Abu Muqawama retains its autonomy and the views and beliefs expressed within the blog do not reflect those of CNAS.
I don't have that much more to add to the conversation about the Wikileaks docu-dump on Afghanistan beyond what I wrote in the New York Times this morning. Let me just say that my op-ed followed on the heels of some very good commentary yesterday by Fred Kaplan, Joshua Foust and others. (Fred laughed when I assured him I had filed for the Times before reading his piece in Slate.) My violent Pashtun ex-flatmate has written some good commentary for this blog from Pakistan along with Mosharraf Zaidi, who wrote some good commentary contra, uh, me. I hyperlinked the heck out of the first draft of the op-ed I submitted to the Times, by the way, full-on Frank Rich-style, with links to all kinds of good reporting, and also called out, by name, Erica Gaston, a researcher for the Open Society Institute who did much of CIVIC's best work on civilian casualties in Afghanistan. Erica is one of the good guys, a Harvard-trained human rights lawyer based in Kabul who makes the best Cajun food in Afghanistan and knows what's in a French 75. Our families know each other back in Louisiana, so I might catch hell if I don't mention the great work she continues to do as well as her take on the Wikileaks documents in the Huffington Post.
That's all. I just felt the need to pop my head out of the Dissertation Cave to give credit where it's due.
UPDATE: Our friend Noah "Danger" Shachtman got caught in a pretty vicious firefight in the Helmand Valley last year while embedded with Marines. So what did he do when the Wikileaks documents were released? He looked for reports on the events he witnessed, of course. What he found exposes the limits of relying on these documents for a full picture of the war. Great op-ed, Noah.
http://movies.ign.com/dor/objects/14343587/machete/videos/machete_trl_tr...
Danny Trejo deserves these two naked blondes in the river. Good for you, Mr. Trejo. You were great in "Heat"
"If his desire is to promote peace, Mr. Assange and his brand of activism are not as helpful as he imagines. By muddying the waters between journalism and activism, and by throwing his organization into the debate on Afghanistan with little apparent regard for the hard moral choices and dearth of good policy options facing decision-makers, he is being as reckless and destructive as the contemptible soldier or soldiers who leaked the documents in the first place. "
Quite right, to be a sensible, professional journalist you have to identify so thoroughly with the "decision-makers" and their corporate masters/lobbyist handlers that you get invited to Joe Biden's bbq, and or have an affair with your embed. Because those professionals deal with "reality" and are far from advancing any sort of agenda, no sirree. And as far as muddying the waters of journalism, what about embeds in general? Relatedly, what is your opinion about the militarization of humanitarian aid distribution. I wonder if that is an unfortunate coincidence or not.
Give the public all the information and let them decide, or would you prefer a more medieval way of distributing information. Picture it, the great unwashed masses look on as the priest performs his hocus phocus, no need to worry their little heads with the details, give them the official narrative. But eventually the rot gets so bad, and everyone is so disillusioned that when the peasants rise up, everything collapses and the world erupts in flames. When last I checked this nation wasn't founded to be some quasi-militarist regime with a gnostic attitude towards information distribution and the wall between religious virtue and civic virtue dangerously thin.
Finally, it's an apartment, not a flat, we fought that feudal-happy island for the right to crawl out from under our colonial servitude: economic, political, and linguistic.
Great op-ed in the Times, AM. Your comments about Julian Assange are right on the nose.
As you said, people who regularly read about Afghanistan in the news would not be surprised by the "revelations" in the Wikileaks documents. And if you're not regularly reading about Afghanistan, you're sure as hell not downloading 75 megabytes worth of field reports and reading through them. Transparency, in this case, came at too high a cost. Like you said, these docs are no Pentagon Papers. Americans are no better informed (and let's be honest, the vast majority of us will only know about these documents via CNN or the first two paragraphs of a Times article) about the war, but our opponents both current and potential get to read military field reports for free.
And worse, now the military will be even more trigger-happy with classifications. You can bet the number of documents labeled "Top Secret" will jump up, making information less accessible to people who need it. Thanks, Julian Assange. Real guardian of democracy, you. While the people we elect are making moral and ethical decisions on our behalf, it is nice to know Julian Assange has appointed himself to risk other people's lives so he can wag his finger and thumb his nose.
Excellent piece by the way Andrew.
People really have no idea what it's like to operate in war let alone a maze like Afghanistan. There's so much more involved than civilian casualties, torture claims and the rest of the reports we've heard before. Keep up the great work.
- Moen
Just read your NYT editorial. Outstanding. Thank you.
"I’m a researcher who studies Afghanistan" Okay, you know more about the Afghan War than 99.9999% of American civilians. Is it at all relevant that you didn't learn anything new? Especially from two days of trying to read through 200,000 pages?
