Assange and Wikileaks created more headaches (and possibly worse) for the United States government and its military over the weekend by providing over 90,000 leaked incident and intelligence reports from the war in Afghanistan to the The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel.
Unsurprisingly, the material attempts to shine a light into the fog of war. The leaks report accidental civilian deaths, “friendly fire”, deadly roadside bombs, much of which went unreported by the media.
“This material shines light on the everyday brutality and squalor of war,” Assange said in an interview with Der Spiegel.
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Details include:
How a secret unit of US Special Forces hunts down Taliban leaders to “kill or capture” without trial;
How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles;
How deadly Reaper drones target Taliban by remote control from a base in Nevada;
How the Taliban have increased its roadside bombing campaign killing more than 2000 civilians – far, far, more than the number of civilians killed by coalition forces.
Love his work or loathe it (and there are valid arguments for both), Assange is driven by exposing what he sees as the truth.
Wikileaks was behind the release of the infamous Baghdad Apache helicopter video earlier this year and has previously revealed the inner-workings of the Church of Scientology, published a membership list of the pseudo fascist British National Party (that included police, teachers, and doctors) and damaging email correspondence from former US Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Of local note: the Australian government was set to blacklist Wikileaks as part of its proposed Internet censorship plans.
“It is not WikiLeaks that decides to reveal something,” Assange explains. “It is a whistleblower or a dissident who decides to reveal it. Our job is to make sure that these individuals are protected, the public is informed and the historical record is not denied.”
The documents on Afghanistan are revelatory in their detail of what actually occurs on the ground in a complicated and dirty war but disclose little new about the big picture challenge – the country is a mess with perhaps no solution ever palatable to all interests.
The White House responded to the release suggesting the events described took place under the leadership of George W. Bush who, it is claimed, under-resourced efforts in Afghanistan.
“It is important to note that the time period reflected in the documents is January 2004 to December 2009,” the White House claimed.
That is indisputable but probably emphasises the continuing politicisation of events in Afghanistan while the “little” battles on the ground continue to burn.
