The information in short based on reports:
- 92,000 documents dating back to 2004 were released by the whistle-blowers’ website Wikileaks.
- They allege that Iran is providing money and arms to Taliban.
- There are details about how widespread corruption is hampering a nine-year war.
- New York Times becomes the keeper of morals and analyses “in mosaic detail why, after US spent almost $300 billion on the war, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001”.
- The Guardian paints “a devastating portrait of the failing war”.
Formally, the US says it is concerned about the safety of its soldiers. If that were the case, it would not have sent them in the first place. How many strikes have been conducted by the Taliban against the US and how many against its own people? How many civilians have died in the drone attacks and how many militants in the American war on terror? If the reports are to be believed, then the money the US is spending is not going to the right place for the right cause. What sort of corruption is taking place? It has to be within the establishment.
Iran’s role has to be considered with some degree of scepticism. The US has been gunning for Iran for a while now and needs a strategic reason to attack it.
According to the Times, Pakistan agents and Taliban meet regularly “in secret strategy sessions to organise networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.”
The ISI works on its own most of the time, therefore what worries the White House is that its partnership with Pakistan’s democrats and Afghan democrats, both set up by Big Brother, have not been as successful as it had hoped. Clearly, American foreign policy makers do not understand that the Pathan belt and people are not Zardaris and Karzais.
Pakistan’s envoy to US, Husain Haqqani, said the leaks consisted of “unprocessed” field reports that “do not reflect onground realities”.
It just does not matter. There is bound to be a slip between the cup and the lip but they aren’t too far from each other. The fact is that despite elections and an elected government in Afghanistan, there are documents pertaining to an Afghan war. The question is: whose war is it and why?
