The recently Wiki-leaked military logs from the war in Afghanistan offer a level of transparency about civilian casualties that countless investigations, several military tactical directives, and hundreds of news reports have not. By not addressing these issues openly earlier and providing a minimum of accountability, ISAF has sabotaged its counterinsurgency strategy, potentially beyond repair.
Much of the press coverage of the more than 75,000 military logs published on Wikileaks has focused on the frequent incidents of civilian casualties. Many of these incidents -- from a CIA shooting of a deaf mute who failed to respond to warnings, to a retaliatory strike by Polish troops killing 5 civilians at a wedding party -- have not been reported before, or at least not in great detail. Further, the frequency of incidents like checkpoint shootings illustrates better than any statistics the level of day-to-day fear and violence that have turned so many Afghan civilians against the international military.
Yet for all the incidents we know about now, thanks to this new public information, the database says a lot more about how much we don't know about the last 9 years. While many civilian casualty incidents are recorded, many more publicly acknowledged incidents do not appear in the Wikileaks dataset. For example, an airstrike in July 2008 that killed 47 civilians, the vast majority women and children, was never reported. An airstrike on November 5, 2008 that killed 40 civilians near Kandahar was not noted. Almost none of the known incidents of problematic night raids -- in which incidents of detainee abuse, civilian casualties, or extreme property destruction or cultural disrespect occurred -- are recorded. If these major incidents did not trigger even an initial cursory report, what else was left out?
In addition, information that does appear in the records seems incomplete or inaccurate. An incident from June 20, 2007 in Chora, Uruzgan, is listed as responsible for 43 insurgent deaths, with no civilian casualties. The final investigation by the UN and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, however, found as many as 80 civilian deaths. On September 4, 2009, an airstrike on insurgents attempting to hijak a fuel tanker in northern Kunduz province is logged, with initial reports suggesting no civilians in the area. However, international media and monitors later found at least 60 civilian deaths.
In both of these cases, the media and independent monitors learned of the incident and pressed for follow up investigations and accurate reporting. But there are many areas of Afghanistan that are inaccessible due to insecurity, and in these areas there is a strong chance that media, the United Nations, or other monitors might never find out. Given what we now know about the way the military track these incidents, and their past record of foot-dragging on public accountability, would inaccurate initial reporting ever be questioned in these cases? An example from the Guardian's investigation suggests not: "There is also at least one episode of UK shootings which the war logs cover up. On 3 December 2006 the US database merely records that a convoy struck an IED in Kandahar, wounding three Royal Marines and causing 25 civilian casualties. But Guardian correspondent Declan Walsh, who was on the scene, interviewed victims in hospital. Witnesses described a shooting spree in which vengeful or scared UK soldiers shot at bystanders, killing two and wounding five. The MoD never publicly investigated these allegations."
These gaps in information need not be deliberate, or malicious. It's not clear how exhaustive this Wikileaks collection is. There may have been other reports filed that have not been publicly leaked. In addition, many of the reports in these files appear to be initial reports, later to be amended upon investigation. Few of these later reports appear in the Wikileaks log. Finally, there's no question that getting to the facts of any encounter is difficult. In many cases it may not be possible to get back to the scene of an incident immediately without putting both soldiers and civilian lives at risk yet again. Even where follow up is possible, there are many hard cases in Afghanistan, in which no amount of research and investigation can make clear exactly what happened.
Yet whether one views these holes in the record as deliberate, negligent, or simply unavoidable, the failure to address the flaws in tracking and accounting for civilian harm, or even to be moderately transparent about these deficiencies, has been extremely harmful to the families affected and to the success of the overall mission in Afghanistan.
After an incident, it is common for Afghan families to seek out international military to ask after family members who have been detained, to seek an apology or compensation, or simply to get answers for why their family was attacked. Most of the time, they have walked away unsatisfied. The standard response of international military to concerned Afghan civilians, or to interlocutors like myself, has been that the incident did not happen, or that no civilians were harmed.
Afghan civilians and civil society have long maintained that many incidents go unreported, yet it has always been hard to prove the negative and international military tend to be given the benefit of the doubt. In meetings with the media, independent monitors, or concerned Afghan officials, incidents of civilian casualties are often denied or minimized, often with an implication that the Afghan civilians in question are lying or exaggerating, motivated by personal greed or insurgent propaganda. International military assert that they account for every bullet fired, and every engagement in which there troops are involved. There is no way that an incident could escape their notice, they say, and they always come first with the truth. Yet the data in the Wikileaks logs casts doubt on those assertions: it appears that many incidents have gone unreported, and many more were simply never disclosed.
