UK,US ,INDIA & AFGHANNITAN Corner Pakistan
The disclosure of the ''Kabul war diary'' - as WikiLeaks dubbed the reports - has once more charged the debate over Afghanistan. Kabul has long accused Islamabad of providing support and sanctuary for militant groups that plan, fund and carry out attacks in Afghanistan.The whistleblowing website Wikileaks made public 92,000 Pentagon files and field reports about deaths of innocent civilians, Pakistani agents meeting the Taliban and Iran secretly furnished it with money, arms and training.
The Kabul government welcomed the leaks, saying the documents on Pakistan's activities in Afghanistan could help "raise awareness on the sanctuaries" Islamabad provides for militant groups."Since 2006, since the first suicide bombing, we have talked about the role of (Pakistan's) intelligence services," Waheed Omar, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman, told reporters."We need more understanding and awareness on the sanctuaries and I hope the leaked documents can raise the level of awareness on that question," he said. The documents on the Afghan war highlights the role that Pakistan's intelligence service plays in destabilizing Afghanistan, the president's spokesman said Monday"We hope they (Pakistan) will take practical steps that convince everyone they don't support them," he said, referring to militant groups that include the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network.Omar said the Kabul government had been "shocked" at the volume of documents but had found nothing new in their content.
Afghanistan's national security adviser this month called on the Pakistani government to "take serious measures" against Islamist groups launching attacks on Afghan targets from secure havens inside Pakistan.
Rangin Dadfar Spanta said that throughout nine years of Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, Pakistani authorities had failed to take action against the groups taking refuge on their side of the porous border.Afghan officials have blamed a number of major attacks on Pakistani-based groups whom they say are supported by Pakistan's intelligence and military.
Such militants were blamed for blowing up the Serena Hotel in Kabul in 2008, attacking the Indian embassy, other Indian targets and a UN guesthouse in October that led to a mass withdrawal from Afghanistan of UN staff.
But due to its sheer size - amounting to more than 90,000 intelligence snippets, military contact reports and diplomatic cables - the full ramifications of this leak are only slowly becoming clear. Plenty of unanswered questions are swirling around in the aftermath.
The United States has pursued a contradictory policy with regard to the Afghan war by ignoring Pakistan's role in the insurgency, the Afghan government said on Tuesday, following the leak of U.S. military documents. The National Security Council did not name Pakistan, but said use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy was a dangerous gamble and had to be stopped.
"Having a contradictory and vague policy against the forces who use terrorism as a tool for interference and sabotage against others, have had devastating results," it said.
At a news conference later on Tuesday, council head Rangeen Dadfar Spanta was more specific, questioning the billions of dollars in cash aid and military assistance Washington has given to Pakistan over the years.
"It is really not justifiable for the Afghan people that how come you give to one country $11 billion or more as help for reconstruction or strengthen its security or defensive forces, but from other side the very forces train terrorism," he said.
He warned that the war would not succeed unless there was a review of Afghan policy by Washington that focuses on Taliban sanctuaries and bases in Pakistan and their supporters.
Those supporting militants should be punished rather than be treated as an ally, said Spanta, who served for years as foreign minister in President Hamid Karzai's government until last year.
For India, there's nothing new in WikiLeaks' recent revelations about Pakistani perfidy.But what the leaks do give India, apart from a chance for the smug 'I told you so' act, is a valid excuse to stop all, and by that I mean all, contact with Pakistan.
Forget people to people contact, forget friendship trains and buses, forget ministerial-level meetings. Recall our high commissioner from Islamabad, expel the Pakistani high commissioner from New Delhi.
After all, the leaks confirm that the Pakistan was involved in the July 2008 attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul. Four Indians, including our defence attache, a press counselor, and two officers of the Indo-Tibetan border police, were among the 58 people killed. And that is a clear act of war.
After all, we don't really need to wait for another WikiLeaks leak to conclusively prove that Pakistan orchestrated the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, apart from various other terrorist strikes across India.
British Prime Minister David Cameron blasted Pakistan before a gathering at the IT major Infosys campus in Bangalore. ‘We cannot tolerate in any sense the idea that this country [Pakistan] is allowed to look both ways and is able, in any way, to promote the export of terror, whether to India or whether to Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world’. While Cameron admitted that steps have been made by the Pakistani government to rectify the security malaise, he was also keen to point out the sinister links between the ISI and fundamentalist networks it claims to be targeting. Cameron’s bountiful praise was reserved for his hosts, who are anticipating a closer security partnership. India and Britain had, he insisted, mutual interests. ‘Our interests are your interests – so let’s work together to realise them.’ Britain, like India, was determined that networks such those of Haqqani or Lakshar-e-Taiba, or groups such as the Taliban, should be duly dealt with, prevented and discouraged from launching attacks against the citizens of both states.
