WikiLeaks reveals Pakistan’s treachery

Whose side is Pakistan on? asked the London Guardian in an editorial. The thousands of U.S. military logs published this week by WikiLeaks contain reports of “hundreds of border clashes between Afghan and Pakistani troops, two armies which are supposed to be allies.” Even more damning, many of the documents link Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, with Taliban and other insurgent leaders. Much of the data consists of raw intelligence from informants, and some of it could be untrustworthy. But it certainly leaves a troubling impression. Indeed, there is now reason to suspect that the ISI has been involved “in a sensational range of plots, from attempting to assassinate President Hamid Karzai to poisoning the beer supply of Western troops.”

None of this is news to us Afghans, said Afghanistan’s Hasht-e Sobh. “Despite much international uproar, hype, and fuss,” there is very little in the WikiLeaks documents that adds to our understanding of Pakistan’s underhanded role in Afghanistan’s woes. Afghans have long known of Pakistan’s active support for the Taliban as well as for other terrorist groups operating here, and we knew that the ISI attended Taliban meetings and provided militants with weapons and money. Even the Pakistani authorities “have hardly tried to conceal all this.” That’s why it’s unlikely that the U.S. or other NATO countries were unaware of Pakistan’s deep involvement with the enemy. To assume that Pakistan “has been trying to fool Washington is naïve—if not downright silly.”

We can’t rule out the possibility that Washington actually approved these leaks, said Afghanistan’s Wrazpanra Khedmatgar. The publication of the secret files could be an attempt by the Obama administration to pressure Pakistan into cutting its terrorist ties. Surely it’s not a coincidence that just a few days before the documents were published, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the leaders of al Qaida and other terrorist groups were hiding in Pakistan. There’s a concerted campaign going on to force Pakistan to choose sides once and for all.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

This “conspiracy theory” about “Pakistan’s evil double-cross” is preposterous, said Mosharraf Zaidi in Pakistan’s News. On the one hand, it’s undeniable that elements of Pakistan’s government “had, have, and will continue to have linkages with the Afghan Taliban.” We don’t need outsiders to tell us that—Pakistani journalists and analysts have been documenting ISI’s role for some time now. But it’s simply not the case that Pakistan is the prime mover in the Afghan conflict, and the U.S. should stop trying to use Pakistan as a scapegoat. Evidently, for Americans, “there is much comfort in finding Pakistan and the ISI under every rock and IED in Afghanistan.”

Some of the allegations about the ISI are “clearly ludicrous,” said The News. The reports alleging ongoing links between the ISI and the Taliban, for example, are “of doubtful provenance and amount to considerably less than a smoking gun.” But on balance, publication of the WikiLeaks documents is a real public service. “We see now the lies and hypocrisies that underpin much of what we are told, particularly about civilian casualties.” The villain that emerges in the logs is not Pakistan. It is a callous U.S. military that is cavalier with Afghan lives.