"often supported by anonymous sources within the American military and intelligence services" It is always important news when official documentary evidence is produced, even when anonymous sources have said it before. This issue is actually a big problem in our media today. People seem to accept information from anonymous sources without any qualifications or reservations. The media certainly does, and it's now standard practice to use anonymous sources as final proof.
"the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict have been compiling evidence of these casualties," Oh, CIVIC is tallying stats, huh? I bet those 7 unique visitors per day are really well informed about these casualties! (http://www.websitetrafficspy.com/www.civicworldwide.org) I searched for links to their site and the only websites I recognized in the 100 top pageranks were HRW and CodePink. But thanks for linking to it yourself.(sincere) Hopefully it's traffic will go up 1,000's of percent.
"I suspect that in the eyes of most Americans, using special operations teams to kill terrorists is one of the least controversial ways in which the government spends their tax dollars." STFU. The issue is whether it is helping or not.
"It may even result in some people dying." So if the leaks help cause us to pull back from Afghanistan and save hundreds of lives and thousands of casualties, then it's worth it, right?
"It’s all too easy for them to find field reports to reaffirm their preconceived opinions about the war." Them = you too. And maintaining your opinions is much more important to you than the average joe. It certainly is warped that the most hear voices on COIN are from COINistas. (Does anybody care what Greenspan thinks these days?)
"I can confirm that the situation in Afghanistan is complex" Talk about a news flash! Thanks!
"Often what appears to be a two-way conflict between the government and an insurgency is better described as intertribal rivalry. And often that intertribal rivalry is worsened or overshadowed by the violent trade in drugs." Thank you for this. (again, sincere) It will be a revelation for lots of readers, I suspect. How do we tell our enemies from our friends is the core problem in Afghanistan and doesn't get talked about enough.
"Mr. Assange says he is a journalist, but he is not. He is an activist, and to what end it is not clear." So what? Jeffrey Goldberg says he is a journalist, but he isn't either. (his end is clear though) The whole point of Wikileaks is that the documents speak for themselves. No one has to rely on Assange or you to tell them what the documents say and mean. They can look for themselves. It's analogous to printing the Bible in native languages.
As for the "dearth of good policy options facing decision-makers", that's true only if you eliminate any type of retreat or disengagement as an option - which you do.
"The whole point of Wikileaks is that the documents speak for themselves."
Which is why Assange labelled the release of the Apache video "Collateral Murder." No agenda there...
I think AM's take on the Wikipedia thing is mistaken.
The Afghan war has been out of sight and out of mind for most of the American public, most of the time since it started. That the relatively small group of people who have followed it closely are familiar with issues raised by the leaked documents already doesn't mean that much.
For example, it is understood within the military community what a big change was represented by Gen. McChrystal's imposition of new rules of engagement intended to minimize civilian casualties. Among the general public, it is not understood just why this was such a huge problem. New ROEs, at best, represent a decision to stop digging, which is fine, but after seven years the hole we are in as far as ISAF operations causing civilian casualties may be awfully deep.
And the Pakistani security services' sponsorship of Taliban elements is a damaging storyline that has just gotten a huge boost. It's worse for Pakistan, frankly, than it is for us: basically, the storyline has Pakistan subsidizing and training groups closely associated with organizations that have killed Pakistanis, including Pakistani soldiers, on an epic scale in the last few years, maintaining that effort to further the idiotic ideas about "strategic depth" that are a major reason Pakistan is such a rattletrap state to begin with. It's not great for the Obama administration either, though. Going forward, the administration will have to answer an increasing number of questions about anything it does to help, or does in partnership with, the Pakistanis.
The theme of the questions will be why we should trust these damned people, who work with the enemy even though the enemy works with people who massacre Pakistanis. Once again, within the small community of people who have followed the war closely, the response sounds convincing: it's complicated, and if we walk away Pakistan could collapse, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons and we don't want them to go berserk and blow up the world. Also, it's complicated. It's a response that only works with the American public if most Americans are not paying attention.
After so many years, so many incidents and so much paper, something like this was bound to happen. I understand the Obama administration's anxiety to nip this leaking thing in the bud before something truly dangerous gets out; I hope the administration can find creative ways to use some of this document dump to, for example, pressure the government in Islamabad in specific areas where its cooperation would be helpful. My point is that it's a mistake to treat this Wikileaks affair as a non-story, unlikely to have major consequences because it doesn't involve stunning, brand-new revelations. Don't overestimate the difficulty of souring Americans on a war they already know isn't going well; that difficulty has shrunk significantly in the last week.
Visitor @ 12:40 AM,
Thank you for absolutely pwning Norwegian Shooter. I feel like no more needs to be said.
Bottom Line: The Wiki leaks incident, like the MChrystyal firing before it, is a blow to those at certain think-tanks and certain pundits who have staked themselves intelectually to the Afghanistan war.
