Leak of Afghanistan War logs

skelliser

Doesn't show the coalition in a good light at all.
Tonnes of info leaked by wikileaks to the NYT, Guardian and Der Spiegel. They cover the period from jan 2004 to dec 2009.

Some of the main concerns:

• How a secret "black" unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for "kill or capture" without trial.

• How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban has acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.

• How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada.

• How the Taliban has caused growing carnage with a massive escalation of its roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-military-leaks

vidoe summary here: http://gu.com/p/2th59

Winning the hearts and minds seems more unlikely by the day.

Manic Moran

skelliser wrote: »

Doesn't show the coalition in a good light at all.
Tonnes of info leaked by wikileaks to the NYT, Guardian and Der Spiegel. They cover the period from jan 2004 to dec 2009.

Some of the main concerns:

Those are concerns?

The first one certainly isn't new. We've been trying to kill or capture TB leaders since day one. What do you think all those predator strikes are about?

The second isn't particularly surprising either. Why should the US advertise what it knows about the enemy?

The third? Hell, that's in the newspapers. There was even quite a discussion on the psychological effects of the operators, who have to transition from a 'war' mindset to a 'home' mindset during their commute.

As for the last, I don't see why that's a negative impression on ISAF. Seems to be more a negative impression on the opposition.

NTM

me-skywalker

Sounds like more sensationalisation... Surely they are hardly great revelations? Think Manic-Moran summed it up nicely so I wont bother.

skelliser

My concerns are twofold:

civilian deaths and reaper strikes into pakistan and possibly neighbouring countries.

How are you supposed to when a war when the civilian population arent behind you, and increasing unrest at home.

I Think afghanistan cannot be won and the loss of servicemen will have been in vain. Which is the worst part of it imo.

Wicklowrider

I don't think bit meal "summarisations" of the situation out there will cut it much longer and these leaks support what battle fatigued veterans have been saying for a long time.
Amongst those leaks, for me at least, the most telling is the summary of Outpost Keating - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26keating.html?src=me

Manic Moran

COP Keating was an unfortunate fight, but hardly anything which has new information reveaked by the leaks (Was it even covered? I don't see it on the Guardian's map)

NTM

Wicklowrider

Manic Moran wrote: »

COP Keating was an unfortunate fight, but hardly anything which has new information reveaked by the leaks (Was it even covered? I don't see it on the Guardian's map)

NTM

Yes, it was covered and in the public eye before now.
But now the NYT got the comprehensive (3 years worth) of logs from the camp. Anyone interested would have heard of the battle but the background details/day to day operations are interesting from the logs released. Unfortunate? I'd have thought it was a foregone conclusion once it was decided to put the base in lowlands surrounded by hills held by the enemy. For anyone not familiar with Keating heres a 360 of the site
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGtzffG2DTU&feature=related

Capt Blackadder

Same kind of thing happened in Wanat. Not a great place to site a FOB. Lessons could have been learned from Dien Bien Phu here. That being holding the high ground around the base etc etc. Though I will admit, i'm no expert in this, and know little.

twinytwo

Wicklowrider wrote: »

Yes, it was covered and in the public eye before now.
But now the NYT got the comprehensive (3 years worth) of logs from the camp. Anyone interested would have heard of the battle but the background details/day to day operations are interesting from the logs released. Unfortunate? I'd have thought it was a foregone conclusion once it was decided to put the base in lowlands surrounded by hills held by the enemy. For anyone not familiar with Keating heres a 360 of the site
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGtzffG2DTU&feature=related

Why would they bother putting a base there when it was clearly a death trap?

the_syco

Read some of http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26warlogs.html

Holy sh|t it's worse than I thought. I suppose the lads and ladies @ military.com can only say so much.

Clawdeeus

Looks like Wikileaks neglected to censor the names of informants in and around Taliban heavy areas. Negelecting to even hide what villages they lived in, and their families names. This not only will prevent many other Afghans trying to help the goverment/ ISAF forces it will almost certainly lead to these peoples exectution.

