WIKILEAKS AND AFGHANISTAN HEROIN

Leaked documents reveal US and Afghan government collusion with major traffickers.

Documents made public by WikiLeaks' latest file drop show that Afghan President Hamid Karzai pulled strings several times throughout early 2009 to free numerous drug traffickers with whom he had political or economic ties.

HAMID GUL ON WIKILEAKS

Hamid Gul, a former Pakistan general accused of helping the Taliban, says United States orchestrated the mass leak of war files to scapegoat him for its imminent withdrawal from Afghanistan.

GARETH PORTER: LEAKS MAKE WAR POLICY VULNERABLE

WikiLeaks offer no major revelations as did the Pentagon Papers

they increase the political pressure on a war policy by highlighting contradictions between the official assumptions of the strategy and the realities shown in the documents - especially in regard to Pakistan's role in the war.

Pentagon Papers chronicle the policymaking process leading up to the Vietnam War

WikiLeaks documents thousands of incidents that illustrate severe problems Among the themes
casual killing of civilians
night raids by special forces based on bad intelligence
absence of legal constraints on Afghan police
deeply rooted corruption among Afghan officials.
Pakistan's political and material support for the Taliban insurgency

There are many intelligence reports about Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, director of
(ISI) during the 1980s, and he is continuing to work with the Taliban commanders loyal to Mullah Omar as well as the Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar insurgent networks

reports reflect anti-Pakistan bias of the Afghan intelligence service under former Northern Alliance intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh. Nevertheless the impression is credible.

New York Times led with Pakistani-Taliban issue. It said the documents reflect "deep suspicions among American officials that Pakistan's military spy service has for years guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than US$1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants."

Pakistani "double-dealing" is administration's greatest political vulnerabilities, national security elite are worried about any hope for success.

Senator Russ Feingold, "highlight a fundamental strategic problem, which is that elements of the Pakistani security services have been complicit in the insurgency"

Hamid Karzai pointing to Pakistani sanctuaries as the primary problem

Last February, then director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said: Disrupting the "safe havens" "won't be sufficient but it is a "necessary condition"

White House issued a compilation of statements showing that they had been tough with Pakistan But none admitted the reality: Pakistan's policy of supporting the Taliban insurgency firmly fixed and is not going to change

Admitting that Pakistan's fundamental interests in Afghanistan conflict with US war strategy would be a serious - and possibly fatal - blow to the credibility of the Obama administration's strategy of using force to "reverse the momentum" of the Taliban. this contradiction and others could accelerate the process that political support among the foreign policy and political elite continues to diminish. loss of this support has accelerated. prominent national security elite have signaled war strategy cannot succeed, paralleling 2006 in regard to the Iraq War

ATOL: SAYED SALEEM SHAHZAD

Taliban leader Mullah Omar

Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani with close ties to the US

lines are clearly drawn between the militants and the military

Afghan Senator Arsala Rahmani is the main communication link to the Taliban. (ISI) had ask Rahmani to move to Peshawar, denounced Mullah Omar and formation of Jamiatul Khudamul Koran. This is the moderate Taliban, Pakistan sought to regain its influence in Afghanistan. The US came to accept the idea of "good" Taliban who could join President Hamid Karzai

earlier, Pakistan summoned Jalaluddin Haqqani and asked him to leave Mullah Omar. He was promised that with American support he would be appointed chief executive of Afghanistan. Haqqani's network has become one of the main drivers of the Taliban-led Afghan insurgency. Haqqani understood he would lose any authority and apologized saying that he could not leave Mullah Omar. ISI understood and never abandoned Haqqani.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan (HIA), gathered by the ISI and asked to open offices in Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province. They were urged to go to Kabul and become involved. a few years ago HIA leader Qutubuddin Hilal went to Kabul to see President Hamid Karzai. Karzai welcomed the HIA delegation with respect, but American officials humiliated them and insisted that they should be condemned as terrorists.

Pakistan wanted a Pashtun-dominated, pro-Pakistan government in Kabul. US agreed to moderate Taliban. Rahmani, former Taliban foreign minister Abdul Wakeel Mutawakil welcomed in Kabul. HIA members were allowed to contest elections.

ISI launched the Jaishul Muslim, a militant organization aimed at fighting foreign occupation, but one that condemned Mullah Omar's support for al-Qaeda. This was a ploy to divide the Taliban. Several Taliban joined. At the same time, al-Qaeda was active. plans were undermined, Jaishul Muslim soon joined the Taliban.

