In 2003, I was instructed to hand over terrorists captured by British forces in Kabul to the Afghan authorities for incarceration in Pul-e-Charkhi prison. But I knew what went on in that infamous place at that time and refused to do so. Under the laws of armed conflict, a military commander is responsible for the treatment of his prisoners, and there are similar liabilities under human rights legislation.
The Wikileaks logs seem to document a small number of cases where US troops may have handed prisoners to the Iraqis believing they might be ill-treated. That seems wrong to me, although if you are fighting a protracted campaign in a sovereign country with functioning authorities, the whole issue becomes far from black and white.
More complicated still is the responsibility of coalition military commanders for the actions of the Iraqis when abuse is suspected or encountered, which form the majority of the allegations of wrongdoing against US forces after Wikileaks. But Iraqi forces were under command of Iraqi authorities, not the US military.
Personally, without question, I would have felt obliged to intervene — as I have no doubt many American commanders actually did. It seems clear that a harder line on this should have been taken at the very top of the US command in Iraq, but what if the Government of Iraq had been unwilling to comply?
The actions of the Iraqis as reported in the leaked logs were barbaric and reprehensible. There were isolated incidents too of abuse by US and British soldiers, although the Wikileaks documents do not suggest this was in any way systematic or widespread. Most such incidents seem to have been investigated. But their outcomes would be unlikely to satisfy the deeply subjective judgment of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, a man without first-hand combat experience and apparently only very limited understanding of the inevitable and universal horrors of warfare as recorded in the logs.
Mr Assange’s raw data is dangerous in so many ways. For example most people reading in the press about the Apache helicopter gunship, callsign Crazyhorse 18, might reasonably conclude that, in killing insurgents who had been trying to surrender, a war crime had been committed. But closer examination of the details suggests otherwise.
Few will look beyond the headlines, and I can guarantee this trumped-up atrocity has already spread like wildfire across jihadist websites. By releasing these documents, so easily open to misunderstanding, misrepresentation and exploitation, Wikileaks have become propagandists for violent jihad everywhere. Mr Assange’s logs provide excellent tools for fundraisers and radicalisers in their quest to attack the West and “apostate” governments in Muslim countries everywhere.
We learn that as many as 681 civilians may have been killed by US troops at checkpoints in Iraq, when their vehicles failed to obey orders to stop. If correct, it is a horrific figure, and each death is a tragedy. But the overwhelming responsibility for these killings lies with al-Qaeda and other terrorists. With Shia extremist groups, often supported and directed by Iran, these terrorists were responsible for the overwhelming majority of the supposed 109,032 violent deaths in Iraq between 2004 and 2009.
Even in the early days of the suicide- bombing campaign, in 2004, 140 suicide attacks were recorded in the country. Mistakes were clearly made by coalition and Iraqi forces. But it is hardly surprising in this nightmare situation that young American privates, faced with a split-second life-or-death response to a fast-approaching car, were so often jittery and called it wrong.
Mr Assange and his media partners, including The Guardian, claim their actions will not endanger identifiable individuals. Having been involved in the world of intelligence for many years, I strongly doubt that. Careful analysis of some of the reports could very likely enable informants, who may still be vulnerable, to be identified.
And recruitment and cultivation of human intelligence sources remains crucial to our operations against the Taleban in Afghanistan today. With a clear understanding of the savagery directed by insurgents against exposed informants in that country, the Wikileaks publications will give many potential informants second thoughts about forming an intelligence relationship with Isaf.
The increasing culture of military leaks is taking us towards the point where operational security is becoming nearly impossible. It might be possible to attempt to justify the publication of the Iraq war logs if they had shone the spotlight on some monumental cover-up, revelation of which was in the public interest. But they did not. Like the Afghanistan leaks in July, they revealed little that was previously unknown.
Colonel Richard Kemp is former chairman of the Government’s Cobra Intelligence Group and head of international terrorism and Iraq for the Joint Intelligence Committee