Whilst I agree these papers should be released, the desperate rush for self aggrandisement in media could certainly do with a shot in the arm here.

maggy_thatcher

Clawdeeus wrote: »

Looks like Wikileaks neglected to censor the names of informants in and around Taliban heavy areas. Negelecting to even hide what villages they lived in, and their families names. This not only will prevent many other Afghans trying to help the goverment/ ISAF forces it will almost certainly lead to these peoples exectution.

Wikileaks never censor anything. They just take material given to them anonymously and make it available to the rest of the world. Effectively it acts like Freenet without the security layer, and a lot easier to use. If something should be kept secret, it should've been under tighter control.

Clawdeeus

maggy_thatcher wrote: »

Wikileaks never censor anything. They just take material given to them anonymously and make it available to the rest of the world. Effectively it acts like Freenet without the security layer, and a lot easier to use. If something should be kept secret, it should've been under tighter control.

You dont think that this is morally wrong, releasing something you know will cause the deaths of dozens more innocent people? OK...

I strongly disagree, the integrity of what they were trying to release would not have been effected by blocking out place and people names in certain cases. You really believe the public simply HAD to know the name and location of a particular co-operator, even though it will almost certainly cause his/her death? Please.

And they do edit what they receive, and add their own analysis.

maggy_thatcher

Clawdeeus wrote: »

You dont think that this is morally wrong, releasing something you know will cause the deaths of dozens more innocent people?

I never said that. It wasn't Wikileaks responsibility. It was the responsibility of whoever gave them the docs in the first place. I'd rather that it was known that the uncensored names are out in the open so that something can be done about it, rather than 'only' the wikileaks ppl and the person wholeaked the data knowing it.

Clawdeeus

maggy_thatcher wrote: »

I never said that. It wasn't Wikileaks responsibility. It was the responsibility of whoever gave them the docs in the first place. I'd rather that it was known that the uncensored names are out in the open so that something can be done about it, rather than 'only' the wikileaks ppl and the person wholeaked the data knowing it.

So you are saying the people who would try and take revenge for this knew of the names of these informants when the original leak was made, and that wikileaks published it brought it to the attention of people who could help protect the informants? I dont know about that.

Lets say hypothetically there is a drug gang in a neighbourhood, who kill anyone who gives information against them. People pass information on anyway. Eventually, reports on the "War on Drugs" are leaked, along with the name and location of those who passed on information, and a newspaper publishes these reports, without editing what is obviously unnecessary information to anyone looking for anything other than revenge. Worse still, inevitably, the first time these people will know thier cover is blown is when the gang comes knocking. You dont think that the newspaper bears any responsibility for what it failed to censor, event though it led directly to unnecasary deaths? That boggles my mind. Not a perfect analogy, certainly, but the principle is the same; a media organistation who releases information, knowing it will lead to the deaths of innocent people.

I seriously doubt the Taliban had access to basically a data base of all co-operaters untill it was released by wikileaks.

Again, I didnt say they should not have released everything, but I really dont see why the names and locations were included.

Manic Moran

maggy_thatcher wrote: »

Wikileaks never censor anything. They just take material given to them anonymously and make it available to the rest of the world. Effectively it acts like Freenet without the security layer, and a lot easier to use. If something should be kept secret, it should've been under tighter control.

I don't think I can really blame wikileaks per se. Their whole reason for existance is the aiding of criminal acts. They don't much care what it is, as long as it's going to get their web page in the headlines. Every blue moon, they may actually publish something momentous. I'm still waiting for that to happen, though.

You are correct, however, in stating that the source of the leak should be under greater control. The catch is that in order for information to be useful, it can't be sitting in a safe somewhere. It's got to be available to those who need it. The counterweight to that is that the more people who have it, the more likely that some idiot is going to leak it, intentionally or otherwise. That's why I'm pleased to see SPC Manning get arrested for the earlier leak. There must be an incentive for people to respect the security classification. Simply putting the information in the deepest, darkest vault where nobody will ever see it is pointless.

Ask your IT Security guy at work. If it were up to him, he'd have computers locked down so tight you can't even change the wallpaper. Better yet, it would be locked in a vault, disconnected from the outside world. But that's not very useful to you. Same problem.

