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Afghan document leaks angers officials

OTTAWA — A murky story of how the Taliban financed its war in Afghanistan and what Canada and the U.S. did to stop it are part of a trove of leaked American documents.

OTTAWA — A murky story of how the Taliban financed its war in Afghanistan and what Canada and the U.S. did to stop it are part of a trove of leaked American documents.

Neither government has ever been very forthcoming about what they know of how the Islamist movement buys weapons, munitions and pays its fighters, or what’s been done to choke off the flow of money.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon denied Monday that the federal government has misled Canadians in any way about the war and condemned the sensational leak of 91,000 pages of documents to an online whistleblowing site.

He added that the documents have, “nothing to do with Canada.”

But one of the notes, released by Wikileaks, shows that Ottawa and Washington suspected South Africa of allowing the Taliban to fundraise on its soil.

The United States, in a May 27, 2007 memo, asked Canada to put diplomatic pressure on both Saudi Arabia and South Africa, a Commonwealth partner.

American diplomats spoke with two senior Foreign Affairs official, including senior director Yves Beaulieu and asked Ottawa to join the Bush adminstration in issuing a joint diplomatic rebuke, or demarche, to the two countries.

“Beaulieu reacted positively to the suggestion that the United States and Canada jointly demarche Pretoria and Riyadh,” said the cable

“Beaulieu said although he was not surprised to hear about Taliban fundraising in South Africa and Saudi Arabia, the government of Canada would need more information about specific (U.S. government) concerns before they could agree to jointly demarche other governments or independently demarche the UAE.”

It’s long been suspected the Taliban have relied on sympathetic Saudi charities to bankroll them.

The reference to the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, is also not a surprise, because intelligence officers have for years expressed concern about possible laundering of opium cash through the oil-rich emirates. The allegations have never been proven.

The revelation about South Africa is new, though, and raises questions about how wide and insidious the Taliban financing network might be.

Cannon refused to get into the details of what was contained in the documents, joining other governments in decrying the leak of sensitive information.

“This is about leaked U.S. documents, and yes, our government is concerned that operational leaks could endanger the lives of our men and women in Afghanistan,” Cannon said.

It’s unclear whether the Conservative government followed through with the joint diplomatic protest.

The classified military material includes details of American strikes on Taliban militants, and civilian deaths. It also contains documents about Pakistan’s intelligence agency and offers potential evidence that it was working with Taliban insurgents.

Cannon did not comment directly on whether the Pakistani government could be trusted as an ally in the region, given some of the details that have surfaced from the documents.

“You’re asking me whether or not I’m concerned with such and such a state. I can tell you we’re working in close co-operation on a number of initiatives with both the Pakistan and the Afghanistan governments.”

The documents contain references to Canadian military operations in Kandahar, including reports of U.S. units that were until recently under Canadian command.

A senior military official, who spoke on background Monday, said they’re studying the leaked records to verify their authenticity and to see if Ottawa was copied on any of them.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange promised on Monday that the release of documents — one of the largest unauthorized disclosures in military history — was just the beginning.

Assange told reporters in London that some 15,000 more files on Afghanistan were still being vetted by his organization.

He said he believed that “thousands” of U.S. attacks in Afghanistan could be investigated for evidence of war crimes, although he acknowledged that such claims would have to be tested in court.

Assange pointed in particular to a deadly missile strike ordered by Taskforce 373, a unit allegedly charged with hunting down and killing senior Taliban targets.

He said there was also evidence of coverups when civilians were killed, including what he called a suspiciously high number of casualties that U.S. forces attributed to ricochet wounds.

The Defence Department declined to respond to specifics contained in the documents, citing security reasons.

Rep. Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the documents reflect his view that U.S. war strategy was adrift last year, before President Barack Obama’s decision to retool the war plan and add tens of thousands of U.S. forces.

Skelton, a Democrat, warned Monday that the documents are outdated and “should not be used as a measure of success or a determining factor in our continued mission there.”

U.S. government agencies have been bracing for the deluge of classified documents since the leak of helicopter cockpit video of a 2007 fire fight in Baghdad.

That was blamed on Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst who was charged with releasing classified information earlier this month.

Manning had bragged online that he downloaded 260,000 classified U.S. cables and transmitted them to Wikileaks.org.

Assange on Monday compared the impact of the released material to the opening of East Germany’s secret police files.

“This is the equivalent of opening the Stasi archives,” he said.

He also said his group had many more documents on other subjects, including files on countries from across the globe.

“We have built up an enormous backlog of whistleblower disclosures,” he said.

Assange said he believed more whistle-blowing material will flood in after the publicity about the Afghan files.

“It is our experience that courage is contagious,” he said.