WikiLeaks Documents Includes Reports of Drones, Deaths and Bribes in Afghanistan

(July 26) -- Documents posted by WikiLeaks are a trove of raw data about Pakistan and Afghanistan, featuring such events as previously unreported civilian deaths and drones gone missing.

A sampling:

The CIA, identified as "Other Government Agency," shot and injured a deaf and mute Afghan man.
The Taliban may have used Man Portable Air Defense System, or MANPADS, to target a U.S. Apache helicopter. The shoulder-fired missiles, which are capable of taking down helicopters or aircraft, were considered a major threat when the United States first went into Afghanistan, but the U.S. military has never acknowledged any case of them being used against coalition aircraft.
Nepalese security personnel working for American contractor Syncope International were involved in a dispute that left one Syncope employee and one Afghan national dead. Two other Syncope contractors, also Nepalese, then entered the U.S. Embassy. The deadly confrontation apparently stemmed from a dispute over a purchase of sheep.

But how do you translate data into information? Perhaps the greatest value of the documents may be in tracking deaths that weren't commonly reported to the public, because they involved Afghans or employees of foreign companies.

Those incidents, which at times are attributed to news reports and other times to military sources, provide a broader view of the breadth of violence that has gripped Afghanistan. Many of those cases do not have any direct involvement of the military, but rather are linked to criminals or tribal fighting.

There are, for example, 100 reports listed under the category of murder, and 110 related to kidnapping.

Some of the documents merely confirm what has been suspected but has taken time to get out, such as the problem of private contractors being extorted for money to move supplies along Afghanistan's roads, raising the concern that the United States is actually funding the Taliban. One report describes a private contractor reporting to the military on bribes it was being asked to pay the Taliban to ensure safe passage for convoys.

That report says other companies backed up the allegations, "and the other companies state they are paying money for safe passage."

These reports, filed under "extortion," appear to flatly contradict statements made recently by military officials, who were questioned by members of Congress precisely about this sort of extortion. "I was personally unaware of these kinds of allegations, but we take it seriously," Lt. Gen. William Phillips, principal military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, said at a congressional hearing.

Some outside researchers appear to still be perusing the documents before providing a final assessment of their worth. "I have just started looking at the documents, and I don't have a global view of them yet," Steven Aftergood, a transparency advocate at the Federation of American Scientists, told AOL News today, a day after they were published.

While some analysts, like Andrew Exum of the Center for a New American Security, have written of the leaks as revealing little new, Aftergood, who has previously criticized Wikileaks for what he describes as indiscriminate disclosures, said these documents shouldn't be judged based purely on shock value.

"It's worth remembering that the Pentagon Papers were not an electrifying read. In fact, they were and are kind of boring," Aftergood said. "But the consequences of their disclosure were profound."