AM:
Not sure I shot this your way, and/or if you've already seen/read it, but
Bricks and Mortar Clientelism: Sectarianism and the Logics of Welfare Allocation in Lebanon
Melani Cammett
Sukriti Issar
World Politics, Volume 62, Number 3, July 2010, pp. 381-421 (Article)
DOI: 10.1353/wp.0.0056
Partial Access HTML Version | Partial Access PDF Version (861k)
Subject Headings:
* Charities -- Political aspects -- Lebanon.
* Islam -- Lebanon -- Charities.
* Hizballah (Lebanon)
* Al-Mustaqbal (Lebanon)
Abstract:
In plural societies, social welfare can be a terrain of political contestation, particularly when public welfare functions are underdeveloped and ethnic or religious groups provide basic social services. It is well established that such organizations favor in-group members, but under what conditions do they serve out-group communities? To address this question, the authors compare the welfare programs of the predominantly Sunni Muslim Future Movement and the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah in Lebanon. Although they operate under the same institutional rules and economic contexts and boast the largest welfare programs in their respective communities, the Future Movement aims to serve a broader array of beneficiaries, including non-Sunnis, whereas Hezbollah focuses more exclusively on Shiite communities. Based on analyses of an original data set of the spatial locations of welfare agencies, qualitative data from interviews with providers and beneficiaries, and case studies of areas where the two parties established and did not establish welfare agencies, the authors argue that distinct political mobilization strategies—whether electoral or nonelectoral—explain different patterns of service delivery across the two organizations.
Best
ADTS
The Taliban cause 100 times more civilian casualties in Afghanistan than the US does. Lara Logan explains this to Katie Couric:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2010/07/26/coverage-focuses-u-s...
Wikileaks release of these documents will likely put a number of Afghans at risk:
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/07/28/murphy-rides-again/#...
CBS News reports that Times of London reporters “scanning the [Wikileaks] reports for just a couple hours found hundreds of Afghan names mentioned as aiding the U.S.-led war effort.”
One specific example cited by the paper is a report on an interview conducted by military officers of a potential Taliban defector. The militant is named, along with his father and the village in which they live.....
When Julian Assange released these documents he assured the public that it had been carefully reviewed to avoid putting people at risk. He said it with the greatest apparent confidence. Now it emerges that either he didn’t know how to avoid putting innocents in the line of fire or didn’t care to. But competence is not required to sit in judgment of others. Not today. All it really takes is enough self-righteousness to impose your amateurish viewpoint on the world because on the theory that nobody else has ever been as clever as you. We are always the people we’ve been waiting for.
The general level of misinformation among the American public about both Afghanistan as well as the U.S. military-civilian effort in Afghanistan (a so-called public-private partnership) is staggering. As the recent military intel report sent to CNAS makes clear, this ignorance extends to the frontline groups on the ground, who are unable to get decent intelligence on local conditions from the bloated & privatized defense intelligence sector that the military effort in Afghanistan has come to rely on.
The Wikileaks document dump contributes nothing to this debate and yet the media has seized on it, rather than on the the far more interesting current stories - the 'leaked' CNAS report, and the Washington Post Top Secret series currently running:
1) The military report handed to CNAS titled Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan.
How many civilian casualties and military casualties in Afghanistan can be blamed on rotten intelligence? The worst case I can recall is the bombing by NATO of a hijacked fuel truck that the Taliban had abandoned in a village - several hundred dead or injured? The Wikileaks document dump contains no top secret upper level intelligence reports - but who would be coordinating that, from 2001-2009? What kind of gibberish is contained in those reports? That's probably what they really want to keep secret - they'd likely display a serious disconnect with reality.
2) The Dana Priest / William Arkin - lead effort by the Washington Post to expose the scale of the private intelligence effort is not the topic of discussion, but it should be - instead, this conveniently timed Wikileaks dump is in the headlines. Note also that the Washington post report relied on no leaks of classified information, but rather was an assemblage of material available in the public domain, complemented by interviews with security officers. Dana Priest is also the same reporter who broke the CIA black site story in the U.S. (there was prior European coverage).
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/2010/07/a_question_f...
Why do we need such a large intelligence effort---the 1,300 agencies we identified that are a part of this effort--- to defeat a couple thousand people? And why haven't our efforts been even more focused on the al-Qaeda network in the last nine years?
Now, compare that to the intro to the report handed to CNAS by the military intelligence chiefs in Afghanistan:
"Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy. Having focused the overwhelming majority of its collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, the vast intelligence apparatus is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment is which U.S. and allied forces operate and the people they seek to persuade...."
You can read the rest of it - but the central conclusions are that the intelligence effort gives no practical aid to ground units, and that "lethal targeting [of insurgent leaders] alone will not help U.S. and allied forces win in Afghanistan."
