WikiLeaks Ten Year Anniversary

WikiLeaks Ten Year Anniversary

WikiLeaks Top 10 Greatest Hits about Afghanistan

A search for Afghanistan on the WikiLeaks website yields 337,501 documents from the archive. WikiLeaks has provided devastating detail about significant acts in the war in Afghanistan down to the metre where they occurred and the particular locations for the individually recorded deaths of 20,000 people. Over time, WikiLeaks disclosures helped to change the perception of the Afghan war. Before the Afghan War Diaries, the discussion was focused on more troops being needed, whereas after those disclosures the discussion focused on an exit strategy from the debacle and quagmire created.

23 May 2014 – Mass recording of Afghan telephone calls by the NSA
When both the Intercept and the Washington Post censored the name of one of the states victim to the NSA recording and storing nearly all domestic and international phone calls of target countries, WikiLeaks revealed country "X" to be Afghanistan. Censorship such as this strips a nation of its right to self-determination on a matter affecting its whole population, denying each individual the opportunity to seek an effective remedy. It also permits the erasure of evidence that could be used in a successful criminal prosecution, civil claim, or other investigations. The US drone targeting program has killed thousands of people and hundreds of women and children in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia in violation of international law. Given how closely the surveillance and drone programs are tied, the censorship of a victim state’s identity directly assists the killing of innocent people.
25 July 2010 – Afghan War Diaries
When WikiLeaks released the 91,000 classified US military documents covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004-2010, the Afghan War Diaries was considered the largest military leak to date. The documents revealed unvarnished and grim details of thousands upon thousands of civilian victims and alleged links between Pakistan and the Taliban.
26 March 2010 – CIA report into shoring up Afghan war support in Western Europe
WikiLeaks publishes a leaked report from the Central Intelligence Agency marked SECRET//NOFORN. The report discusses strategies for the targeted manipulation of public opinion in two NATO ally countries, France and Germany, shifting public attitudes towards the war in Afghanistan, in order to ensure that neither country's government withdraws its troop contingent to the ISAF mission.
22 July 2009 – Dasht-e-Leili Massacre of Taliban prisoners of war
These files include formally highly classified US government communications about the Dasht-e-Leili massacre in Afghanistan. The massacre killed thousands of Taliban prisoners of war who were locked in shipping containers. The files were released earlier on two websites maintained by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) but are of significant historical importance. PHR asked that WikiLeaks house the documents to assure the widest journalistic and public access to the documents. WikiLeaks reaches an audience different than PHR's and having the documents on WikiLeaks' servers helps to ensure that the documents' availability does not depend solely on PHR's web infrastructure.
2 March 2009 – RAND study on Intelligence Ops & Metrics in Iraq and Afghanistan
This major November 2008 RAND Corporation study on intelligence operations in Iraq and Afghanistan includes interviews with 300 US, UK and Dutch intelligence officers and diplomats. The 318 page document was confidentially prepared for the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command and focuses on intelligence and counterinsurgency operations. The quotes from interviews are from the UK Ambassador and the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency to on the ground intelligence officers.
27 February 2009 – WikiLeaks cracks NATO documents on Afghanistan narrative
WikiLeaks cracked the encryption to key documents relating to the war in Afghanistan, detailing the "story" NATO representatives are to give and avoid giving to journalists. The document dated October 6 was encrypted with the word "progress". Among the revelations is Jordan's presence as secret member of the US lead ISAF occupation force, which NATO spokespersons are to keep secret. Altogether four classified or restricted NATO documents on the Pentagon Central Command (CENTCOM) site were discovered to share the 'progress' password. WikiLeaks has decrypted and released all documents in full.
16 February 2009 – NATO report on civilian deaths in Afghanistan
The ISAF Security Summary released by WikiLeaks revealed that civilian deaths from the war in Afghanistan had increased by 46% over the previous 12 months. A dramatic escalation of the war and civil disorder is detailed, with coalition deaths increasing by 35%, assassinations and kidnappings by 50% and attacks on the Kabul based Government of Hamid Karzai also more than doubled, rising a massive 119%. According to the report, outside of the capital Kabul only one in two families had access to even the most basic health care, and only one in two children had access to a school.
14 January 2009 – ISAF: Afghanistan civilian deaths rises and other statistics
WikiLeaks released this "Metrics Brief, 2007-2008", a high-level International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) document prepared by the Pentagon (CENTCOM) containing 12 slides of graphs, maps, statistics and text about the war in Afghanistan. The documents reveal that the yearly civilian death tole increased during 2008 by 46%, the number of attacks on the "Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan" (GIRoA), increased by 116%, surface to air fire by 67%, and that Improvised Explosive Device (IED) device casualties increased by 29%.
28 June 2008 – Jihad Security & Intelligence Manual
This document, which the Associated Press claimed to have obtained but did not release, provides 1,081 hand written pages of a jihadist manual entitled "Security and Intelligence". Analysis of PDF metadata traced the document back to 1998. The material is prefaced with several dedications to prominent entities associated with the Afghan mujahideen including: Osama Bin Laden, Abullah Azzam, The leaders of the Islamic Jihad in Afghanistan and The state of Pakistan, both government and people ("for allowing the brothers to be on their soil").
9 September 2007 – US Military Equipment in Afghanistan
WikiLeaks releases the full equipment register of every US Army managed unit – from psychological operations (“PsyOps”) and interrogation units to Kabul headquarters, documents that help us understand how money is being spent and the nature of operations in Afghanistan.