War Documents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the West’s Ugly Image

The online website WikiLeaks sparked a huge frenzy following the publication of 75,000 confidential documents on the war in Afghanistan and around 50,000 documents on the war in Iraq. A Pentagon spokesman considered that publishing such confidential documents on wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq leads to facing risks to the U.S. troops, and to Iraqi and Afghan citizens cooperating with the U.S. forces in both countries.

The Pentagon spokesman, Colonel Dave Laban, also described the published reports as superficial, but they disclose Iraqi individuals working with the U.S. forces. Colonel Laban added that such leakage threatens to revive the memories related to difficult times of war, including the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

It is likely that the above-mentioned documents would reveal human losses among Iraqi civilians. Laban doesn’t expect that the documents would include any video recordings.

On the other hand, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen expressed his opinion by saying, “Publishing the documents shall be a very regrettable matter.”

In fact, the publishing of such confidential documents on the U.S. war against Afghanistan and Iraq by a special website financed by non-governmental bodies — therefore, from a non-profit website — has a large impact on the world’s public opinion. In addition, the website is financed by human rights activists and journalists who oppose wars.

No matter how confidential these documents are, they actually affect the morale of troops who are still fighting outside their nation, and expose their actions against local citizens. Moreover, the special report in Iraq states that a number of Iraqi civilians were killed at the American barriers, whereas others were murdered in the public roads, as happened at Al-Nousour square in Baghdad when the Blackwater personnel protection shot a civilian car, which lead to the death of around 20 passengers. Not to mention the awful violations perpetrated by some of the troops against the Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Buka and other prisons, as well as the torture practices carried out by Iraqi soldiers at the special prisons affiliated to Premier Nouri Al Maliki’s office that the U.S. troops knew about.

Among the document publishing’s risks is that they revealed the names of Iraqi and Afghan citizens who served the U.S. forces as translators or agents, i.e. spies on the national resistance members to military or political occupation, or those who supply food to the occupation forces as well as individuals and companies that offer them logistic services.

In fact, all these categories will be subject to investigation and perhaps to accountability by Jihad and resistance organizations. In addition, accountability might be extended to reach other countries, which means the Arab and foreign individuals who served the U.S. forces on all levels. In addition, this accountability will not come to pass any time soon and might be postponed to a later time.

What matters most in publishing these documents is that they grant all those who have been affected by the American occupation an opportunity to lodge claims against it at the International Criminal Court, individually or collectively. Also, the human rights organizations and Arab human rights should undertake such a task from now on in order to acquire the rights of those who were mistreated and deprived from their financial rights or suffered from violation acts such as rape, displacement and money looting.

Besides that these documents actually reveal secrets that condemn the aggressor, the security bodies’ documents in the Arab world cannot be reached in any time now or in the future because if revealed, many elites will be seriously affected. Therefore, the oppressed remain so until death and the oppressor shall remain as such also until death.

Thus, our history shall remain preserved in the dark catacombs taken from others’ archives. Also, the historical events shall be written as the decision makers please. Unfortunately, we point at others’ mistakes while we forget ourselves.