

 
Last edited by a moderator:

Latest Replies

Global Defence

New threads

Articles

Top