WikiLeaks in Arab world! Wednesday, 28 July 2010 04:28

The outing of some 92,000 secret military documents by WikiLeaks has not only put Washington in the dock and rattled the US military machine over its conduct in combat; it has sent shock waves through world capitals.

The unprecedented leak – the organisation released the files to one leading newspaper each in the US, the UK and Germany, besides posting them on their website — of such a huge amount of confidential data, quite naturally, has sent the Pentagon scrambling into damage control mode, investigating how that happened and how to minimise its impact not only on US military efforts in Afghanistan but also on US national security.

Speculation about the why and how of the leak is rife.

One speculation sees it as part of the Democratic Party’s manoeuvring to garner support for early withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and finally end the longest war in US history. Another sees in it the Republican Party’s efforts to project the Democrats as incapable of handling the issues of US national security and the war in Afghanistan.

Some find the sudden change of the commander of US forces in Afghanistan prompting the leak while others see a strengthened Al Qaeda paying people with access to confidential information in order to create a wedge  between the US and Pakistan. Yet others see groups within the US government upset with Obama’s  policies playing their hand to discredit his administration.

Be it as it may, the point we would like to raise is: If the documents contain information about US forces committing war crimes in Afghanistan, as they likely do, will the International Criminal Court (ICC) use the data to start proceedings against the US for war crimes in Afghanistan?

The ICC should be fair in pursuing countries or people who commit war crimes and not concentrate just on people like Sudan’s President Omar Hassan Al Bashir and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

Unfortunately, we see the world media likely focusing on who leaked the documents and how it happened and not on what the document contain, like it happened in the case of the leaked photos and documents of atrocities in Abu Ghraib prison and the Israeli war on Gaza.

Another point: Can there be a WikiLeaks in the Arab world?

WikiLeaks has only been in operation since July 2007 but already they have amassed more than 500,000 documents worldwide, including documents about the Arab world.

The main objective of WikiLeaks is “to protect whistle-blowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public.” This encourages transparency in government and promotes democracy.

However, looking at how things work in the region, WikiLeaks will not happen in the Arab world any time soon. There are but few people in the Arab world ready to take the risk and put their life and family commitments at stake to provide documents that can expose corruption and anomalies in public life.

We only hope that there will come a time when the Arab world will have committed groups like WikiLeaks.