A lot of sensitive information about the war in Afghanistan has been leaked thru Wikileaks, and the Guardian has set up a site to examine it. The New York Times and Der Spiegel were also recipients of the classified information and are doing their own articles. There is plenty of disturbing stuff. One thing that is disturbing is the Taliban’s incredible indifference to protecting innocent civilian life.
The logs suggest that Taliban insurgents have killed or injured at least 7,000 Afghan civilians in IED attacks between 2004 and 2009. The number has increased tenfold over that time. Civilian casualties rose even after Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s spiritual leader, ordered insurgents to avoid killing bystanders.
In May last year, he said suicide bombers should only attack “high and important targets”. “A brave son of Islam should not be used for lower and useless targets. The utmost effort should be made to avoid civilian casualties.” He called on his fighters to win over the Afghan people.
Yet in August, 429 civilians were killed or wounded by IEDs, the highest recorded in the logs. Investigators working for the UN said in January that the Taliban were responsible for more civilian deaths than the US-led military coalition.
When you compare the Taliban’s tactics to the causes of civilian deaths caused by the Coalition, you realize that fear of IED attacks is the primary driver of those deaths, too. Even an apparent war crime by Polish troops was done in retaliation for an IED attack.
There are disturbing reports on Task Force 373, which appears to be an assassination outfit. They have killed a lot of civilians as they’ve gone about crossing names off their target list, which now exceeds 2,058 individuals.
The totality of the leaked information confirms that we’re fighting a very dirty war and that we’re not making a whole lot of progress. The other side is indeed more ruthless and indifferent to human life, but that doesn’t seem to make them any easier to beat. The leaks also confirm that our military consistently lies and covers up bad news (often as part of official policy). The information contained in the leaks cuts off in late 2009, so the vast majority of it covers events that occurred during the Bush administration or durng the review period of the Obama administration. Some things may have changed for the better, but the outlook still looks bleak. We’re doing a lot of awful things, the other side is far worse, and there’s no end in sight.
This kind of war is always dirty, which is why I opposed it from the beginning. Not the initial attack and attempt to take bin Laden. I supported those. But rather the dirty occupation and COIN war. Those I opposed. By their nature they are brutal. Even the Soviets failed at it. From the beginning, I questioned, “Can we be more brutal than the Soviets?” I still think the answer is “No.” Certainly that is the answer to “Should we become more brutal than the Soviets?” “Nation building” sounds nice and lofty and altruistic, but to rebuild a nation, you need to tear down the old one and snuff out the initial culture and traditions. Sort of like what we did to Native Americans.
The US Military is good for “Shock and Awe”, i.e. massive firepower and quick raids. Those idiot Somali pirates that attacked a US Navy cruiser got about as far as a mouse biting a Tiger’s toes. However, the Taliban are more like a swarm of bees defending their hive from a Bear. The Bear is infinitely stronger, but when he bats his paws, the bees disappear like smoke to sting him again and again. He can eat the honey, but the cost is much pain and he can never kill all the bees.
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The full leaked database contains 92,201 records of individual events or intelligence reports. This is our selection of 300 of the key ones. We have ensured none includes information identifying intelligence sources or putting Nato troops at risk.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
The International Security Assistance Force said there were about 90 improvised-bomb strikes, 120 bombs found and 290 armed attacks on the highway from May 6 to June 10 this year.
The destruction of bridges and culverts on the highway forces drivers onto dirt byways, turning what had been a five-hour trip when the road was built into one of some 12 hours.
Repairs are urgently needed, and last week the USAID awarded a contract for rebuilding nine bridges to The Louis Berger Group, a U.S. company that will use Afghan firms as subcontractors. Since that contracting process began, however, three more bridges have been blown up.
The attack Dad witnessed occurred in midafternoon as a NATO supply convoy passed through a village between the Gilan and Moqur districts. Insurgents detonated a roadside bomb and then fired machine guns and rockets from both sides of the road, apparently firing from the roofs of houses, Dad said.
Insurgent tactic
Security concerns about Afghanistan’s main highway, or ring road – portions of which stretch from the capital in east-central Afghanistan to Kandahar in the south, and from there to Herat in the west – have risen dramatically.
In 2008 a bus carrying 50 people traveling from Kandahar to Herat was ambushed by Taliban forces. Days later, a purported Taliban spokesman announced that 27 of the passengers had been executed after a Taliban court determined that they were Afghan National Army troops.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."One thing to bear in mind is that these reports came from US troops. Any analysis of enemy actions could as much be speculation or misinformation from local informants as the truth.
And that the reports represent what the troops were willing to make visible to the chain of command. With all the usual PR opportunities to the boss that exist in any organization.
We are fighting a dirty war because that is what Cheney wanted us to do — rely on dirty tactics and questionable human intelligence. And I think that a lot of operational stuff has been on autopilot since the end of the Bush administration. And likely not been visible to the President. Not being visible is not the same thing as hidden from the President. There are choices of what is salient information to pass up the chain.
into Obama’s administration he’s still pissing away lives and treasure on this fool’s errand.
We’re “Waste Deep in the Big Muddy”.
“Waist Deep”.
I’m not sure the first spelling isn’t more appropriate.
you just added a year that hasn’t transpired to his administration.
A year and a half of pissing away is MUCH more defensible.
There’s no such thing as a clean war. WWII was very dirty, but the presentation of the war was better than it is today.
World War II was the last war in which countries had the luxury of demanding unconditional surrender. The national security environment with nuclear powers on the one hand and the UN on the other is much different. Conventional warfare was not thought to be clean or dirty until some peaceniks in the American Red Cross has countries negotiate the Geneva Conventions.
And since the withdrawal from Korea, wars have tended to become more focused on asymmetric tactics and counterinsurgency. The military thought that the First Gulf War was a great success because finally they could fight a conventional war again.