The New Dark Age

25 July, 2010 — Palestine Note

New York – The internet transparency group Wikileaks released a trove of over 91,000 leaked government and military documents painting a bleak picture of the last six years of the US-led occupation of Afghanistan.

The group gave advance access to the archive to three newspapers, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel, who each published reports on the documents on Sunday evening. The release marks one of the largest government leaks in history.

The Guardian reports on how the documents reveal the existence of secret CIA paramilitary groups that were responsible for civilian deaths. There were 144 incidents mentioned in the documents in which NATO forces killed civilians.

Pakistan’s Secret Service is also identified in the documents as giving aid to insurgents fighting against NATO forces.

In addition to these revelations, The Guardian notes that the leaked documents show:

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

The White House reacted angrily to the release of the documents. Politico reports:

White House National Security Adviser James Jones issued a statement that begins: “The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security.

“Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents – the United States government learned from news organizations that these documents would be posted. These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people.

The Afghan bombshell follows the release by Wikileaks in April of the “Collateral Murder” video showing US troops in a helicopter gunning down unarmed civilians.

IDG News Service reports on Wikileaks plans to continue to make the site a have for whistleblowers.

Wikileaks.org, the online clearinghouse for leaked documents, is working on a plan to make the Web leakier by enabling newspapers, human rights organizations, criminal investigators and others to embed an “upload a disclosure to me via Wikileaks” form onto their Web sites.

The upload system will give potential whistleblowers around the world the ability to leak sensitive documents to an organization or journalist they trust over a secure connection, while giving the receiver legal protection they might not otherwise enjoy.

“We will take the burden of protecting the source and the legal risks associated with publishing the document,” said Julien Assange, an advisory board member at Wikileaks, in an interview at the Hack In The Box security conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.