Since the dramatic release of a US military film of a US airborne shooting of unarmed journalists in Iraq, Wiki-Leaks has gained global notoreity and credibility as a daring website that releases sensitive material to the public from whistleblowers within various governments. Their latest “coup” involved alleged leak of thousands of pages of supposedly sensitive documents regarding US informers within the Taliban in Afghanistan and their ties to senior people linked to Pakistan’s ISI military intelligence. The evidence suggests however that far from an honest leak, it is a calculated disinformation to the gain of the US and perhaps Israeli and Indian intelligence and a coverup of the US and Western role in drug trafficking out of Afghanistan.
Since the posting of the Afghan documents some days ago the Obama White House has given the leaks credibility by claiming further leaks pose a threat to US national security. Yet details of the papers reveals little that is sensitive. The one figure most prominently mentioned, General (Retired) Hamid Gul, former head of the Pakistani military intelligence agency, ISI, is the man who during the 1980’s coordinated the CIA-financed Mujahideen guerilla war in Afghanistan against the Soviet regime there. In the latest Wikileaks documents, Gul is accused of regularly meeting Al Qaeda and Taliban leading people and orchestrating suicide attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The leaked documents also claim that Osama bin Laden, who was reported dead three years ago by the late Pakistan candidate Benazir Bhutto on BBC, was still alive, conveniently keeping the myth alove for the Obama Administration War on Terror at a point when most Americans had forgotten the original reason the Bush Administration allegedly invaded Afghanistan to pursue the Saudi Bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks.
Demonizing Pakistan?
The naming of Gul today as a key liaison to the Afghan “Taliban” forms part of a larger pattern of US and British recent efforts to demonize the current Pakistan regime as a key part of the problems in Afghanistan. Such a demonization greatly boosts the position of recent US military ally, India. Furthermore, Pakistan is the only muslim country possessing atomic weapons. The Israeli Defense Forces and the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency reportedly would very much like to change that. A phoney campaign against the politically outspoken Gul via Wikileaks could be part of that geopolitical effort.
The London Financial Times says Gul’s name appears in about 10 of roughly 180 classified US files that allege Pakistan’s intelligence service supported Afghan militants fighting Nato forces. Gul told the newspaper the US has lost the war in Afghanistan, and that the leak of the documents would help the Obama administration deflect blame by suggesting that Pakistan was responsible. Gul told the paper, “I am a very favourite whipping boy of America. They can’t imagine the Afghans can win wars on their own. It would be an abiding shame that a 74-year-old general living a retired life manipulating the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan results in the defeat of America.”
Notable, in light of the latest Afghan Wikileaks documents, is the spotlight on the 74-year-oldGul. As I wrote in a previous piece, Warum Afghanistan? Teil VI:Washingtons Kriegsstrategie in Zentralasien, published this June on this website, Gul has been outspoken about the role of the US military in smuggling Afghan heroin out of the country via the top-security Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan.
As well, in a UPI interview on September 26, 2001, two weeks after the 9-11 attacks, Gul stated, in reply to the question who did Black Sept. 11?, “Mossad and its accomplices. The US spends $40 billion a year on its 11 intelligence agencies. That’s $400 billion in 10 years. Yet the Bush Administration says it was taken by surprise. I don’t believe it. Within 10 minutes of the second twin tower being hit in the World Trade Center CNN said Osama bin Laden had done it. That was a planned piece of disinformation by the real perpetrators…” [1] Gul is clearly not well liked in Washington. He claims his request for travel visas to the UK and to the USA have repeatedly been denied. Making Gul into the arch enemy would suit some in Washington nicely.