Afghan communities and human rights monitors have long called for greater transparency and accountability, and the latest information coming out of Wikileaks makes it only too clear why. Afghan anger over civilian casualties has been a top cause of Afghan resentment and anger at international forces; and a leading recruitment tool for the Taliban. Preventing and addressing civilian harm is now one of ISAF's key counterinsurgency tools, but with the level of accumulated mistrust over the type of civilian harm and lack of disclosure illustrated by these war logs, it may be coming 9 years too late. With a bit more transparency and honesty in dealing with the harm caused by their forces earlier on, the international military might not be in position it is in now.
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And they rationalize it by saying they aren't "trying" to kill them. So that makes it alright. One doubts whether whether soldiers were "trying" or not consoles anyone. Dead am dead, neh?
Want to stay safe in a war zone? Be a soldier.
1. This is a significant comparison, and should be included in every discourse about "civilian casualties," and rationalizations for all armed conflicts by state actors, in general.
2. Is the primary provenance for this: www.casualty-monitor.org/ ?
Much appreciated,
voxpop88
There are many members of the U.S. armed services that have proudly served their country, and have come to realize that most wars are waste of lives and resources, and should be avoided.
As a start, here is someone for you to research learn from:
Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed "The Fighting Quaker" and "Old Gimlet Eye", was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.
During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America during the Banana Wars, the Caribbean and during World War I, he served in France.
In addition to his military achievements... he was an outspoken critic of U.S. military adventurism.
In his 1935 book "War is a Racket," he described the workings of the military-industrial complex and, after retiring from service, became a popular speaker at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s.
from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
The show describes a Supreme Court precedent that lets the government cite national security concerns in withholding evidence in trials. In that particular case, the government denied the claims of the widows and orphans created by a crash of a B-29 bomber. Especially significant was that it denied them a look at the crash report, because disclosing the crash report would disclose something secret, and damaging to national security.
Without examining the crash report themselves, the Supreme Court ruled that citizens would have to trust the government when it said national security was at stake. Ever since, the government has relied on this precedent to deny plaintiffs access to just about anything it can classify as "secret."
Fast forward to recent times, and that B-29 crash report (the basis of the SCOTUS 1953 decision) has been de-classified. Guess what?... It contained *nothing* about any secret program, and revealed that the Air Force was negligent in maintaining the plane.
As a postscript, Ira Glass (the "This American Life" narrator) notes that a bill has been stalled in congress that would require that the judge in such national security trials be allowed to see whether the documents being withheld on national security grounds contain anything secret.
This needs to get a lot more attention.
I heard the piece but couldn't remember where the link was
The cache of classified U.S. military reports on the Iraq War as yet unreleased by WikiLeaks may be more than three times as large as the set of roughly 76,000 similar reports on the war in Afghanistan made public by the whistle-blower Web site earlier this week, Declassified has learned.
Read more:
http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/2010/07/27/wikileaks-iraq-cache-three-times-bigger.html
Open your mind and find the truth for the truth will set you free.
There are many members of the U.S. armed services that have proudly served their country, and have come to realize that most wars are waste of lives and resources, and should be avoided.
As a start, here is someone for you to research learn from:
Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed "The Fighting Quaker" and "Old Gimlet Eye", was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.
During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America during the Banana Wars, the Caribbean and during World War I, he served in France.
In addition to his military achievements... he was an outspoken critic of U.S. military adventurism.
In his 1935 book "War is a Racket," he described the workings of the military-industrial complex and, after retiring from service, became a popular speaker at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s.
from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
Bollocks.
"They add credence to the possibility that maintaining combat forces in Afghanistan may not be in our strategic interest."
I've never thought combat forces in Afghanistan can be in our strategic interest. And what is the strategic interest and who determines that? If we spent our money we've spent on the these useless wars and the empire in general since 2001 on renewable energy systems we would have no "strategic" reason for the empire.
Any discussion on the utility of forces in Afghanistan is an a priori capitulation to the imperial logic. It issue is not being in Afghanistan but being an empire which is utterly useless to the American people. All cost and no benefits for the people. The benefits of the empire go to less than 1% of the population and that is why it exists. Empire exists for hegemonic control of the world by a tiny number of rich around the world.
The empire is not just wasted resources. It distorts our real economy and it erodes our strength while killing our republic in every sense of that word. Empire is a dangerous beast.
And if not, we can't assume that the truth's necessarily in a military document or resides somewhere in the Pentagon.
When Pat Tillman was killed, the reports or conclusions did not contain the truth. Three bullets to the head from 10 yards away is not a friendly fire incident.
As important as it is, that the information on war crimes is on display for US citizens to be fully informed about what's being done in Afghanistan on their behalf and in their name, it doesn't guarantee any kind of justice, consequences or end to the murder.
It's doubtful prosecutions will result from the leaked documents. With Abu Ghraib, two scapegoats were found, for policies and crimes handed down from the highest levels of government.