From what I've seen of the leak thus far, it contains a lot of raw, ground-level data. For the political sphere, most commentators or people on Boards.ie probably don't much care about how long it takes the Afghan police to get to the intersection of two particular roads when called, or which particular base was the source for reinforcements at COP Keating. They almost certainly won't care that the village elder of one town holds George Bush personally responsible for the confiscation of his AK-47, or that the village elder of the other town helps the Coalition. Such information is useful to people on the ground. To one example, one of the Guardian's 'most significant' was a report of a taliban meeting held on a specific date at specific times in the house of a named person. It lists by name all those people who attended that meeting. Does anyone on this site really care about the names of those people or the time of day the meeting happened? Chances are, it's useless information to you. But those individuals now know that ISAF are tracking them by name, and that they have a leak who was present at that specific meeting.

The Manning leak, as near as I know, contained no practical intelligence of use to anyone. Of course, I don't know everything. I'm not an Apache pilot, I've no idea if the computer symbology revealed information about some heretofore classified helicopter system. But he still chose to break security. This leak, however, with its raw data, could very well prove detremental to persons on the ground.

NTM

maggy_thatcher

Clawdeeus wrote: »

So you are saying the people who would try and take revenge for this knew of the names of these informants when the original leak was made, and that wikileaks published it brought it to the attention of people who could help protect the informants? I dont know about that.

No, what I'm saying is we've no idea what the chain of distribution was between the people who was allowed to know the contents of the documents and wikileaks. Any one of those people in that chain knows the full information, and post-op censorship is pretty pointless. It's closing the door after the horse has already bolted.

Manic Moran wrote: »

You are correct, however, in stating that the source of the leak should be under greater control. The catch is that in order for information to be useful, it can't be sitting in a safe somewhere. It's got to be available to those who need it. The counterweight to that is that the more people who have it, the more likely that some idiot is going to leak it, intentionally or otherwise. That's why I'm pleased to see SPC Manning get arrested for the earlier leak. There must be an incentive for people to respect the security classification. Simply putting the information in the deepest, darkest vault where nobody will ever see it is pointless.

I don't understand why information such as the actual identities of the informants wasn't compartmentalized though? What the informants say needs to be distributed to those who need the information, but really the only person who knows the identity of an informant should be their handler (I know that's how all the fictional books do it, is there some reason why it can't be done in real life like that?).

I agree, though - revealing information that you weren't authorized to do is madness in any career...

Manic Moran

maggy_thatcher wrote: »

I don't understand why information such as the actual identities of the informants wasn't compartmentalized though? What the informants say needs to be distributed to those who need the information, but really the only person who knows the identity of an informant should be their handler (I know that's how all the fictional books do it, is there some reason why it can't be done in real life like that?).

Yes. These guys aren't spies recruited by The Agency. Most of the intel comes from standard footsoldiers on patrol who talk to locals. These patrols are not always from the same base, or even from the same unit, so it helps the patrols if they know who they're talking to. I'm sure that whoever's informing on Mullah Omar is handled by a specific person, but most people don't reach that level.
Further, Afghan civilians are not confined to a single region. The same person could be talking to ISAF forces across the province. If there's no exchange of information between units, they have no way of validating the guy's background or the calibre of the information he provides.

Again, it's all an issue of 'information is useless unless shared'

NTM

delos

Part of the problem with COP Keating was that if it was situated in the most defensible position it would not have been able to do its job with regard to building rapport with the locals. If it was on the high ground they would have appeared like the castles of the robber barons of medieval France and would have been resented. They had to bee seen to be vulnerable to a certain extent for the locals to trust them. Unfortunately the lives of the soldiers had to be put at (greater) risk.
While not for one moment wishing to belittle or deny the suffering and loss that occurred, the real tragedy is in the fact that Afghan police not being paid. How can you expect the place to function when this happens? IMHO, in the long run it was not the strategic position that doomed COP Keating but the corruption that seems to be endemic in Afghanistan. Sorry for going off topic a bit but it's far too simplistic to say that they should have been on the high ground. The decision to site the base wasn't made by people who know nothing about positioning bases