Western agencies took this as a betrayal. By 2007, al-Qaeda had taken the insurgency
to Pakistan's cities and took over ISI's jihadi assets As a result, a battle was orchestrated between state forces and jihadi elements.

A key, in 2005 Kashmiri militants joined with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In 2007, Ilyas Kashmiri and Sirajuddin Haqqani (Jalaluddin Haqqani's son) changed the dynamics of Taliban-led attacks. This opened a gap between Haqqani and Pakistan.

For instance, in 2009, Naseeruddin Haqqani, a brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani, was arrested by the Pakistan. Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud (now killed) secured his release by swapping some Pakistan army prisoners. Similarly, Sirajuddin Haqqani provided shelter to fleeing members of the Pakistani Taliban when the military began operations in the South Waziristan tribal area.

Pakistan has long-standing ties to the Taliban and militants, the country is on the brink of an unprecedented showdown with militants and their organizations.

In response, streams of militants are believed to be grouping in North Waziristan; Pakistan is at a critical juncture and a false move by it - or by its ally the US - could place it in the lap of extremist forces.

Mullah Omar
General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani

Senator Arsala Rahmani
Jamiatul Khudamul Koran

Jalaluddin Haqqani

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan (HIA)
Qutubuddin Hilal

Abdul Wakeel Mutawakil

Jaishul Muslim

Ilyas Kashmiri
Sirajuddin Haqqani

Naseeruddin Haqqani
Baitullah Mehsud

WIKILEAKS TARGET PAKISTAN

Not long after Wikileaks dumped tens of thousands of classified Afghanistan “war” documents into the public arena for consumption, the corporate media zoomed in on Pakistan. “WikiLeaks documents released Sunday shine a spotlight on Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, a spy agency that has been accused for years of having links to terrorist groups,” writes the Wall Street Journal.

Plus Al-Jazeera is underwhelmed, see here and here. and here,

The all-time classic 2001 de Borchgrave-Gul interview is here,

WORLD'S FIRST STATELESS NEWS ORGANZATION

1. Ask yourself: Why didn’t Wikileaks just publish the Afghanistan war logs and let journalists ‘round the world have at them? Why hand them over to The New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel first?

2. The initial response from the White House was extremely unimpressive:
This leak will harm national security
There’s nothing new here.
Wikileaks is irresponsible; they didn’t even try to contact us!
Wikileaks is against the war in Afghanistan; they’re not an objective news source
“The period of time covered in these documents… is before the President announced his new strategy.

3. If you don’t know much about Wikileaks or why it exists, the best way to catch up is this New Yorker profile of Julien Assange.

4. If you go to the Wikileaks Twitter profile, next to “location” it says: Everywhere. world’s first stateless news organization.

5. And just as government doesn’t know what to think, the traditional press isn’t used to this

Notice how effective this combination is. The information is released in two forms: vetted and narrated to gain old media cred, and released online in full text, Internet-style, which corrects for any timidity or blind spot the editors at Der Spiegel, The Times or the Guardian may show.

WIKILEAKS

WikiLeaks founder drops 'mass spying' hint - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

WikiLeaks founder drops 'mass spying' hint - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

If there had been mass spying that had affected many, many people and organisations and the details of that mass spying were released then that is something that would reveal that the interests of many people had been abused."

“Well, It’s Their Fault for Bringing Their Kids into a Battle”

OVERVIEW
WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.

Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

The military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured.

After demands by Reuters, the incident was investigated and the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own "Rules of Engagement".

Consequently, WikiLeaks has released the classified Rules of Engagement for 2006, 2007 and 2008, revealing these rules before, during, and after the killings.

WikiLeaks has released both the original 38 minutes video and a shorter version with an initial analysis. Subtitles have been added to both versions from the radio transmissions.

WikiLeaks obtained this video as well as supporting documents from a number of military whistleblowers. WikiLeaks goes to great lengths to verify the authenticity of the information it receives. We have analyzed the information about this incident from a variety of source material. We have spoken to witnesses and journalists directly involved in the incident.

WikiLeaks wants to ensure that all the leaked information it receives gets the attention it deserves. In this particular case, some of the people killed were journalists that were simply doing their jobs: putting their lives at risk in order to report on war. Iraq is a very dangerous place for journalists: from 2003- 2009, 139 journalists were killed while doing their work."