The founder of WikiLeaks yesterday defended the whistleblower site’s decision to release tens of thousands of classified US military files, amid fears the move has put Afghan informants at risk.
The site at first claimed the documents were vetted to ensure names of informants were not released, but reports since suggest details of Afghans said to have provided intelligence to the US can be uncovered with ease.
The Pentagon has warned that the disclosure has put the lives of informants at risk and threatens to undermine intelligence work in war-torn Afghanistan.
PHOTO: REUTERS
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Britain’s Times newspaper in an interview that it was “extremely important” that the files were in the public domain. He also risked further angering the US, publicly accusing the White House of failing to respond to his requests for help before the release of the files to minimize the risk of informants being identified.
“We understand the importance of protecting our confidential sources. The United States appears to have given every UN soldier and contractor access to the names of many of its confidential sources without proper protection,” he said.
“No one has been harmed, but should anyone come to harm of course that would be a matter of deep regret — our goal is justice to innocents, not to harm to them,” Assange said.
“That said, if we were forced into a position of publishing all of the archives or none of the archives we would publish all of the archives because it’s extremely important to the history of the war,” he said.
Any document that “clearly jeopardized innocent people” could be added to the 15,000 documents already held back from publication, Assange said.
The more than 90,000 classified military files span a period from 2004 to last year as the US and NATO war effort in Afghanistan ran into a rising Taliban insurgency.
They contain a string of damaging claims, including allegations that Pakistani spies met directly with the Taliban and that the deaths of civilians at the hands of international forces have been covered up.
The Times reported on Wednesday that after just two hours of combing through the documents it was able to find the names of dozens of Afghans said to have provided detailed intelligence to US forces.
Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai yesterday condemned the release of information he said could endanger the lives of Afghan informants.
“I heard this yesterday ... that names of certain Afghans who cooperate with the coalition NATO have been also revealed in these documents. This indeed is extremely irresponsible and shocking,” he told a news conference.
“Because whether those individuals acted legitimately or illegitimately, by providing information to NATO forces, they are lives. And the lives are in danger now,” he said.
Releasing the names was “an act that I cannot overlook,” he said, adding that he had ordered government agencies to sift through the documents to see if there was anything new or damaging to the nation.
“We’ll have to see names and the context in which those names are mentioned and then act according to this … It is a very serious issue,” he said.
Karzai also questioned the willingness of his Western allies to strike insurgent bases in Pakistan given the strong evidence of Islamabad’s support for the Taliban.
“The war against terrorism is not in the villages or houses of Afghanistan ... but in the sanctuaries, sources of funding and training [of terrorism], and they lie outside Afghanistan,” he told a news conference in Kabul.
“It is a different question whether Afghanistan has the ability to tackle this,” he said in response to a question about Pakistan support for the Taliban and why the conflict was dragging on. “But our allies have this capability. The question now is ‘why they are not taking action?’”
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