Put that together with the WaPo report, and it seems like the best step would be to fire the private intelligence contractors in Afghanistan en masse - but maybe they want to keep their lucrative contracts - I'm sure their shareholders want that, anyway.
P.S. Do you know who the biggest contractors in the WaPo Top Secret database are? Do you know where retired General Zinni and retired Homeland Security Director Chertoff work these days? Who is Al-Yamamah, again?
Secrets of al-Yamamah: The Guardian BAE investigation
For the updated details, see:
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/companies/bae-syst...
Wasteful, bloated, and ineffective - but quite lucrative for a small handful of companies and bureaucrats and shareholders - see the list (there is overlap in each category):
intelligence analysis: 39 governmental organizations and 50 companies
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/functions/intel-an...
human intelligence: 17 governmental agencies, 47 companies
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/functions/human-in...
psychological operations: 18 government agencies, 37 companies
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/functions/psycholo...
And, yes, technical intelligence (WMD & electronics, etc.) - 26 government groups, 50 companies.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/functions/technica...
Not much in the Wikileaks dump about that, is there?
Of course WikiLeaks has a political agenda. Y`alls problem is that its not your agenda, and they are damn slick at doing it. So y`all, like true blooded ameri-khans start visualising those who oppose bleeding with their guts in their hands. Its a cultural thing, Team America, we understand.
Seriously, they oppose the military-industrial complex with all their skill. You may find it childish. I do not. Im still waiting for a clear example of them putting lives ont he line.
Dropping thousands of primary documents on an oblivious populous qualifies as slick now? Really sticking it to the man.
"Seriously, they oppose the military-industrial complex with all their skill. You may find it childish. I do not. Im still waiting for a clear example of them putting lives ont he line"
Clear enough?
“Hundreds of Afghan civilians who worked as informants for the U.S. military have been put at risk by WikiLeaks’ publication of more than 90,000 classified intelligence reports which name and in many cases locate the individuals, The Times newspaper reported Wednesday.”
“The article says, in spite of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s claim that sensitive information had been removed from the leaked documents, that reporters scanning the reports for just a couple hours found hundreds of Afghan names mentioned as aiding the U.S.-led war effort.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20011886-503543.html
Visitor @ AM re: Homo-EROTIC on July 28, 2010 - 1:33pm
You are playing to an audience of ONE...yourself. I do hope you are not under the delusion that you are funny.
Deux Eh, Pwned, really? Collateral Murder was also released in unedited form. Look for yourself.
Abu Mook, as for the update and Danger's op-ed, who said the leak provides the full picture of the war?
I think the bigger question is why are we in Afghanistan?
I mean if this spurs more debate on Afghanistan is this not a good thing? Also I highly doubt US citizens are put in danger by this.
Maybe some Afghani Translators are, that sucks, but assets are expendable.
Also gotta agree with everything Norwegian Shooter said in his first post... I mean does that fact that wikileaks has an agenda matter? CNAS has an agenda (most think tanks do)
That these documents bring Afghanistan back to the fore front of the minds of those Americans that do not study the conflict on a daily basis is perhaps the only redeeming thing about them.
I see the value in an activist mind set, but worry at the blurring of the lines between journalist, who however irresponsible still at least pay lip service to some rule sets, and activist like Assange who do not.
But this all reminds me of the excellent quote written on a white board in a corridor in Iraq - "America is not at war, the marines are at war, America is at the mall"
If the publication of these documents reminds the America people that they are actually engaged in a open ended conflict that is of itself a good thing.
http://img386.imageshack.us/img386/7371/pic06940pc7.jpg
Fnord, there are aren't any lives on the line.
The wikileaks docs are SECRET.
weak tea.
Exum and cleared peeps know this, but gosh, they aren't saying anything....any valued informants, undercovers, moles, double-agents, etc are classified TOP SECRET codeword. the only afghanis in the SECRET docs are public friendlies and unfriendlies that are already known players.
the high value players got more coverage.
and you can't just overwrite Lady Gaga cds in a TS facility to make data carryouts.
just ax Sandy Bergers socks.
"Maybe some Afghani Translators are, that sucks, but assets are expendable. "
Veritas, that's why no sane person would trust us.
Fnord - and in addition to the hundreds of names mentioned - that gets people killed real good, and in Iraq the wife and kids as well - you also have to consider that Wiki Leaks "vetting" consists 700 wiki volunteers - 700.fucking.hundred and their mostly online.
On.fucking.line
Even the half wits in US Intel could get inside something like that.....
I asked a rhetorical question of you the other day: if any of the Muslims you care for came to you with information they came across or overheard - would you advise them to contact US Intel?
Or Norse intel: with the consideration that their name would be shared with US Intel?
Fnord, would you?
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