Some Obama administration officials and congressional lawmakers in recent days have sought to downplay the significance of the massive leak of secret U.S. military files by the organization WikiLeaks by saying it’s “old news,’’ or a rehash of what is already well known about the prolonged war. But why would they think such a dismissive characterization of the remarkable trove of documents makes things better, not worse?
If anything, what they are conceding is that top U.S. intelligence and policy-making officials know full well that at least some of the billions of dollars that they have given to Pakistan in recent years has gone to funding the very insurgency that they are trying to wipe out in Afghanistan – with little, if any success.
It’s true that Washington has long known that Pakistan has been playing such a double game, especially its powerful Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. The ISI essentially created the militant groups that became the Taliban to act as their proxy fighting forces against India and, later, in Afghanistan. But the front-line troop reports and other documents posted online by WikiLeaks provide chilling and authoritative details about how U.S.-funded allied forces are literally at war with our own troops.
And they do so with the kind of specificity that the Obama administration and congressional lawmakers will find hard to ignore. The really smart counterterrorism officials in Washington – who don’t dare speak publicly because it could end their careers – are hoping the new disclosures will finally force those in charge of Pakistan policy to do something that they have been unwilling to do in the past. They’re hoping the White House and Congress tie the billions in aid money flowing to Pakistan to verifiable efforts by the Islamabad government to slash the ties between its intelligence and military services and the Taliban and other militant organizations that they are in collusion with.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, some of them acknowledge that such “tough love’’ could be risky. When Washington cut off some aid to Pakistan after it clandestinely developed nuclear weapons capability, the Islamabad government intensified its ties to jihadi organizations. But given the intensity of the Taliban insurgency, they say, that is a risk that Washington can’t afford not to take.