The reaction from Pakistan was predictably spiky. In some circles, the mood was even one of depression. The president, Asif Ali Zardari is scheduled to visit Britain shortly. While the timing could have been better, the President will still go, his ears ringing with Cameron’s pronouncements. ‘Obviously, we are saddened by Prime Minister Cameron’s remarks in Bangalore to an Indian audience,’ explained Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit
The United States on Wednesday diplomatically endorsed British Prime Minister David Cameron’s remarks that the West would not tolerate the export of terror by Pakistan.
When asked if the U.S. agrees with the statement of Cameron, now on a visit to India, Crowley said, “Well, we don’t want to see the export of terror by any country. We are concerned about and have said many times that extremist elements within the borders of Pakistan, in the tribal areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan, first and foremost, it represents a threat to Pakistan, it represents a threat to Afghanistan.”“And as we have seen, extremists with links to this – these areas have made their way to Europe, have made their way to the United States,” Crowley noted.
Earlier on Wednesday Cameron said in India, “We should be very clear with Pakistan that we want to see a strong and a stable and a democratic Pakistan, but we cannot tolerate in any sense the idea that this country is allowed to look both ways and is able in any way to promote the export of terror, whether to India or whether to Afghanistan, or anywhere else in the world.”
When it was pointed that Britain, although one of the main allies in the war on terror, seem not to be satisfied with the steps Pakistan is taking, Crowley told journalists, “Pakistan has, in our view, made a strategic shift in the last year or more. It has taken aggressive action at considerable expense of – to Pakistan. The Pakistani people are suffering as much if not more than any other people in the world from terrorism.”
Crowley, however, concluded on a different note reiterating, “There is clearly more to be done.”
“Our joint concern here is to eliminate the safe havens that exist in the region and to prevent the emergence of new safe havens from which there can be the export of terrorism that can threaten the United States, Europe, or other parts of the world,” he added
For the Western public, the reports offer a fresh angle on this grinding and frustrating war. So far this appears to have merely amplified popular discontent with the conflict, rather than generating calls for a dramatic change of course or withdrawal. US President Barack Obama has even sought to use the leak - which covers 2004 to 2009, mostly the period when the Bush administration was in office - to justify his decision last year to throw an extra 30,000 American troops into the fray.
Several American administration officials privately expressed hope that they might be able to use the leaks, and their description of a sometimes duplicitous Pakistani ally, to pressure the government of Pakistan to cooperate more fully with the United States on counterterrorism. The documents seem to lay out rich new details of connections between the Taliban and other militant groups and Pakistan’s main spy agency, the directorate for ISI.
Three administration officials separately expressed hope that they might be able to use the documents to gain leverage in efforts to get more help from Pakistan. Two of them raised the possibility of warning the Pakistanis that Congressional anger might threaten American aid.
“This is now out in the open,” a senior administration official said. “It’s reality now. In some ways, it makes it easier for us to tell the Pakistanis that they have to help us.”
But much of the pushback from the White House over the past two days has been to stress that the connection between the ISI and the Taliban was well known.
“I don’t think that what is being reported hasn’t in many ways been publicly discussed, either by you all or by representatives of the US government, for quite some time,” Gibbs said during a briefing on Monday.
Here are some flashpoints from the 91,000 WikiLeaks logs to get you started
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Nato’s secret ‘black’ unit
Nato has a ‘black’ unit of special forces called Task Force 373 to ‘kill or capture’ Taliban leaders without trial
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Taliban’s surface-to-air missiles
A surface-to-air missile strike by the Taliban that shot down a Chinook helicopter over Helmand, killing seven, shows that they have much more sophisticated anti-aircraft capabilities than previously thought
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Under-reporting civilian deaths
The war logs seem to point to much higher civilian casualties than reported. They reveal 144 ‘blue on white’ incidents, ranging from controversial airstrikes, to the deaths of unarmed drivers and accidents involving convoys
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Taliban paid to kill Indian workers
The logs say the ISI offered the Taliban $15,000-30,000 to kill Indian contractors in Afghanistan. Intelligence inputs confirm that the July 7, 2008 attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul was deliberate and carried out on ISI orders
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Osama bin Laden is dead
The fact there are so few references to Osama bin Laden in a log of 90,000 files has many believing the Al Qaida leader is in fact dead
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Qaida bought weapons from N Korea
The logs suggest bin Laden’s financial adviser Amin flew to North Korea in December 2005 to ‘confirm’ a deal for remote-controlled with Pyongyang
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Osama gifts wife
A report dating to July 2007 suggests that impressed with his skill in making remotecontrolled IEDs, bin Laden presented an Arab wife to an insurgent called Abdullah in Kunduz province
• $1bn US aid to kill marines?
The leaked files suggest ISI representatives meet the Taliban and organize networks of militant groups that fight against US soldiers
