Afghanistan wave 4

No Impact to Wikileaks

Referring to the Bush administration's policy of focusing on Iraq, Mr Obama said: ``For seven years, we failed to implement a strategy for the region. That is why we have increased our commitment and developed a new strategy.''

The records, which show Pakistani intelligence officers served as double agents by helping the Taliban to plan attacks on US forces, cover the period from 2004 to the end of last year -- before Mr Obama's revised strategy.

The President made his comments yesterday before the US congress approved a further $US37 billion ($41bn) in military spending for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Legislation to approve the funding had been held up for two months, after being passed in the Senate, because of resistance in the House of Representatives.


There’s nothing new in the Wikileaks and they don’t assume Obama’s change in strategy in 2009

Macdonald, 10 (7/28/10, L. Ian, The Gazette “Leaked war papers reinforce what we already knew; Pakistani intelligence is in bed with the Taliban, and Karzai regime is corrupt,” lexis)
This is different. The 92,000 documents have been released to three publications, including the Times in the U.S., but have been posted by the whistle blowing website WikiLeaks (not to be confused with the mainstream online encyclopedia, Wikipedia). It's not known who leaked the documents to the website, but they are up there for anyone, including the Taliban and Al-Qa'ida, who wants to read them.

The field reports, covering a six-year period from 2004-2009, tell us what we already know -that the mission is not going very well for the U.S. and its NATO allies, including Canada.

There appear to be four main points, also well known.

First, that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency has been sheltering, nurturing, and financing the Taliban insurgency in the wilds of western Pakistan, and neither the U.S. nor the Afghans, to say nothing of the Pakistani government, have been able to do much about it. And if NATO and Afghanistan can't secure the border with Pakistan, they can't secure the country.

Second, that the Karzai government in Kabul is systemically corrupt, which is not a good way to win the hearts and minds of its own people.

Third, that the Afghans have insufficient security forces, both military and police, to secure the country. And until they achieve wage parity with the Taliban, they won't develop enough security.

Fourth, stuff happens. Collateral damage, like the NATO air raid that went horribly wrong the other day, killing dozens of civilians. Another way not to win hearts and minds. Or friendly fire, like the 2006 incident in which it is alleged in the WikiLeaks that four Canadian soldiers were killed. In Ottawa, the government denies this, but there will certainly be calls for an inquiry (there are always calls for a public inquiry in Ottawa).

Then there is the question of whether detainees have been abused or tortured. Julian Assange, the Australianborn whistleblower behind WikiLeaks, alleges the field reports show evidence of unspecified war crimes. In Canada, we've already been through this in the argument over the release of documents pertaining to Afghan detainees.

To the extent that forward operations and ongoing strategy might be compromised by the WikiLeaks posting, that would be obvious cause for dismay in NATO countries, including Canada. With more than 150 deaths, mostly from roadside explosions and suicide bombers, Canadian forces have already paid a high price on the Afghan mission.

For the rest, the WikiLeaks archive is evidently posted without context or background, a very different situation from the Pentagon Papers, a coherent and comprehensive internal assessment of the Vietnam War.