By Srikanth Srinivasa: Subscribe to Srikanth's RSS feed
July 30, 2010 11:23 AM EDT
The Taliban, Afghanistan’s terror group, on Thursday for the first time warned that it will behead anti-Taliban informers for the Nato-led coalition, whose names might appear on the leaked Afghanistan war logs, in the wake of the explosive revelations made by Wikileaks, media reports said.
Wikileaks published over 92,000 uncensored intelligence documents related to the war in Afghanistan and exposed names and locations related to the country, thus creating a security scare.
Concerns were expressed by officials in Britain for those who had helped the British forces in Afghanistan saying that the publication of documents had compromised informants and put their lives at a risk.
The Taliban was quoted as saying that “We know how to punish them”, apparently alluding to beheading as a punishment for those it considered traitors.
Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called the expose "extremely irresponsible and shocking". He was quoted as saying that NATO force’s soldiers’ lives will be in danger now, which is a very serious issue:
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Colonel Richard Kemp, former head of British forces in Afghanistan, was also quoted as saying, "This is potentially damaging to operational security. Publishing this information online increases the enormous dangers our soldiers face. There are few things more valuable to the enemy than gaining insight into our plans. The Taliban will be pouring over every one of the leaked documents with a fine toothcomb."
Meanwhile, in an interview with Channel 4 News, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid was quoted as saying that they were studying and investigating the report while remarking that “if they are US spies, then we know how to punish them”.
However, Admiral Mike Millen, US military’s top officer was quoted as saying that Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks could say whatever he liked about the greater good he thought but the truth was that they might already have on their hands blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family.
In a related move, the US government called in the FBI to help hunt those responsible for leaking secret documents about the Afghanistan war.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has promised a thorough and an aggressive investigation to identify the leakers and determine how this leak occurred while assuring that steps were being taken to restrict access to classified documents in future.
Gates also promised to assess the content of the information compromised and warned that sources identified in the documents were now risked being targeted for retribution by Afghan insurgents.
“Steps will be taken to protect the lives of US service members as well as Afghans possibly exposed by the leaks,” he was quoted as saying.
Bradley Manning, a 22-year old intelligence analyst, is allegedly been identified as the prime suspect in the leak inquiry. Currently, he is already in custody in Kuwait after being arrested for allegedly leaking other information earlier this year.
However, he was previously caught boasting that he had leaked tens of thousands of documents on the Afghan war to the Wikileaks website. The Pentagon suspects that Manning may have some accomplices in the military.
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