NATO

The Afghan War documents leak is the disclosure of a collection of internal U.S. military logs of the War in Afghanistan, also called the Afghan War Diary, which were published by WikiLeaks on 25 July 2010. The logs consist of 91,731 documents, covering the period between January 2004 and December 2009. Most of the documents are classified Secret. As of 28 July 2010, only 75,000 of the documents have been released to the public, a move which Wikileaks says is "part of a harm minimization process demanded by [the] source". Prior to releasing the initial 75,000 documents, Wikileaks made the logs available to The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel in its German and English on-line edition which published reports per previous agreement on that same day, 25 July 2010. The leak, which is considered to be one of the largest in U.S. military history, revealed information on the deaths of civilians, increased Taliban attacks, and involvement by Pakistan and Iran in the insurgency. Wikileaks says it does not know the source of the leaked data. The three outlets which had received the documents in advance, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel, have all concluded that they are genuine when compared to independent reports. The New York Times described the leak as "a six-year archive of classified military documents [that] offers an unvarnished and grim picture of the Afghan war". The Guardian called the material "one of the biggest leaks in U.S. military history ... a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and NATO commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency". Der Spiegel wrote that "the editors in chief of Spiegel, The New York Times and the Guardian were 'unanimous in their belief that there is a justified public interest in the material'." Some time after the first dissemination by WikiLeaks, the US Justice Department were considering the use of the U.S. Espionage Act of 1917 to prevent WikiLeaks from posting the remaining 15,000 secret war documents it claimed to possess. Hundreds of civilians have been wounded or killed by coalition forces in several instances that were not previously revealed.[5][30][31] The press listed several examples of such previously unreported incidents of civilian injuries and deaths.[32] David Leigh of The Guardian wrote: They range from the shootings of individual innocents to the often massive loss of life from air strikes, which eventually led President Hamid Karzai to protest publicly that the US was treating Afghan lives as "cheap". The logs refer to sums paid of 100,000 Afghani per corpse, equivalent to about £1,500.[32] In one incident, a U.S. patrol machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers.[33] On 4 March 2007, in the Shinwar shooting, U.S. Marines opened fire on civilians after witnessing a suicide bombing and supposedly coming under small arms fire. The Guardian reported their actions: "The marines made a frenzied escape [from the scene of the bombing], opening fire with automatic weapons as they tore down a six-mile stretch of highway, hitting almost anyone in their way -- teenage girls in the fields, motorists in their cars, old men as they walked along the road. Nineteen unarmed civilians were killed and 50 wounded." The military report of the incident (written by the same soldiers involved in it) later failed to make any reference to the deaths and injuries and none of the soldiers involved were charged or disciplined.[34] On 21 March 2007, CIA paramilitaries fired on a civilian man who was running from them. The man, Shum Khan, was deaf and mute and did not hear their warnings.[32][35] In 2007, documents detail how US special forces dropped six 2,000 lb bombs on a compound where they believed a "high-value individual" was hiding, after "ensuring there were no innocent Afghans in the surrounding area". A senior U.S. commander reported that 150 Taliban had been killed. Locals, however, reported that up to 300 civilians had died.[36] On 16 August 2007, Polish troops mortared the village of Nangar Khel, killing five people -- including a pregnant woman and her baby -- in what The Guardian describes as an apparent revenge attack shortly after experiencing an IED explosion.[32][37] According to The Guardian, the logs also detail "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". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan_war_logs

• published: 08 Jun 2013
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